TEE BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW. 



183 



Wide Fuames often sag, or rather, the 

 bottom bars do, and this causes a crack to 

 appear between the tops of the sections and 

 the top bar of the wide frame. Somebody, 

 I have forgotten whom, wrote me awhile 

 ago that he put a short piece of wire around 

 the middle of each wide frame after putting 

 in the sections, drew it up snug and gave 

 the ends a twist to hold them together. 

 This prevents all sagging of the bottom bars. 

 The wire used is the same as that used in 

 wiring frames. It is but the work of an in- 

 stant to remove the wire, and this man says 

 that it does not take nearly so long to put 

 on the wire as it does to scrape the sections 

 if it is left off; besides, they look whiter and 

 cleaner if no propolis ever touches them. 



Introducing Queens is almost always a 

 more or less hazardous undertaking. The 

 usual way of releasing them now-a-days is 

 to allow the bees to open the cage by eating 

 candy out of the entrance. Mr. W. H. Pridg- 

 en says in his catalogue that it is an im- 

 provement to release the escort that accom- 

 panies the queen and then replace it with 

 the same number of real ijoung bees taken 

 from the colony into which it is proposed to 

 introduce the queen. It is more difficult to 

 introduce queens to hybrid bees than to any 

 others that I have tried. Sometimes I found 

 it necessary to make them hopelessly queen- 

 less before I could succeed. Take away the 

 (jueen and all of the unsealed brood and 

 bees will accept a queen invariably, unlesB 

 they have been a long time queenless — at 

 least, such is my experience. 



W. H. Pbidgen, of Creek, N. C, has got- 

 ten out a most interesting catalogue and 

 price-list of queens — the most interesting, I 

 think, of any I have seen. In it he describes 

 the methods he uses, which are practically 

 the Doolittle. Instead of scooping up the 

 larva upon the point of a stick and trans- 

 ferring it to a cell-cup he has a plan where- 

 by the cocoon at the bottom of the cell i» 

 taken up with the larva upon it. Thus the 

 "cradle, baby and all is transferred without 

 even waking up the baViy." Illustrations 

 are given showing the tools used. Those 

 interested in queen rearing ought to send 

 for this catalogue. Mr. Pridgen is making 

 a specialty of five-banded bees, having fifty 

 colonies of straight, five-banded stock. He 

 also supplies (jueens from imported stock, 

 but mated to five-banded drones. 



The Colob of Queens is affected by the 

 temperature at the time they are being 

 reared. Some one made this assertion in 

 the American Bee Journal and it aroused 

 Mr. McArthur, of Canada, so that he con- 

 tributed several columns to that paper in 

 trying to prove the incorrectness of the 

 assertion. I think it possible that Mr. Mc- 

 Arthur did not exactly understand the mat- 

 ter. He may have thought that these writers 

 meant that queens reared in cool weather 

 thereby received a taint of black blood. 

 From reading his article I am inclined to 

 that view. It is a fact, however, that queens 

 reared in cool weather are often quite dark 

 compared with those reared in hot weather. 

 I hafe often noticed it. 1 do not know as 

 the progeny of such queens will be any 

 darker. 



1i»U»lUiU»^^U" 



Foul Bbood receives considerable atten- 

 tion this month in the " Extracted Depart- 

 ment " of the Review. There is one other 

 point that I failed to touch upon in my com- 

 ments upon Mr. McEvoy's excellent articl«, 

 and that is the idea that foul brood develops 

 from dead brood; that is, brood that has 

 been chilled or starved, or been killed in 

 some manner. Mr. McEvoy warns bee- 

 keepers to keep dead brood ont of their 

 hives, as it is likely to develop foul brood. 

 I believe Mr. McEvoy once receded from 

 this position, and I am sorry to see so sen- 

 sible a man take it up again. Those who 

 differ with him on this point are called 

 " professional guessers." A man does not 

 have to have experience with foul brood in 

 order to see the folly of such a belief. A 

 late freeze one spring once destroyed con- 

 siderable brood in many of my colonies. 

 No foul brood developed. In making up 

 nuclei for queen rearing I have often had 

 brood that starved from neglect — so many 

 of the bees going back to the old hive. (I 

 have since learned how to obviate this diffi- 

 culty.) No foul brood came about as a 

 result. There have been thousands of cases 

 like this all over the country. 



THE NOBTH WESTEUN CONVENTION. 



I have never attended any better conven- 

 tions than some of the meetings of the 

 North \Vestern in Chicago. I once heard 

 our lamented T^angstroth characterize ot.e 

 of the meetings of the North Western as the 

 greatest gathering of large, practical bee 



