June, 1910. 



American Vee Journal 



arate cover, a copy of my last Annual Re- 



gort. which Erives an account of the Indiana 

 eeinspection law. and of our first summer's 

 experience with it. We are very much 

 pleased with the way in which this statute 

 is working out. The law is planned so as tt) 

 cost the State the minimum amount and 

 still do efficient work. The bee-inspectors 

 are men competent in both bee-work and 

 orchard work, and are accordingly employed 

 for the entire year. When not engaged in 

 the actual work of bee-inspection they de- 

 vote their time to our regular inspection 

 work in the orchards of the State. This ren- 

 ders unnecessary a separate apiary depart- 

 ment whose inspectors would be idle a great 

 portion of the year. As a result, I think we 

 are securing more competent bee-inspection 

 for less money than any other State in the 

 Union. 



The work of last season as reviewed in 

 the Report sneaks for itself. 

 Respectfully, 



Benjamin W. Douglass. 

 State Entomologist. 



Indianapolis. Ind., May 18. 



Section.s Made of Paper 



We have received the following from 

 one of our readers in Quincy, 111. : 



.All know that the price of sections is get- 

 ting higher every year, and basswood is fast 

 disappearing in some localities. It is strange 

 that some of our bee-supply manufacturers 

 have not as yet tried making sections out of 

 paper. We have berry-boxes made of 

 paper, and they are cheaper than, and just 

 as strong as. the wooden ones. I wonder 

 why a section could not be made with wire 

 strung through the paper to help support it. 

 I think they could be made just as strong as 

 the wooden ones. I should like to know if 

 paper sections have ever been tried. 



Subscriber. 



We believe that a bee-keeper in 

 Michigan experimented with heavy 

 card-board made into sections, and he 

 seemed to think that it was a success. 

 Perhaps he will be kind enough to tell 

 us something about this experiment 

 with paper sections. It would seem, at 

 first thought, that paper sections would 

 be cheaper than wooden ones. Per- 

 haps some manufacturer will be kind 

 enough to experiment in making them, 

 and report. 



*■ 



Our Front-Page Pioture.s 



The first picture is referred to on 

 page 198 by Mr. .Adams, and the second 

 one is described as follows: 



Apiarv of John Albert. Jr. 



I am sending a picture of a part of my api- 

 ary. It contains 40 colonies of Italian bees — 

 my favorites. The strongest colonies are 

 run for comb honey, while the weaker ones 

 are for extracted honey. 



Our main honey-fiowsare white clover and 

 heartsease, although heartsease is the more 

 important. Heartsease honey sells better 

 than the clover honey in this locality. 



The honey-flow last year was almost a 

 complete failure. It was necessary to feed 

 some of the colonies. Prospects for a good 

 clover flow for this year are excellent. 



Wahoo. Nebr. Joh.n .\lbert. Jr. 



A New Bee-Book 



The Macmillan Co., of New York, N. 

 Y., have just issued a book written by 

 D. Everett Lyon, which bears the at- 

 tractive title, " How to Keep Bees for 

 Profit." It has 329 pages, measuring 

 7>^x.5 inches, with clear print from 

 large type. The usual topics discussed 

 in text-books on bee-keeping are found 

 in this work, although necessarily with 

 greater briefness, as it contains less 

 than a fourth as much matter as the 

 leading bee-books. 



The work is written in easy style. 

 Unfortunately it is sometimes more 

 readable than reliable. In the chapter 



"How to Make Increase," the reader is 

 advised that about the last of April, if 

 the weather permits, and honey is com- 

 ing in rapidly, a good, strong 10-frame 

 colony of bees may be increased to ,5 

 colonies by dividing into 5 parts and 

 furnishing each part with a queen, and 

 then the author says: 



" If you desire to increase one colony up 

 to 10. the method of procedure is identically 

 the same, and differs only in that you give 

 each empty hive but one frame of bees and 

 brood instead of two. " 



In the North, even supposing that 

 each of the frames were filled with 

 brood, a single frame of brood and 

 bees in a hive in April would have a 

 hard time of it to struggle through 

 until warmer weather. 



The author favors Italian bees for the 

 beginner, especially of the red-clover 

 strain ; for comb honey, the Danzen- 

 baker hive or other shallow hive; and 

 says : " By all means winter outdoors." 



Although this book can not take the 

 place of any of the excellent text-books 

 on bee-keeping already so extensively 

 in use, it adds one more to the con- 

 stantly increasng number of works on 

 this fascinating subject. It is bound in 

 cloth, and sells for $1..50, with 10 cents 

 extra for postage. We club it with 

 the American Bee Journal one vear — 

 both for $2.20. Send all orders "to the 

 office of the American Bee Journal, 

 146 W. Superior St., Chicago, 111. 



Tale of a Bee 



A boy met a bee in the clover. 

