1896 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



431 



queen-cell can be given In a few days more, 

 which cell is to give the future mother of the 

 colony. Either of these plans will work, if 

 properly attended to; but, as I said at the start, 

 I doubt whether any thing of the kind is the 

 royal road toward the production of the best 

 results in comb honey. 



Amalgamation or no amalgamation, it is real- 

 ly folly for us to divide up our money, lime, and 

 energies between two national organizations. — 

 The Bee-heepers' Revierv. 



Only 3 out of 24 respondents to A. B. J.'s 

 question-box had a good word for keeping bees 

 queenless during the honey harvest. The three 

 were P. H. Elwood, J. A. Green, and E. France. 

 — Hasty in Review. 



Let me say to my good friend Merrill, of the 

 American Bee-keeper, that it is not personal 

 vanity that leads some of us bee-keeping editors 

 to speak of the sickness in our families and of 

 the food we are eating, but because we have 

 suffered so severely, and, having found a way of 

 escape, are anxious that others should know of 

 the way. — Editorial in May Review. 



Glad to see that the new-process foundation 

 proves less liable to sag, in the trials so far, 

 than the old kind. Even with pure wax, sag- 

 ging has been a serious evil. 



" Perfectly abominable." These are the 

 words in which Ernest backs up Geo. P. Rob- 

 bins as to the style in which some of us put our 

 honey on the market. 'Spects we need more of 

 the same kind of talk. — Hasty, in Review. 



Mr. A. L Root is, and has been for a good 

 many years, a good deal of a preacher, if we 

 may judge from his sermonettes in Gleanings. 

 If he practices all he preaches — that is, takes 

 all his own medicine — he must be a very busy 

 man, and ought to be pretty healthy spiritually. 

 Between good potatoes and better sermons, the 

 readers of Gleanings ought to be well-kept in 

 both body and soul. — American Bee Jonrnal. 



Mr. J. B. Hall, of Woodstock, Ont., is known 

 as Canada's comb honey chief. In 1883 he ex- 

 hibited 2:3.000 pounds of honey at the Toronto 

 Fair, and 11.000 pounds of it was comb honey in 

 sections. Mr. H. produced and sold in one year 

 $3000 worth of honey. Out of his honey crops 

 he built a large two-story brick house, and 

 banked enough money to carry him over all the 

 poor honey seasons. Mr. Hall is very popular 

 with all the bee-keepers, and. being such a suc- 

 cessful specialist in bee-keeping, his opinions 

 are always valued highly in bee-matters. After 

 saying all this (which we learned through one 

 of our good Canadian friends)— would you be- 

 lieve it?— this same J. B. Hall won't open his 

 head except he's driven to it in a convention 

 discussion! My! but he can talk ! but on pa- 

 per he's so very mum (for a Canadian), that it 

 seems strange. He's a good man, though, and 

 we liked him very much when we had the 

 pleasure of meeting him at the Toronto conven- 

 tion last September. — Americayi Bee Journal. 



Lysol and its value in cases of foul brood ap- 

 pears to me in a different light after reading 

 the article of F. L. Thompson on that subject. 

 It seems that the feeding of lysol may cure foul 

 brood; but if there is infected honey in the 



hive, the use of that honey at some future time 

 will again bring in the disease. In other words, 

 foul brood can never be permanently eradicat- 

 ed from a colony so long as its old combs of 

 honey are left in the hive. The use of lysol in 

 a region of country where there are colonies of 

 bees infected with foul brood may be a good 

 thing— it certainly would be if its use would 

 prevent the contraction of the dread disease, 

 and Mr. Thompson seems sure that it will. 

 For this purpose I can see that the use of some 

 drug might be valuable. I suppose the philos- 

 ophy of the matter is that, if ail of the honey 

 brought into the hive in times of scarcity, at 

 times when bees will rob, is tinctured with ly- 

 sol. any germs of disease that are brought in 

 will come in contact with the lysol and thereby 

 be killed. — Editorial in May Review. 



WHY BEES SWAR.M; A GOOD ANSWER. 



George F. Bobbins, A. B. J., 22.=). jauntily says 

 he knows why bees swarm; and he can tell us 

 (e'enmost) how to prevent it. Let me see if I 

 can't beat you at that, friend R. Bees swarm 

 because there is a hole in their hive. Abolish 

 the holes, and swarming is cured — I can war- 

 rant 'em. Perchance the Bobbins remedy is 

 not quite so illusory as mine; but it may fail 

 sometimes, and mine will not. He takes away 

 the contents of the hive, and leaves the hole— 

 and the bees. The objections are that you 

 have doubled your stock, and you may want to 

 prevent that: you have a lot of hungry babies 

 that must starve, as there are no nurses to feed 

 them: and, you have a lot of sealed brood that 

 may chill in a sudden cold spell of weather; and 

 you mav get the whole thing scooped by rob- 

 bers. These combs can indeed be given to weak 

 colonies, but only in a small way; and we want 

 a scheme that covers the whole apiary. If he 

 will take away the combs from several hives 

 each day continuously, and put them into a big 

 warm tenement hatchery, when the young bees 

 are numerous ladle them a few quarts into each 

 original hive — well, I think that's the direction 

 from which morning is most likely to arise. 

 Perhaps the man who works out the finished 

 details of this may be canonized as a benefac- 

 tor. I have never got around to begin the 

 trial, although I have long had the scheme in 

 mind. Th^ outcome of such a hatchery is not 

 increase of colonie'^, but a lot of nearly empty 

 combs. — Hasty in Review. 



^■^(d^^m^k^ 



iy 



INTRODUCING A QUEEN WHERE THERE ARE 

 LAYING WORKERS. 



I believe you and other bee-keepers claim 

 that a queen can not be introduced where there 

 is a laying worker. If you were here I could 

 show you a case where we succeeded. The 

 colony was queenless for a month or more after 

 we first noticed it. We sent for a queen, and 

 when we came to put her in we found quite a lot 

 of eggs in drone-cells, which are now hatching. 

 We put the queen in. She was in the cage for 

 four days, and we let her out. She is now laying 

 all right. A. Blue. 



Bladensburg, Ohio, May 15. 



[You must have misunderstood us. It is true, 

 it is somewhat risky, introducing a valuable 



