itlja BEtJ-KEEfERS REVIEW. 



159 



know ' the first thing about patting up the 

 wires. I might fasten them so the current 

 would be grounded, or lose all of its strength 

 before reaching the bell. Will a home- 

 made battery, such as you use ror wiring 

 frames ( described on page 1"5, 18!(.") ), an- 

 swer ? Does it need three batteries ? Will 

 an ordinary door-bell ring loud and long 

 enough to wake a sound sleeper? I can 

 get an electric door-bell for 7") cts. of Mont- 

 gomery Ward it Co., Chicairo: a battery for 

 '>0 cts., or the whole outfit for $1.7.'), includ- 

 ing 1()0 feet of insulated wire, etc.; but this 

 is simply a door-bell, and I don't know 

 whether it is the rielit outfit or not 



There is a gang of wild boys here who take 

 delight in robbing bees — not only mine, but 

 all over the neighborhood. They took 

 about .s;i.00 worth of nice white comb honey 

 from one hive last year, and held a grand 

 pow-wow on the corners. I saw honey and 

 wads of wax there the next morning: found 

 out who was there, got the sheriff on track 

 of them, but they denied having any honey 

 or any knowledge of it. I could not prove 

 it in court, or, at least, the prosecuting at- 

 torney thought so. No arrests were made, 

 but the sheriff told me he knew I was on the 

 right track, for they all showed guilt when 

 questioned. I have lost honey every year. 

 Somptiraes th<^y destroy the whole hive, and 

 I am getting sick of it. I always give them 

 all they want to eat, but there is no ' fun ' 

 about it then. They like the fun of ' coon- 

 ine ' it. I can't work hard all day and 

 watch every nisht, so I wish to try some 

 kind of alarm to wake me. " 



The editor replies as follows : 



" 1 The battery described in Gleanings, 

 page 20C, current volume, would hardly be 

 suitable for an electric alarm; that is. it 

 would he too strong and too expensive. The 

 one that you mention, which yon can get of 

 Montgomery Ward & Oo.. including bat- 

 tery, door-bell, and insulated wire, is just 

 about the thins, and the price is very 

 reasonable. The bell should be stationed in 

 your bedroom, and the two wires should 

 attach the bell to a point outside the house. 

 The bell and battery may be in the same 

 room. Directions which go with the outfiti 

 would show you how to arrange the bell and 

 battery, so there will be no trouble along 

 that scor». But very little wire will be 

 needed. The spool of linen thread, men- 

 tioned on page 2(;fi, ]8;ir) should be long 

 enough to eo clear around the apiary, or 

 the space of ground that \ ou wish to protect 

 from depredations of thieves. As there 

 explained, the thread should pass through 

 eyelets fastened to treis or posts, and 

 should be low enough, -^ay about two feet 

 from the ground, so as not to be seen by 

 those who go into the api iry. As there ex- 

 plained, one end of the thread is made fast, 

 and the other end fastened to a wooden plug 

 that separates the two brass springs form- 

 ing the two poles of th** battery, as explain- 

 ed in our journal, IHit.'i. By following di- 

 rections there given, together with the 

 directions that go with t,h» battery outfit 

 from Montgomery Ward & Co., I think yon 



will be able to make the thing work all 

 right. " 



Thieves have given me very little trouble ; 

 if they did, I should put up such an alarm. 

 Clothes line thieves once made considerable 

 havoc in this city, and when it was neces- 

 sary to leave our clothes out over night I 

 strxing a black linen thread around them 

 and brought the end in the bedroom win- 

 dow, fftstening it to the handle of my old 

 school bell, setting it in a chair by the head 

 of the bed. One night, about midnight, 

 the bell came down rattley't bang, and I 

 scrambled into my trousers and rushed out 

 to find nobody there — hut the wind, and 

 that had managed to fi^p one corner of a 

 sheet around the string and give it a jerk. 



Queen Cells by the Wholesale; Drone Comb 

 for Cell Caps. New vs. Old 

 Methods. 

 Through the courtesy of Gleanings lam 

 able to lay before my readers the following 

 most valuable article and as fine pictures of 

 queen cells as I have ever seen. The arti- 

 cle is written by Mr. H. L. Jones, the vet- 

 eran queen breeder of Australia. Of course, 

 the method is really the Doolittle plan of 

 getting cells, but Mr. Jones describes and 

 defends it so graphically, and those pictures 

 prove the matter so beautifully, that I 

 take pleasure in printing the article and 

 illustrations. A finer lot of queen cells I 

 have never seen, nor have I ever seen bet- 

 ter pictures of cells. Good queens will 

 hatch from such cells as those. See how 

 completely the cells are covered with those 

 hexagnol indentations. Poor queens never 

 come from such cells as those. Deliver me 

 from the queen that hatches from a smooth 

 cell. She is really only about half queen, 

 and the other half worker. How those 

 pictures carry me back to that most de- 

 lightful period of my life — when I was rear- 

 ing queens for the market. To hold up 

 those cells to the light and see the queens 

 " come to life, " see their first faint move- 

 ments; later to hear them "chanking" 

 their way out and then to see them, those 

 beautiful, yellow, "new-looking" queens, 

 push off the lid to their cradle and crawl 

 out into the outer world, then to see them 

 stretch their long legs over the combs of a 

 little nucleus from which a laying queen 

 had lately been caught and caged in a nice 

 white basswood cage: the patting on of the 