 And bothered the spry little rover. 

 The bee grew mad and then madder— 

 And the youth is now wiser and sadder. 



—Selected. 

 * 



Natioiial'.s Meinber.ship Growing 



The last report from General Mana- 

 ger France showed a membership of 

 38.37 in the National Bee-Keepers' Asso- 

 ciation. So it should soon be an even 

 4000. We had hopejl, that it might 

 reach .5000 by the tiirle of the next 

 National convention, and still feel en- 

 couraged that it may. But perhaps it 

 would be well to make it 4000 first. 



Do Bees Steal Eggs? 



It is hard for one to believe that 

 bees will deliberately enter another 

 hive and carry away eggs from which 

 to rear a queen. But M. T. Pritchard, 

 the man who with the aid of a boy 

 reared nearly 3000 queens in one sea- 

 son, reports, in Gleanings, a number of 

 cases that seem to leave no room for 

 doubt. He says : 



In the early part of the season of 1006 we 

 had trouble with our queenless colonies 

 used for grafting. Nearly every day we 

 found cells started with either eggs or young 

 larva: in them, resulting in the bees refusing 

 to accept the grafted cell given to them. 

 This we could not account for. as these colo- 

 nies are not used to graft into until 5 or 6 

 days after they are made queenless. Occa- 

 sionally one of these cells would be over- 

 looked and a virgin hatch, each of which 

 proved to be a bUuk virgin. 



All colonies in the yard were Italians with 

 tested Italian queens except one. This was 

 a fine imported Carniolan queen kept in a 

 very weak colony to prevent her from rear- 

 ing any drones; consequently we concluded 

 that the queenless bees were stealing eggs 

 from the Carniolan colony; and to test it we 

 saved several of these cells and hatched 

 them, and found that each one produced a 

 typical Carniolan virgin. We then removed 

 the Carniolan colony from the yard, and had 

 very little trouble with natural cells from 

 that time. 



Our theory is that the Carniolan colony 

 being light, or from some other reason, did 

 not defend its entrance as well as the other 

 colonies, and the queenless bees found it an 

 easy place to steal eggs. 



A Bear Correction 



On page 155 there was an item in 

 "Canadian Beedom" headed, "Not 

 Byer's Bear." Mr. J. M. Wismer, who 

 wrote the letter in which the error oc- 

 curred, says that the original in his 

 scrap-book reads as follows: "Some- 

 where in the 70's the writer had been 

 privileged to take a night's lodging 

 with a friend in J. L. Byer's neighbor- 

 hood, who owned a large brown bear." 

 It seems that the way we published it, 

 the bear was owned by Mr. J. L. Byer, 

 who conducts the "Canadian Beedom." 

 He never was a bear conductor or 

 owner. We are glad to make the cor- 

 rection, as we do not wish to bear 

 down too hard on Mr. Beyer, for, if we 

 remember correctly, he is already be- 

 coming a little bare on top! 



Our Bee-Keeping Sisters 



Conducted by Emma M. Wilson. Marengo, 111. 



Bees Wintered Splendidly at Marengo — 

 The Unusual Spring 



Last fall we took our bees into the 

 cellar Nov. 18. The weather was very 

 mild until Dec. 0, the thermometer 

 going as high as 07 degrees, and it did 

 seem almost too bad to have them in 

 the cellar when they could be having 

 such good fHghts, but we were very 

 glad they were tlure when on the 8th 

 of December we had a heavy snow- 

 storm, and never saw bare ground 

 again until March. They wintered 

 splendidly, and we took them out of 

 the cellar March 21, strong and vigor- 

 ous, never in better condition. We had 

 some misgivings as to what the weather 

 might be, but never in all our bee- 

 keeping experience have we had ideal 



weather for bees to build up as was 

 the rest of March and the first half of 

 April. They just boomed. 



We overhauled most of our bees in 

 March. We found them fully a month 

 ahead of any previous year. Full, 

 healthy frames of brood never looked 

 so good before. 



Then when pears, plums, cherries, 

 and apples were in full bloom — each 

 tree a bower of beauty — came our 

 freeze. The thermometer at 21 degrees 

 and the ground covered with snow. 

 Oh, such desolation! It made one 

 shiver to look at the poor fruit-trees. 

 We had a long cold, wet spell — very 

 trying weather for bees — and had it 

 come earlier it would no doubt have 

 been very bad for them ; but the fine 

 start they had, had made them strong 



