188 



THE BEE KEEPERS' REVIEW. 



The main idea of the Ilgen hive (Review 

 125) seems to me to be a very attractive one, 

 if not, itideei], the winning idea. A two- 

 chambefed tenement, one chamber to be 

 reserved empty for the prime sw irm, then 

 the swarm made to embrace all the flight 

 bees by the simple process of turning the 

 thing around, then colonies consolidated 

 into one in the fall, and the young queen 

 saved. How easily the Wells system of 

 double storing could be roped in for the 

 time when the establishment has two queens. 

 Invalids and weak persons who cannot lift 

 a good weight would find it too heavy 

 doubtless. 



The exact temperature of bees' bodies was 

 a great surprise to me, and I suspect it will 

 be to the brethren. I'm almost inclined to 

 say that the usually careful Germans have 

 played Frenchman, or Yankee, and made a 

 big mistake. 81^ F. is fourteen degrees 

 lower than I supposed the bees' normal to 

 be. The range is considerable from a bee 

 just thawed out enough to crawl, to the one 

 dying with heat; but this might be expected. 

 From 77^ to 95^ is 18 degrees. 



The Pettit method of " hurrying up the 

 cakes " in the outside sections by double 

 bee space will doubtless amount to some- 

 thing, wfiether it pays expenses or not. It 

 is in accord with bee nature to have their 

 treasures inclosed with a living shell or hive 

 of bees, and this extra space outside humors 

 this natural.craving. One kind of hives I 

 use has a super, in which top as well as all 

 sides are completely bathed in bees (inven- 

 tion of my brother before I bought the 

 apiary), and it's tip-top so far as storing 

 goes. I don't use these supers much be- 

 cause they require a section too big to sell 

 well. 



The General Round-up 



The Busy Bfee, successor to the Nebraska 

 Bee-Keeper, is none the less a new paper 

 from picking up the shoes of a defunct one. 

 It is in fact the most decidedly new paper 

 that has appeared for a long time. If it 

 carries out its announced programme it will 

 have not only a field of its own, but enemies 

 of its own, and lots of them. Any old paper 

 that should undertake to cover adequately 

 the same ground would encounter an ugly 

 tornado of protest from its prosessional 

 patrons — they some years ago agreed that 

 *' contraction " was the only proper manipu- 

 lation in bee culture. But lo, here comes a 



baby under the banner of expansion, infla- 

 tion, bee-keeping for all creation, and pro- 

 poses to devote itself almost exclusively to 

 the enlistment a'ld upbuilding of beginners. 

 I for one am glad of it. The close-com- 

 munionism of our craft has an ill look. 

 This is a free country. Let the hard shells 

 have their papers; and let there be at least 

 one able paper on the line which used to be 

 popular in this country, and is still popular 

 in Europe — bee-keeping as a delightful way 

 to get acquainted with nature, and earn 

 something too, and make the table a little 

 less bare. 



I see by Gleanings 4.58 that at the Home 

 of the Honey Bees they are still fuddling 

 with spray pumps. Still adhere to my old 

 position that the whole thing is a self-decep- 

 tion and delusion — three times worse than 

 the pan-thumping of our grandparents. 

 That didn't do ai.y harm, and did lots of 

 good in working off the surplus of human 

 nerve excitement. This does do harm. 

 Bees' sight is not keen enough to discrim- 

 inate between drops of water and flying 

 bees, and when somewhat weary with cele- 

 brating they come right at your spray under 

 the impression that that's the thick of the 

 swarm, where clustering is about to begin. 

 Something to keep two simultaneousswarms 

 apart is what is most sorely needed, and I 

 feel pretty sure that the spray pump tends 

 to draw them together. 



A centrifugal for filling combs instead of 

 for extracting them is going to be one of the 

 appliances of the going-to-be apiary, I feel 

 pretty sure. Gleanings illustrates one on 

 page 411, the workmanship of George W. 

 Leonard. Combs are filled, you understand, 

 as the natural and best way of feeding bees. 

 By and by perhaps some one will get up an 

 extractor that will either empty or fill combs 

 as one may desire, and so prevent the in- 

 crease of machines to be kept in order. 



Friend Tjoonard also presents a pair of 

 wooden tweezers to pick up the queen with 

 — not so handy usually as skilled fingers; 

 but ^here is sense and force in what he says 

 about fingers leaving a scent on the queen 

 which causes the bees to ball her when put 

 back. Worse than that, they may sting her 

 to death as quick as a flash. 



Ernest Root, Gleanings 40(!, says he has 

 extracted stings from several stung queens. 

 So it's not true that a sting thrust into a 

 bee's body always, or even usually, pulls out 

 again. 



