February, 1910. 



American liee Journal 



actually does <lo in its lifetime. It may 

 not be without interest to make some 

 attempt to answer the latter question. 

 Of course, many a bee spends its life- 

 time when little or nothing can be 

 done, and the average of all must be 

 taken. 



It is hard to havg any positive data, 

 but for the sake of having something 

 to start with, let us suppose that during 

 the season a queen lays eggs that will 

 be the equivalent of 1000 eggs a day for 

 half the year, or 182 days. That means 

 that the season's gathering must be 

 divided among 182,000 workers. 



Suppose also that the colony stores 

 75 pounds of honey, to which must lie 

 added what the colony consumes dur- 

 ing 12 months, 200 pounds, according 

 to Adrian Getaz. This gives us 275 

 pounds, or 4400 ounces. Dividing that 

 among 182,000 bees gives .02417, or 

 about one-fortieth, of an ounce to be 

 credited as the life work of each 

 worker. 



That may or may not be somewhere 

 near the exact truth, but it is not hard 

 to believe that there is a very wide dif- 

 ference between the average life work 

 of a bee and what it can accomplish 

 when it has the best chance. 



Kequeening for European Foul 

 IJroofl 



John T. Greene, who had about 300 

 cases of black brood, or European foul 

 brood, reports in Gleanings, that be- 

 coming discouraged with shaking and 

 disinfecting hives, he finally gave up 

 all other treatment, and merely re- 

 queened with young Italian queens, 

 leaving all the old combs in the hive, 

 and was " greatly pleased to find about 

 9.5 percent of the colonies thus left, 

 without a trace of the disease at the 

 close of a very light buckwheat flow." 



3Iea.suring Cells iu Honey-Comb 



An easy way, partly copied from 

 L'Apiculteur, is given in Gleanings. 

 Lay upon the comb a rule marked with 

 eighths or smaller measurements, with 

 the end of the rule corresponding with 

 the side-wall of a cell. Look along 

 the rule until the wall of another cell 

 corresponds with some mark on the 

 rule, and count the number of cells 

 thus enclosed. Thus, suppose 9M inches 

 be the measurement, and 46 the number 

 of cells. Divide 9X by 46, and you 

 have .201087 of an inch as the diameter 

 of a cell. Again, divide 46 by 9 V, and 

 you have 4.9729 (practically 5) cells to 

 the inch. 



A mistake is sometimes made in esti- 

 mating the number of cells in a square 

 inch. Because there are 5 cells to the 

 inch, it is at once taken for granted 

 that there are 5 times 5, or 25 cells to 

 the square inch. That would be cor- 

 rect if the cells were square; but being 

 hexagonal there are, instead of 25, 

 28 13 15 cells to the square inch ; quite 

 a little difference when the number of 

 cells in a whole comb is to be esti- 

 mated. 



It may be desired to measure the 

 number of cells in a given surface with- 

 out being obliged to figure on the size 

 of the hexagons. Lay your rule on 

 the comb, as before described, horizon- 

 tally, and mike your measurement. 



Now measure vertically, having the 

 end of the rule at a given point in a 

 cell, and find where the corresponding 

 point in another cell coincides with a 

 mark in your rule. Multiply together 

 the count of the cells in both directions, 

 and you have the number of cells in 

 the space measured, which will, of 

 course, be found by multiplying the 

 number of inches horizontally by the 

 number vertically. Divide the total 

 numtjer of cells by the number of 

 square inches, and you have the num- 

 ber of cells to the square inch. 



producing sections without separators 

 if the honey is to be packed for ship- 

 ping ; for a home market it is possibly 

 worth while, as, under some circum- 

 stances, if not under most circum- 

 stances, a little more honey may be ob- 

 tained without than with separators. 



Sections Without Separators 



As heretofore mentioned, W. K. 

 Morrison claims that section honey 

 may be successfully produced without 

 separators, the chief stipulation being 

 narrow sections, and beside these there 

 must be full sheets of foundation and 

 level hives. Discussing the matter in 

 the Bee-Keepers' Review, Adrian Getaz 

 says that the bee-keeper who thinks 

 that by fulfilling these conditions he 

 will always be as successful as Mr. 

