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$ I °-^ PE^EAF^^ \©) f^EDiNA Ohio 



Vol. XXI. 



SEPT. 15, 1893. 



No. 18. 



STRAr Straws 



FROM DR. C. C. MILLER. 



Are you going to Chicago October 11 ? 



A YOUNG bf:e sheds its skin about half a doz- 

 en times while in the larval state. 



Say. Doolittle. the wire cloth I use to kill 

 bees has throe meshes to the inch; and when 

 one of its wires hits a bee it hurts. 



A REMEDY FOR ANTS is giveii in Revue. It 

 consists of pulverizpd crude napthaline scat- 

 tered in the places frequented by the ants. 



Crossness, especially late in the season, is 

 given as the leading characteristic of Funics, in 

 Bulletin No. 3(). Department of Agriculture. 



Drones from unfertilized queens, and even 

 those from laying workers raised in worker- 

 cells, Cheshire thinks, are just as good as any. 



A Fi>YiNG BEE is supposed to vibrate its 

 wings from 200 to 400 times in a second —say 

 20.000 times in a minute. Lively work, isn't it? 



PoLT.EN is used by the French as a ferment 

 for hydromel. Why doesn't some enterprising 

 Yankee start the manufacture of yeast from 

 pollen ? 



A WOMAN sometimes thinks she isn't in very 

 big business when she's busy at housekeeping. 

 But the rest of the family don't think it's very 

 little business if she drops out of it for a while. 



A QUEEN has about 5000 eyes; a worker from 

 that to 0000, and a drone twice as many as a 

 worker. I'm glad Tm not a bee, for with only 

 two eyes I can see much that ought to be done. 



A queen's brain is not so large as that of a 

 worker, and Cheshire thinks a quoen doesn't 

 know as much as a worker. The queen lays 

 eggs, and the workers run all the other business 

 of the hive. 



People are more inclined to get fat as they 

 grow older. Not so with bees. A perfect bee 

 weighs little more than half as much as it did 

 when, in the grub state, it commenced spinning 

 its cocoon. 



Reversing frames has been little mention- 

 ed of late. In reply to a question about it in 

 A. B. J., only three out of twenty-five think it 

 of any use beyond getting frames filled with 

 comb to the bottom-bar. 



Are bees very regular about the time of 

 sealing up queen-cells? It seems to me that I 

 have sometimes, when destroying queen-cells, 

 found them containing grubs much too small 

 to be of the regulation age. 



"Just AS SOON as it is warm enough in the 

 spring for bees to fly," says Hutchinson, in ^. 

 B. J., ■' I would remove them from the cellar." 

 You wouldn't keep that up many years, W. Z., 

 if you lived at Marengo. 



Drones are said to be free commoners. I nev- 

 er had much proof of it till this year. I have 

 two colonies of half-blood Funics, the drones 

 being pure, and those ebony-black gentlemen 

 are scattered all over the apiary. 



Fulled queens, according to H. F. Coleman, 

 in ^. B. J., should not be handled, the end of 

 the cell being opened and the queen allowed to 

 run down of her own accord. I handle mine; 

 but the other way might be safer. 



Funics are just like blacks in their readiness 

 to run and fall off the combs, but exactly the 

 reverse of blacks in their way of finishing up 

 combs, the blacks making very white combs 

 and Funics the greasiest-looking of all. 



" By feeding each colony seven or eight 

 pounds of sugar syrup at the end of the season, 

 it will be stored in the center of the hive, and 

 it will be largely this food that the bees will 

 consume during their confinement."— ifutc/iin- 

 son, in A. B. J. 



A NOVEL PLAN for stopping robbing is given 

 by M. D. Andes, in A. B. J. He " removed the 

 queens from the hives that were robbing, and 

 in 30 minutes the robbing ceased." After being 

 queenless 48 hours they had their queen re- 

 turned, and all was lovely. 



Brood in sections never troubles me much, 

 although there is nothing to hinder queens go- 

 ing up into supers if they want to. This year, 

 however. I have not seen brood in a single sec- 

 tion. Is it because the honey-flow was unusu- 

 ally heavy this year? 



Gallup, the old original Gallup, says, in 

 A. B. J., that it is so common for stray swarms 

 to take possession of vacant chimneys, etc., in 

 California, that "in letting a contract for a 

 house it is now customary to insert in the con- 

 tract that it must be bee-proof." 



That bad smell that I complained of. com- 

 ing in the hives this year directly after clover 

 harvest, M. B. Bergey thinks is a disease. A 

 few of his colonies liave it yeai'ly. tlu^ bees dy- 

 ing in droves. I doubt whether mine is the 

 same. I think no bees die in my case. Is his a 

 new disease ? 



WiNTEHiNG IN RussiA, whether it be from 

 hardier bees or a moister climate, or what not, in 

 spite of the S(>vere cold, seems more successful 

 than here. Mme. Levaschof reports in Revue, 

 that, out of 40 colonies, she lost only one, and 

 that by her own fault— this with five months of 



