THE BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW. 



217 



recommend four horizontal wires aud me- 

 dium brood fouudation for the Laugstroth 

 size of frame. This briuys the wires about 

 two iuches apart. Try the experiment your- 

 self ; and if you can get more perfect combs 

 in any other way, we should like to know it. 

 Those we have are as smooth and even as 

 the surface of a board." — (,' leanings. 



Thick top bars Prevent Burr Combs. 



" Perhaps some of our readers would like 

 to know how thick top bars are doing as re- 

 gards presence or absence of burr combs. 

 Some of them have been ift use now for 

 three years, aud they are perfectly clean 

 to day so far as spurs of wax are concerned, 

 although they are soiled as a matter of course 

 with propolis. It is such a comfort to pull 

 off the covers of hives having these frames 

 in ! The bee-keeper who has tried the two 

 kinds of frames in hives side by side, the old 

 burr comb frame and the non-burr comb, 

 we are sure will declare that he will never, 

 ■never go back to the narrow top bars." 

 — Gleanings. 



Some Extra Large Bees. 

 Mr. J. P. Murdock, of Oxford, Fla., writes 

 me that he has some extra large bees, so 

 large that thirteen of their worker cells meas- 

 ure three inches, seven drone cells two inch- 

 es, and more than half the bees fail to pass 

 the ordinary perforated zinc. He says these 

 bees are the result of selection in breeding 

 from an Italian queen inported eleven years 

 ago. He has sent me a copy of the Florida 

 Disjyatch, containing an account of his ex- 

 perience in getting these bees, and of his 

 discovering their unusual size, and I make 

 the following extract from the article. 



" Last season all who saw my bees would 

 remark, ' what big bees ! ' This occurred so 

 often that I concluded to test the matter and 

 see how well I had succeeded. So I sent to 

 a number of our bee men of the North a 

 sample cage, and asked in return a similar 

 favor. In the meatime I rigged up a bal- 

 ance, by which I could weigh to sixteenth 

 grains. By this I found the heaviest dozen 

 went a little more than twenty-three grains, 

 and the lightest about seventeen grains. 

 Now a dozen of mine went up to thirty eight 

 and and three -sixteenths grains, more than 

 double the size of some I received. Well, it 

 set the parties who saw these big fellows to 

 * buzzing ' at once, and all wanted to try 

 them. The result is I have at this time a 

 number of these queens North, trying to 

 break the record on surplus. .Just here I 

 hear that fellow remark. ' another trick to 

 sell queens. ' Not quite, my dear sir. I 

 have the first queen yet to sell for lucre. " 



I have sent for a queen, and expect to 

 know something about these big bees by 

 actual, personal experience. 



Advantages of Spring Feeding. 

 Feeding bees in early spring, and thereby 

 stimulating them to rear a lot of brood that 

 will probably be chilled by a " squaw winter " 

 is not profitable : but I have often thought 

 that many bee-keepers might profitably 

 feed their bees from the beginning of settled 

 warm weather until the flow from clover 

 commenced. If the bees were iu chaff hives, 

 or protected in some other manner, the feed- 

 ing might be commenced earlier in the 

 spring. I have known a cool rainy spell to 

 come on after fruit bloom, and last for two 

 weeks. Breeding ceased almost entirely. 

 White clover found most of the colonies 

 with empty brood combs. The first thing 

 that the bees did was to fill the brood combs 

 with honey. The next thing was to swarm. 

 But little work was done in the sections ; 

 the swarms were small and but little 

 brood was left in the old hive. The flow 

 from white clover was good but the results 

 were meager. A pound of sugar fed each 

 day to each colony during the honey dearth 

 would have kept the combs full of brood and 

 returned its cost four fold. I can but feel 

 that even in ordinary seasons it would pay 

 to feed, when little honey is coming in, 

 from the first of May to the beginning of the 

 main harvest. The combs will then be full 

 of brood and food, the hive full of bees, and 

 when the honey comes, the army of workers 

 can do nothing with it except to put it in the 

 supers. Who has not noticed the difference 

 in results between a colony that is all ready 

 for the boxes at the opening of white clover 

 and the one that is not ready until clover is 

 about gone. This is a subject that I thought 

 upon much this last spring, and, if nothing 

 prevents, I shall give it a trial another year. 

 The following editorial in the Bee-Keepers'' 

 Guide for July, shows that its editor has not 

 only done some thinking in this line, but has 

 been putting his thoughts into practice. 



"This matter of feeding bees during a 

 honey harvest is slightly an out of the way 

 feature in bee-keeping. Yet there has not 

 been a time during these two months when 

 a quart feeder full of syrup would not be 

 very acceptable to any colony in the apiary. 

 We have fed two barrels of sugar and some 

 glucose. We are not sure there is any ad- 

 vantage in feeding the latter ; it is so sticky 

 and tough when it is evaporated down to 

 the consistency of honey the bees seem to 

 handle it with difficulty. We have, in our 

 apiary, a large galvanized tank sitting on 

 brick so arranged that we can build a fire 

 under it. In this we can convert at one 

 time, a half barrel of sugar into syrup. The 



