Marcli, 19 10. 



American Vee Journal 



This year I have taken the plan given by 

 DooIiKle and left the opening all the way 

 across on the bottom-board, about 14xlJ4, with 

 J^-inch galvanized wire screen mouse-protector, 

 and the cork-holes closed entirely. All the 

 hives have the same quilt covering now as they 

 had last winter, only the propolis was not 

 removed from the cotton summer covers, but 

 they were moved too late for the bees to seal 

 them down, and these are covered over all 

 with the Root H zinc-bound *'honey-boards." 



Now, why is it that under the board cov- 

 ers the quilts are quite cold? Not the slight- 

 est heat can be detected over the cluster. I 

 examined only 2 in the top row on the east 

 side of the cellar that were easiest to get at. 

 The bees on the west side of the cellar make 

 less than half the noise of those on the east 

 side. I suppose because the cooking stove 

 is within 3 feet of the top of the hives on the 

 east. Are the quiestest bees not wintering the 

 best? There are not so many aead bees on the 

 floor as at the same time last winter. I ex- 

 amined some of them with a lamp, holding it 

 close to the entrance, and not a dozen dead 

 bees were on the bottom-board, and not a bee 

 came out in the few seconds I was there. Are 

 my 14xlfi entrances too large? Probably they 

 are more than 4 times the size of Doolittle's, 

 but they can't be as bad as those hives win- 

 tered with no bottom-boards at all, all open, 

 set upon a 4-inch scantling, and come out 

 fairly well. I could partly close the slide 

 easily, instead of having it removed entirely, 

 as it is now. 



2. When I tried incubating, as I informed 

 you. with a lamp under a hive, in the house, 

 with exit under the window in the spring of 

 190S, it \vorked well, because any extra heat 

 escaped into the room and did no harm, but 

 in the spring of 1909 I put a lamp in a hole 

 dug in the ground, surrounded it with a top- 

 less and bottomless box and set 4 hives upon it 

 for a top, but I could not keep the heat low 

 enough without having the lamp go out, and 

 after moving them to proper stands when the 

 weather got warm, only the weakest colony of 

 the four did any good. One of the stronger 

 ones swarmed before its time, from too much 

 heat, but the swarm and the other three did 

 not, all together, give more surplus than the 

 weaker ones. Buckwheat and goldenrod gave 

 most surplus unless the large milkweed helped. 

 I saw many bees working on it and some of 

 them would sit on its leaves as if they were 

 half asleep. Did you ever have any experi- 

 ence with this milkweed? It is getting to be 

 more of a nuisance every year. 

 ^ 3. I was reading in the last Report of the 

 National Bee-Keepers' Association, first column 

 of page 64, that a Mr. Bernschein said he 

 always loses half his clipped queens by super- 

 seding in the spring. I have always clipped 

 my queens, and have had the same trouble 

 at other times of the year, but last spring 

 the queens were killed at the most critical 

 time, when they should have been breeding 

 for the white honey-flow. Is this a usual 

 thing for the bees, to kill clipped queens? I 

 have long been trying to account for the 

 loss of so many queens by superseding, and I 

 think I told you of it once. This has hap- 

 pened so often that all my bees are hybrids, 

 though buying queens every year. If you 

 tell me this is usual I shall clip no more, 

 except as an experiment. Every bee-keeper 

 should join the .N'ational to get its full re- 

 ports, as the bee-papers could not publish the 

 reports in full even if they tried, and the 

 General Manager, N. E. France, of Platts- 

 ville. Wis., is such a splendid, enthusiastic 

 man. 



4. Lately I tired of the way some dealers 

 in Italian queens humbugged the people by 

 making them believe that the filthy combs fre- 

 quently built by Italian bees were caused by 

 "travel-stain." as they call it, when it is 

 caused chiefly by the Italians mixing in pieces 

 of ohl, dark comb with new wax in building 

 new combs, so I decided on trying Carnio- 

 lans that are reported to build white combs. 

 I procured some Carniolan queens in Octo- 

 ber, one of which I introduced as follows, on 

 some one's recommendation in the papers: 



I first smoked the bees heavily below, and 

 closed the entrance, then pounded on the 

 hive to make them fill themselves with honey, 

 and then laying a large board in front of the 

 hive-entrance, 1 shook off all the bees from 

 the combs on to the board and let them run 

 into the hive, and they soon collected on the 

 combs again that had been returned to the 

 hive, and the queen had been dropped amongst 

 the bees outside the hive and ran in with 

 them. In a few days there were eggs in part 

 of one comb and soon after no eggs or larvx 

 were visible, and in a few days after there 



were more eggs, but these also disappeared 

 shortly after. What became of these eggs? 