 Morrison is likely to be wofully disap- 

 pointed. Mr. Getaz sells his honey in 

 the local market, so that absolute reg- 

 ularity is not necessary, and he has 

 produced sections mostly without sep- 

 arators. He thinks that without sep- 

 arators four bee-way sections are best, 

 and that the thickness of the sections 

 makes only a little difference. In addi- 

 tion to the conditions mentioned, he 

 adds as essential : a heavy flow, a 

 strong colony^and warm weather. With 

 either of these conditions lacking, there 

 is likely to be more or less failure. 



It is perhaps hardly worth while for 

 any one to experiment with regard to 



Chunk Hone.v in the North 



M. P. Cady (in the Bee-Keepers' Re- 

 view) reports that some half-dozen 

 years ago he was quite taken with the 

 idea of producing bulk, or chunk, 

 honey, and gave it a trial (supposedly 

 in Wisconsin) on an e.xtensive scale. 

 He says : 



In order to test thorouglily the desirability 

 of the " chunk" honey, and at the same time 

 to develop a marltet for the new product, a 

 ^ood salesman was employed to solicit or- 

 ders direct from the consumers. .'V fine 

 sample in a flint glass pail was used in secur- 

 ing orders. The salesman explained tlie 

 superior money value of tlie chunk honey, 

 and. being a silver-tongued hustler, he made 

 sales very readily at 12':! cents i)er pound, at 

 the same time selling, to those who pre- 

 ferred, extracted honey at lu cents per 

 pound, and section honey at 15 cents; how- 

 ever, most of the sales were "chunk" 

 honey. 



While the immediate results were very 

 satisfactory, the final results were disap- 

 pointing. .\n occasional patron was pleased 

 with the chunk honey, but more than nine- 

 tenths of the purchasers were emphatic in 

 expressing their r^reference for either ex- 

 tracted or section honey: and finding it im- 

 possible to make sales of the chunk honey. I 

 was obliged to discontinue its production. 



Consumers objected that the honey 

 was mussy, was not equal in flavor to 

 section honey, and the candying of the 

 extracted honey used to fill up the 

 crevices spoiled it for table use. For 

 some reason these objections do not 

 prevent chunk honey from being pop- 

 ular farther south. 



f!@fxJ5 -ifems 



*■ -" 



H. L. Jefli-ev— An Old-Time Bee- 

 Man 



Mr. James McNeill, of Hudson, N. 

 Y., has sent to this ofiice a copy of the 

 New York Herald, which contains an 

 account of the interview of a reporter 

 with H. L. Jeffrey, now 63 years of age, 

 and known to the older readers as a 

 former, occasional contributor to bee- 

 literature. Nearly a full page is oc- 

 cupied with the report, which is chiefly 

 interesting as showing how much space 

 can be occupied with so very little real 

 information about bees. Air. Jeffrey 

 will probably smile when he reads that 

 he " knows more about the savage little 

 honey-gatherers than any other man 

 on earth," and that not till he had 

 solved such mysteries was any one able 

 to answer the question, "Why were 

 the cells of different size, and why did 

 the bees build always on a phunb line, 

 and why was there only one queen in 

 a hive, and why were a lot of other 



things?" If. instead of having the space 

 filled by a man who cheerfully con- 

 fesses " woful and utter ignorance con- 

 cerning the insects," one-tenth of the 

 space had been filled with matter 

 directly from Mr. Jeft'rey's pen, its 

 readers would liave had ten times as 

 much real information about bees. 



Young- Bees for Queen-B earing 



The importance of having young bees 

 for queen-rearing is not as generally 

 understood as it should be. Some- 

 times queen-rearing nuclei are made up 

 entirely of old bees, as when a nucleus 

 is formed by moving a colony from its 

 stand and depending upon the return- 

 ing bees, which, of course, will all be 

 field-bees. An article from the late E. 

 L. Pratt, in the British Bee Journal, has 

 the following : 



I am entirely convinced that both (he 

 queen and the drones are stinuilated to nup- 

 tial Hiffht by the workers when they have 



