1896 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



393 



WATERY-APPEARING CAPPING. 



Question.— In the fall of 1804 I Italianized a 

 part of my apiary, and during the season of 

 1895 the colonies which were so Italianized gave 

 me section honey which looked badly on ac- 

 count of the capping to the cells apparently 

 lying flat on the honey, with no air-space under 

 the capping. I had noticed a very little such 

 before, in colonies that had a trace of Italian 

 blood in them; but the Italianized colonies 

 gave two-thirds of all the honey they made, of 

 such a watery appearance that it hurt the sale 

 of my honey much. I do not recollect ever see- 

 ing any thing regarding this matter in print, 

 and ask if this capping close to the honey is a 

 characteristic of the Italian bee. 



Ansiver. — The matter of watery-appearing 

 honey was the subject of much discussion at 

 our bee conventions and elsewhere in the early 

 seventies, at about the time the Italian bee had 

 obtained a good foothold in the United States, 

 and very many condemned them on account 

 of their being so economical of wax and 

 space as to give their comb honey the appear- 

 ance our questioner speaks of. If the question- 

 er had noticed more closely he would not only 

 have discovered that, besides there being no air 

 between the capping and the honey, the cap- 

 ping itself contained less than one-half the 

 thickness in wax that is used by the black bees. 

 While the Italian bee was condemned by many 

 comb-honey men on account of their bad-ap- 

 pearing honey, yet those who used the extract- 

 or were loud in their praise of this quality; 

 "for," said they, "as less wax is used, less 

 honey will be consumed for wax secretion, and 

 this will give us the amount of honey which 

 the black bees use in secreting wax for us to 

 turn directly into cash." Hence it came about 

 that the Italian bee was especially recommend- 

 ed for an apiary worked for extracted honey, 

 while the blacks and hybrids were thought by 

 some to be the better bees for comb honey. Not 

 long after this it was noticed that certain 

 strains of the Italian bee, and those coming 

 from mothers many generations off from im- 

 ported stock, gave combs of a whiteness which 

 nearly if not quite equaled those produced by 

 black bees, and so we set to breeding in this 

 direction till the success along this white cap- 

 ping line was so great that scarcely a thing 

 about the watery appearance of comb honey 

 has appeared for the past eight or ten years in 

 our bee-papers. Here lies one of the objections 

 made by some against the further importation 

 of bees from Italy, that, by such importations, 

 we have a new warfare to begin till we can 

 breed this watery-capping propensity out of 



them. While I think there is something in this 

 objection, still, so far as I know from personal 

 experience, and some facts gleaned from others, 

 a great advance along the line of white capping 

 of comb has been made in Italy as well as in 

 this country; and our questioner must have 

 gotten hold of some of the very worst bees 

 along this line which are imported from Italy 

 to-day. With me the Cyprian bees were worse 

 along this watery-appearing-comb line than 

 the Italians; while the Syro-Italian bees, sent 

 out by a prominent apiarist, were the worst I 

 ever saw— so much so that their honey was 

 hardly salable at any price, without explana- 

 tion, as the people looked upon it with suspi- 

 cion of adulteration, or that it was glucose 

 capped by machinery, according to the " fake " 

 that was then abroad in the land. Had it not 

 been for the many good qualities of the Italian 

 bee, this quality of poor- looking comb honey, 

 that was noticed at the start, would have doom- 

 ed them just as surely as the stinging propen- 

 sity did the Cyprians. But the Italian bee is in 

 this country for its many good qualities, and it 

 is here to stay for all time, and in time the ob- 

 jection spoken of by our questioner will be a 

 thing entirely of the past. 



CLIPPING queens' wings. 



Question.— I desire to clip the wings of my 

 queens this year. What is the best way to clip, 

 and when is the best time to do it? 



Answer. — First, I will answer as to time: 

 When apple-trees and dandelions are in bloom 

 is the best time that I know of to clip the wings 

 of queens, as at that time of the year there are 

 not so many bees in the way, this making it 

 easier to find the queen, and it has also become 

 warm enough so that there is little danger of 

 chilling the brood if the combs are out of the 

 hive some little time. Then the queen is apt to 

 be laying up to her greatest capacity, which 

 makes her more slow of motion, and easy to see. 

 But, having really decided to clip our queens, 

 the time to do this is at any time when we see 

 any queen not clipped which we are sure is a 

 laying one. Thus I am always prepared to clip 

 any queen I may find which is laying, and has 

 whole wings; and, besides this, I go over the 

 apiary during fruit bloom to make sure that all 

 are clipped. Now, how shall we clip? Some 

 tell us to clip with scissors, doing so with the 

 queen standing on the comb, cutting ofT what 

 you happen to catch at the time the scissors are 

 shut. Others say, take the queen by the thorax, 

 and then deliberately cut just so much of the 

 larger wing on the right or left side, just as 

 seems good to them; while others have a clip- 

 ping-device to run the queen in, so that she 

 will be like a cow in a stanchion, etc., all of 

 which are undoubtedly practical in the hands 

 of those who are accustomed to their use. My 

 way, although I do not claim for it the best, is 

 as follows: Have the small blade of your jack- 