 Did the bees destroy them because it was too 

 late in the season to rear brood, or what? 

 "I don't know." Probably you do. 



Novice. 

 Answers. — 1. You are to be congratulated, 

 lour bees have such an abundance of good 

 air of the right temperature that they do not 

 need to make any stir to change the air nor 

 to warm it, so they are so nearly dormant 

 that you can feel no heat over the cluster. 

 What more do you want? Of course, the 

 quieter the bees are, the better. My hive-en- 

 trances are 12^x2, making 24^ square inches. 

 \ours are 14xlJ:i, or 24'/^ square inches. 

 \our entrances are all right. If vou want to 

 warm your hand over the cluster, make the 

 entrance so small that the bees will have to 

 ventilate to change the bad air, and the effort 

 to ventilate will help warm your hand. Or, 

 lower the temperature of the cellar below the 

 freezing point, and the bees will have to stir 

 themselves and eat a lot of honey to warm up 

 the cluster, and then it will warm your hand 

 on top. Sounds contradictory to say that cool- 

 ing the cellar warms up the cluster; but it's 

 about the same as saying that as the weather 

 gets cooler the fire in a sitting-room gets 

 hotter. 



2. Milkweed is rather plenty here, and I 

 think I have seen a very few sleepy-looking 

 bees on it, but the greater trouble is that 

 sometimes the bees are thrown out of business 

 by having parts of the flower stick to their 

 feet. The Chapman honey-plant is the worst 

 I ever knew about having a number of bees 

 sit stupidly upon it. 



3. I think every one who begins clipping 

 queens will be surprised at the number of 

 queens that are superseded. It is not that any 

 more queens are superseded than before he be- 

 gan clipping, only while wings were whole he 

 could not well tell whether they were super- 

 seded or not, and when he finds a queen with 

 whole wings in place of a clipped one he 

 knows there was superseding. Ask him how 

 many of his queens were superseded before 

 lie clipped, and he might answer, "I don't 

 know, but I don't suppoce one in twenty." 

 The actual fact is that in the regular course 

 of nature ei'ery queen is superseded. I have 

 clipped for a great many years, and have had 

 a good many old queens, and I don't be- 

 lieve I ever had a queen killed because her 

 wings were not whole. 



4. I doubt that Italians are worse than oth- 

 ers about taking bits from their old combs to 

 put into new. At any rate I've had blacks and 

 near-blacks that were just as bad. 



I think it is the usual Ihing that a queen 

 continues laying at least a short time after 

 the bees stop rearing brood from her eggs 

 But bee-keepers don't often notice it." 



A Big Bunch of Bee Questions. 



1. Can I take bees without a queen a 

 distance, give them a frame of brood with a 

 queen-cell, and get them to stay and increase 

 to a full colony? 



2. I made a hive the other day that has 

 S rooms in it, 4 frames to the room, only one 

 room has 10 frames. Over each 4 brood- 

 frames are 4 honey-frames on top. The 10- 

 frame room is to run for honey and drones, 

 so they may have a better chance at the 

 queens. Will that hive be a good one to rear 

 queens in? 



3. There are no black bees within a mile 

 and a half of me that will interfere. As I 

 use drone-traps do you think I will ever 

 have a good stock of Italians? 



4. Are hybrids as good for honey-gathering 

 as full-bloods? 



5. In caging cells, one cell in a hive, with 

 no queen, will the entrance of the cage have 

 to be closed to keep the bees from tearing it 

 out? 



0. A bee-friend says a pound of honey will 

 go as far with a colony of bees as 2 pounds 

 of granulated sugar for winter. Is that so? 



7. He says the workers lay the drone-eggs. 

 Is that so? I thought the queen laid all the 

 eggs. 



8. He has 50 colonies and has had bees 

 20 years. I have 10 colonies and have had 

 bees 2 years. He says he thinks the bees 

 know when a queen gets to be too old, and 

 will rear a young queen when it is needed, 

 whether they swarm or not. Another bee- 

 keeper with 40 colonics said he had a box- 

 hive with a queen that had been in it for 

 20 years. I believe they are both mistaken. 

