THE BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW, 



17 



young larv» are scanted of food. The sec- 

 ond day the larva? are eaten. The third day 

 the sealed drone brood are torn out and 

 sucked dry, and the more solid portions 

 thrown out the entrance. At about this 

 time the bees are noticed to be feeding each 

 other something invisible. He does not 

 say it ill so many words, but apparently he 

 wishes us to understand that the younger 

 bees take pollen and manipulate it much as 

 they would to feed the larva>. and then 

 (there being now no larva' in the hive) feed 

 it to the bees, which are not good at pollen 

 preparing. This may go on several days, 

 if the supply of pollen holds out— exactly 

 how long seems not to be ascertained. For 

 some reason neither Mr. Doolittle nor any- 

 body else seems ever to have been able to 

 get this consumption of pollen started in 

 late fall or winter. At that period bees will 

 starve to death on plenty of pollen with- 

 out eating any, so far as can be discovered. 

 By a brilliant guess he makes the composi- 

 tion of ordinary larval food to be about two 

 parts honey, four parts pollen, one part wa- 

 ter. For the starvation food mentioned 

 above they must learn to use water or larval 

 juice instead of honey. Mr. D's inference 

 is that old bees never eat raw pollen at all. 

 A, B. .T. 757. 



Prof. Cook says he thinks there has been 

 as yet very little real, scientific breeding 

 practiced on bees. A. B. J. 759. (rlad so 

 high an authority said that. Queens, so far, 

 have been bred to sell: and to sell well their 

 progeny must be prettij. And that with 

 most breeders hitherto has been the end of 

 the chapter. 



A straw in Gleaning 739 quotes E. T. 

 Abbott as advising that sulphur for fumiga- 

 ting purposes be mixed with equal bulk of 

 saltpeter. Defective combustion is a very 

 common and very had fault in fumigating. 

 Saltpeter supplies oxygen: and if somebody 

 has proved by actual success in practice 

 that the above is an effeciive remedy, it is 

 quite an item. 



Further proof was hardly needed, but F. 

 Greiner, in Gleanings 740, gipes proof that 

 the foreign authorities are in error who 

 claim that bees will die rather than go at 

 field work younger than I*^ days old. Bees 

 five days old brought some pollen. In 

 another experiment bees six days old brought 

 enough basswood nectar so that it would drop 

 from the combs in the way so familiar to 

 practical bee men. 



Harry Howe, who appeals to W. L. Cogg- 

 shall as an exempler, says it is good tactics 

 to have it understood that any one who 

 wants honey can have all he can eat by 

 merely dropping along when you are in 

 your apiary, and that without having to ask 

 for it. Practical defense against stealing. 

 Gleanings 747. May be something in it. 

 Prospective thief hankers for honey a fort- 

 night before he actually steals. If the plan 

 given above were in vogue he would call a 

 conple of times during the fortnight, and 

 the stealing wonld never take place — may 

 be. 



Gravenhorst's favorite way of strengthen- 

 ing weak colonies in early spring is to set a 

 big feeder in the top story of a strong col- 

 ony, and when it gets full of bees take it bees 

 and all and put it over the weak colony— 

 this io be done at evening. Most of them 

 stay at the new location; in fact a large part 

 of them are too young to know the way 

 home. He don't like exchanging the loca- 

 cations of hives for this purpose as with him 

 queens get balled and killed. I am pleased 

 to hear so eminent an authority say that 

 comb-building, under certain circumstances, 

 is mere by-work, and not expensive of hon- 

 ey. Return your after swarms, swapping 

 them, and cutting out all cells. [ I suspect 

 that this is a very valuable suggestion — the 

 complete exchange of the bees of two colo- 

 nies giving seconds about the same time, 

 but letting the frames stay where they are ] 

 Queens of after-swarms get to laying sooner 

 than those from your selected cells. Gra- 

 venhorst uses the migratory system a good 

 deal. Someof his bees last year worked in 

 four different locations, at home, at a big 

 rape field, at a plain covered with white 

 clover, and at the heath in fall. And here's 

 a hint about the mystery that has greatly 

 puzzled many of us — fine flow of honey at 

 one place, and three miles away none. 

 Well perhaps a week or two weeks before 

 the honey flow there was a nice local shower. 

 No honey results appeared at the time, and 

 you forgot all about it: but it develoj)ed 

 bloom, and a honey flow which followed afar 

 off: and where there was no water shower 

 there was no honey shower. This very 

 meaty article is in gleanings 7.t0 and 7.51. 



Dr. Butler's simple domestic still, to 

 stand on the kitchen stove and furnish a 

 constant supply of distilled water, is worthy 

 of liigh praise. It is not a patented con- 

 cern, but the parts are all cheap utensils 



