THE BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW. 



131 



Five - Banded Italians have pleased C A. 

 Bunch, of Nye, Ind., by not swarm ng and 

 storing more honey than the other strains of 

 Italians. "Besides. " he adds, "most of us 

 poor mortals admire that which is beautiful." 



W. C. Fkazier, so he writes me, thinks 

 that a wholly new system of apiculture could 

 be invented, differing entirely from the pre- 

 sent system as regards hives, manipulation 

 and wintering. He says: " this bee business 

 has been once around the circle and we are 

 now about back to box hives." 



Mice can destbot whole colonies of bees. 

 Mr. West unpacked the bees belonging to 

 Mr. McColl, (the man who is so successful 

 in raising alsike) and found several colonies 

 destroyed by mice. < )thers were seriously 

 injured. They were packed out of doors in 

 clover chafiF, and where the mice did not get 

 in, they wintered well. 



D. A. Pike does not take much stock in 

 the plan of a queen breeder rearing all his 

 queens from one queen and the drones from 

 another. He should have all of his queens 

 bred up to such a standard of excellence that 

 he would be willing to breed queens from 

 any of them. He is then prepared to send 

 out good queens, and not until then— so 

 thinks friend Pike. 



" The lowest hives in the cellar did not 

 contain a live colony." This is what a bee- 

 keeper told me this spring. He said the cel- 

 lar was damp and cold, but just how damp 

 and cold he did not know. The bees near the 

 top of the cellar wintered quite well. In my 

 experience in cellar wintering I have noticed 

 that the colonies near the top of the cellar 

 nsnally wintered best. Is this a hint for me 

 to keep my cellar warmer ? 



Ventilation for bee-cellars and wintering 

 repositories is being talked of again. I 

 wish that I could believe it necessary — I al- 

 ways wanted to believe in it— but I have win- 

 tered bees so perfectly buried under the fro- 

 zen earth, that my faith is weak. But then, in 

 some conditions, it may be necessary. If a 

 man is wintering his bees successfully by the 

 use of ventilation as a help, let him continue 

 its use ; on the contrary, if he sees no need 

 for it, why go to any expense to secure it ? 



HOW SUGAB MAY BE AN AID WITHOUT BEING 

 made INTO HONEY. (?) 



Touching the sugar - honey discussion, 

 Chalon Fowls writes : " But there is one 

 point you mention that you can safely harp 

 on, first, last and all of the time, and that is 

 feeding sugar for winter stores. I have al- 

 ways found it profitable to do this, even 

 with sugar at double its present price. An- 

 other thing, I believe the possibilities of 

 heavy spring feeding, to obtain a large force 

 of workers for the harvest, have never been 

 half realized. I honestly believe that by the 

 intelligent use of sugar, for breeding and 

 winter stores, the honey crop from natural 

 sources could often be doubled." 



The COST of honey production has been 

 quite thoroughly discussed in Gleanings. 

 Some of the articles are well written, but a 

 great deal of ink has been used in trying to 

 decide whether any of the income from the 

 apiary ought to be counted as a salary to the 

 one who superintends, or plans the work, 

 and, if so, what amount. Of course, what- 

 ever time is used l)y the owner, or any one, 

 in superintending the work, ought to be 

 counted in the cost of the honey. There is one 

 comfort about this, however, and that is that 

 when the owner is also superintendent, as is 

 usually the case, it makes no difference, so 

 far as the amount of his income is concern- 

 ed, whether one-half of the proceeds of the 

 apiary come to him as superintendent's 

 salary, or whether the whole amount left in 

 his pocket is called profit. It's his money 

 just the same, and calling it salary, or call- 

 ing it profit, will neither increase nor dimin- 

 ish it. 



OBJECTIONS TO THE GKADING OF HONEY. 



There has been brought against the grad- 

 ing of of honey the objection that it would 

 produce a sameness, and remove that incen- 

 tive to excel that ought to accompany all 

 pursuits. If there is a grade requiring per- 

 fection, as I think there ought to be, this 

 objection will not hold good. 



Another objection is that different persons 

 would grade the same honey diflferently, 

 even when working by the same rules. 

 There probably would be minor differences, 

 but the grading would be much more uni- 

 form than when no general rule was fol- 

 lowed. 



