January, 1916. 



I American ^ae Journal 



IS 



p=^a<w4wg*__J 



DIFFERENT TYPES OF SECTIONS 



to swarm, it is well to reduce the en- 

 trance for a few days to keep out the 

 cold air. 



Ten days later we look again over 

 the colonies that had the queen-cells 

 started. If the bees do not appear to 

 have given up the swarming notion we 

 place the queen on one frame of brood 

 in the brood-chamber and fill up with 

 empty combs or full sheets of founda- 

 tion. The balance of the brood we put 

 in the super over a queen-excluder. 

 Should there be too much brood we 

 give the surplus to other colonies, or 

 if it is not desirable to weaken the col- 

 ony, we place more than one frame in 

 the lower story with the queen. Any 

 colony found with nine frames of 

 brood or more in the early spring may 

 be treated in the same way with good 

 advantage whether it shows the swarm- 

 ing impulse or not. About nine days 

 afterward we look over the brood 

 above the excluder for queen-cells 

 which we destroy. 



Every year we find a case or two of 

 a young queen laying in the super 

 above the excluder, where we have 

 missed a cell, but no harm was done in 

 such cases. The excluder between the 

 two queens prevented the issuance of a 

 swarm. One of the queens should be 

 removed, however, prior to the honey 

 flow. 



During swarming time vve go over 

 the yard in this way three times, at in- 

 tervals of nine or ten days, and in our 

 home apiary we have not had a swarm 

 for the last five years. In our outapi- 

 aries we have had one or two swarms 

 for lack of time or because of neglect. 

 A beginner must exercise caution in 

 spreading brood in early spring. 

 Should the brood-nest be too much ex- 

 tended more harm than good is likely 

 to be done. 



We do not make 

 ping queens ; that 

 hunt for the queen 



the date. Then, should we find next 

 year an undipped queen in that hive, 

 we have no fear of swarming and 

 the manipulations described above 

 are practically unnecessary. This is 

 in fact the sole advantage we find in 

 clipping the queens at all. and the only 

 reason we practice it. Without a knife 

 and pencil, however, we never do any 

 work in our apiaries in the spring. 



The reasons for swarming are want 

 of room, age of queen, too much heat, 

 too much surplus stores, too many bees, 

 or excess of brood. 



Any colony before preparing to 

 swarm will always rear drone-brood. 

 If no drone-cornb is in the brood-nest 

 you will find drone-cells in among the 

 worker-brood. Should there be no 

 drone-brood, it is an indication that 

 they have a young queen and there will 

 be no danger of swarming. This col- 

 ony may be left alone safely on subse- 

 quent visits to the apiary. 



Seguin, Tex. 



a practice of clip- 

 s to say we never 

 with the object of 



clipping her wings, but whenever we 

 find a queen handy we clip her with a 

 pocket knife and mark the hive with 



Naphthaline as an Insecticide 



BY DR. A. F. BONNEY. 



FROM my first experience with bees 

 I was not satisfied with bisulphide 

 of carbon as an insecticide, as the 

 vapors are very explosive, dangerous 

 to inhale and extremely fugitive. I 

 was on the outlook for something with- 

 out these disagreeable features, and I 

 have, I believe, found it in naphthaline, 

 to which I gave a thorough test in the 

 summer just past by using nothing else 

 in my yard, with the result that I did 

 not lose an ounce of comb, although 

 there were several piles of hives filled 

 with brood-comb exposed out-of-doors 

 from the middle of May until well into 

 June. To make more certain I pur- 

 posely exposed a sheet of brood-comb, 

 then removed it to the honey-house, 

 put it in a pasteboard bo.x with a cou- 

 ple of small balls of naphthaline and 

 never saw a worm. 



Naplithaline in the form of little 

 balls is called "Moth Balls, "and is used 

 by housewives to repel moths from fur 

 garments. It is also known as "Tar 

 Camphor," for in a molded mass it 

 much resembles gum camphor physi- 

 cally. Naphthaline is a benzine hydro- 

 carbon with a chemical formula of 

 CioHb ; it forms white crystalline leaf- 

 lets, has a peculiar and not disagreeable 

 odor suggestive of coal tar, volatilizes 

 at all temperatures above freezing and 

 more rapidly the warmer it gets; melts 

 at about Wt degrees Fahr. Its vapors 

 kill most fungi and most insects. 



A curious thing about this substance 

 is that if a hive is full of the odor and 

 there is honey in it the bees will go in 

 and do not seem to mind the smell nor 

 suffer any inconvenience. It may not 

 be poisonous to them, or it may take 

 prolonged exposure to the drug to 

 cause death in any insect or its larva. 



Just now the price of naphthalene is 

 high compared with a year ago when it 

 was abundant at 7 cents wholesale, but 

 even at 30 cents, the present price, it is 

 a cheap germicide for the beekeeper, 

 as a couple of naphthaline balls weigh- 

 ing about one-fourth of an ounce will 

 protect the combs for weeks if not 

 months. It is molded into balls, so it 

 may be put into any shape by heating 

 in a tin dish set in boiling water. Little 

 sheets or cakes weighing half an ounce 

 would be a good size, and molds can 

 be made of thin pieces of wood, which 

 must be wetted when used. 

 Buck Grove, Iowa. 



[Naphthaline is splendid to repel in- 

 sects, but will not drive them out once 

 they have become established. We 

 have no doubt that moth balls would 

 protect the combs perfectly if used be- 

 fore the eggs are laid. Once the combs 

 become infested we very much doubt 

 whether the naphtha will kill the moth- 

 worms or drive them out. If the bee- 

 keeper would take the precaution to 

 keep naphtha in the boxes where un- 

 used combs are stored there would 

 likely be little damage f i om moths. The 

 past season's e.xperience would hardly 

 be conclusive, in the use of this drug 

 for the wet cool weather has been un- 

 favorable to the moth. — Editor.] 



Sections and Dividers (Separa- 

 tors ) —Are They Perfect 

 in Construction? 



BY 



F. GREINER. 

 30 



DURING the past 30 or more years 

 the beekeepers and the supply 

 dealers of our land have exerted 

 themselves to the utmost and have so 

 perfected the accessories we need for 

 producing comb honey in the best pos- 

 sible shape, that we might say the de- 

 sideratum has been reached. If I take 

 it upon myself in the following to point 

 out where other slight improvements 

 may be made it is because it sometimes 

 takes many years of experimenting, 

 testing and trying to find out one wee 

 little fact, and my experience shows 

 where certain flight changes could be 