 What is your idea? 



9. Can I confine a young queen in a hive 



and have her mated without taking a flight? 



10. Will it make anv difference for me to 

 get golden Italians and red-clover Italians, and 

 let them mix, or would I better keep only 

 one kind? 



11. Which of the two kinds mentioned do 

 you think better for mv locality, and will the 

 Italians beat here? Our chief honey-plants 

 are poplar, blackberry, cherry, locust, sumac, 

 white clover, raspberry, catnip, bitterwood, 

 maple, buckwheat, etc. 



12. If I cage queen-cells, must I hang them 

 as they were in the hive, or can I lay them 

 down in the cage? 



13. How many can I cage in a queenless 

 colony and have the bees feed them as they 

 should? 



14. How is the best way to make queen- 

 candy if I should need it for my yard, as 

 I am going to rear my own queens if I 

 have luck. 



15. I have 10 colonies of bees and want to 

 increase to 2S this year. I can buy prime 

 swarms for $1.00 to $1.25 each. Would I 

 better let mine run for honey or let them 

 swarm once each? Chunk honey is 10 cents 

 a pound here. 



10. I have Italians and blacks. I want to 

 get pure Italians and keep them, and also keep 

 pure blacks. How will I manage it? 



17. I am going to move some of the blacks 

 to an out-apiary, but do not want to move all. 

 Can I catch and kill all the black drones in 

 the home apiary, and rear my Italian queens 

 in July and August? How would that do? 



15. What good are drones to a colony that 

 has a mated queen? Will it hurt if I kill 

 all drones in such a colony? 



19. What is the gentlest race of bees you 

 know of? 



20. What race of bees has the longest 

 tongues? 



21. What is the best way to select a young 

 queen before her brood hatches? 



22. Which is the safest way to make a liv- 

 ing, to work with bees or to run a farm? 

 Which way will one have the best time? 



23. I run my bees for extracted honey. 

 When I don't find sale for it, how will it do 

 to let the honey stay on the hive till I do 

 find sale for it? How will it do to put a 

 wire-screen over a strong colony and pile up 

 the supers over this? Virginia. 



Answers. — 1. If you move the bees a mile 

 away, or imprison them for 3 days, if you 

 take enough bees, and if it is a good enough 

 season, you might succeed. 



2. I'm not sure I understand just how the 

 hive is made. I suppose several nuclei are 

 to be kept in the same hive, separated by bee- 

 tight partitions, in which you expect to keep 

 young queens to be fertilized. If the en- 

 trances are so arranged that there is no dan- 

 ger of the young queens entering wrong com- 

 partments when returning from a wedding ex- 

 cursion, the hive ought to be a success. But 

 if you have 4 full-sized brood-frames for each 

 nucleus, there will be little or nothing gained. 

 I question your idea about drones. 



3. You may if you get a pure queen now 

 and then. 



4. Very often they are. 



5. If a cell is given before the bees realize 

 their queenlessness, they may tear it down; 

 not afterward. 



6. For wintering, a pound of sugar will 

 go farther than a pound of honey. 



7. In a normal colony the queen lays all 

 the eggs. In a colony queenless long enough, 

 laying.workers may appear, and their eggs 

 will produce only drones. 



8. Your friend is right about bees replacing 

 a queen without swarming, and that is what 

 took place several times in that box-hive, no 

 doubt, for a queen generally lives only 2 to 



4 years, and I never heard of one living more 

 than 5 or 6. 



9. No. I 



10. Generally it is considered better to keep " 

 only one kind; but a cross often does better, 



at least for a time. 



11. Likely there is little or no difference, 

 although if the red-clover bees are really what 

 their name implies they ought to be the better 

 in a red-clover region. Likely Italians will 

 beat the blacks. 



12. You may safely lay them on the side. 



13. X don't know, but I suppose a great 

 many. 



14. Stir powdered sugar into warmed ex- • 

 tracted honey to make a very .stiff dough. 

 After standing a day or two, if it becomes 

 thin, knead in some more sugar. 



16. At the prices you name, better produce 

 all the honey you can and buy prime swarms. 



16. Keep each kind in an apiary by itself, 



5 miles away from any other kind of bees. 



17. That ought to answer; only remember 



