Seplembtr, 1910. 



American Hee Journalj 



of June and half of July, il is tuo dry. How- 

 ever, we are liopiiin for some fall honey. 

 The " Old Reliable " is still eayeriy read. 



Io\v.\. 



Answer.— Likely t'le troubk- is from too 

 lartie an amount of droiie-comb in the hive. 

 It may pay you to cut out the drone-comb 

 and put patches of worker-ctunb in its place. 

 Or. you may put in a patch of worker foun- 

 dation where you cut out the drone comb. 

 Cut away the cells around the liole on one 

 side, leaving the septum exposed, and press 

 the patch of foundation down upon this 

 septum. Next spring will be a good time to 

 do this, when the combs are partly empty. 



Time ol Day Bees Swarm— Knowing Foul Brood- 

 Getting Nuclei— Best Bees 



I- What time of the day do bees swarm .' 



2. How can you tell if the colony lias Euro- 

 pean and American foul brood ? 



3. When is the best time to get nuclei ? 



4. Which is the best.Carniolan. I^anat or 

 Caucasian bees ? Ohio. 



Answers,—!. The prime swarm, which is- 

 sues with the old queen, generally comes off 

 somewhere between o and 12 o'clock. An 

 afterswarm. having a virgin queen, is more 

 irregular, and may issue earlier or later, in 

 some cases as early as 6 in the morning, and 

 as late as 4 or 5 pm. 



2. Any time when there is brood in the 

 hive. You may tell by thescales in the cells 

 when no brood is in the hive, but it is much 

 more ditficult. 



3. It doesn't matter very much when. If 

 you had ordered nuclei earlier you would 

 have been farther on than to order them 

 now. But if you order them now you will be 

 farther ahead than if you wail till next year. 

 Generally, too. you can get them a little 

 more promptly at this time of year, and if 

 there is any difference in cost it is in favor 

 of ordering now. 



4. I don't know. lOach has its champions, 

 claiming that their faN'oriie is best. 



Treatment for European Foul Brood 



I write to let you know the condition of my 

 small apiary to <late. The latter part of 

 May European foul brood showed up in 7 

 hives out of 20; the forepart of June 1 gave 

 them my treatment, which is to shake bees 

 and queen onto a set of drawn brood-combs, 

 placing the diseased brood above an ex- 

 cluder, lam delighted to say the disease 

 has disappeared, and I have extracted from 

 40 to 104 pounds of white clover honey from 

 each colony, some occupying 4t> Hoffman 

 frames at a lime: also, I have not had one 

 swarm. My bees are all Caucasian. This 

 has been a grand year so far. and I expect to 

 get 100 pounds per colony from buckwheat, 

 as it has just commenced to yield, and there 

 are thousands of bees in each hive. 



New York. 



Answer.— If it turns out that this treat- 

 ment proves effective, it will be a great gain, 

 as it will prove no interference with a crop 

 of extracted honey. No doubt colonies 

 should be made very strong before the 

 treatment. 



Treatment for American Foul Brood 



Would you treat a colony for American 

 foul brood if iust a few cells were affected 

 on each comb f The bees have gathered 

 about 50 pounds of section honey. All the 

 bees are quite strong, and 1 don't like to de- 

 stroy all the young larva; and eggs just on 

 account of a few cells. What would be the 

 best way to do. wait until next spring and 

 see if it developed into a bad case and then 

 treat it? Utah. 



Answer.— It seems somewhat hard to 

 treat a colony for only a few cells, but the 

 likelihood is that those few cells will keep 

 constantly increasing. Likely the colony 

 would continue with little diminution until 

 next year, but in the long run would you 

 gain by postponing treatment? The treat- 

 ment next spring or early summer would in- 

 terfere with the honey crop more than to 

 treat them now. But you need not "destroy 

 all of the young larv^ and eggs." although 

 the loss of eggs and very yonng larva;; is not 

 so serious a loss as the loss of older brood. 

 A modification of the Baldridge treatment 

 may serve you : 



Find and cage the queen, i'ut in an empty 

 l»ive one or more frames of brood that you 

 know are clean, from healthy colonies. Put 

 your caged queen in this hive, or at the en. 

 trance, and set the hive on the old stand- 



moving tlicDld hive to one side a few feet. 

 If this is done at a time of day when bees 

 are at work, ihv bircs returning from the 

 held will enter the new hive on the old 

 stand, moving the old hive to one side a few 

 feet. If this is done at a time of day when 

 bees are at work, the bees returning from 

 the field will enter the new hive on the old 

 stand, and as soon as a goodly number have 

 returned the queen maybe liberated. The 

 old hive may then bf placed close to the 

 side or on top of the new one. and a wire- 

 cloth tube arranged to go from the old hive 

 to near the entrance of the new one. Then 

 at the end of 21 days all the brood will be 

 hatched out, and you can carefully brush 

 the bees off the combs and melt the combs, 

 thus saving all brood and bees It will be 

 well to furnish water to the bees in the old 

 hive, as no field-bees return to it. 



Storing from Watermelons and Cidermilts 



1. Watermelon shipping season is over 

 here. We have left lots of sunburnt melons. 

 I cut lots of them for the chickens to get the 

 seeds. The bees fairly covered them. Do 

 they gather honey from them ? 



2. If I hauled them up within a quarter of 

 a mile of the hives and cut or burst a wagon- 

 load a day. would the bees gather " honey "' 

 to amount to anything? There are any 

 amount of them here. 



3. 1 understand if bees gather honey from 

 apple pomace from a ciderniill, it will be 

 bad for them to winter on. Is that correct ? 



4. Would honey from watermelons have 

 the same effect ? 



5. Honey that is soured just a little--does 

 it hurt to feed it back to bees ? 



6. I put 100 pounds of honey in glass jars, 

 and 2 jars soured. What was probably the 

 cause? Texas. 



Answers.— I. The juice of the melons is 

 sweet, and the bees seem to use it as nectar. 



2. I don't know how much it would amount 

 to. and I don't know what would be the 

 quality of the product. 



3. Yes. 



4. I don't know. The apple pomace is fer- 

 mented. If the melons are not fermented, 

 they would probably not be so bad as the 

 apples. 



5. It will be all right to feed it in spring for 

 brood-rearing after bees are flying daily, but 

 would be bad for wintering. 



6. Too thin. A lot of harm is done in more 

 than one way by extracting honey before 

 the bees have ripened it. 



Queen-Mating^Queen-Cell Protectors 



1. I understand that a queen-bee can, and 

 does at times, lay eggs before she has mated 

 that will hatch drones. W'ill the eggs from 

 an Italian queen-bee that has mismated 

 hatch pure Italian drones, or will they be 

 half-blood the same as the workers ? 



2. How are those little cone-shaped wire 

 queen-cell protectors used? I have a num- 

 ber of them, but did not use them because 

 I could not make them cover the cell as I 

 thought they ought to do. Minnesota. 



Answers.— I. The drones are reared from 

 eggs that are not fertilized, and are of the 

 same blood as the mother. Some claim that 

 the mating has some influence on the drone- 

 eggs, but that influence can certainly be but 

 very little. 



2. The protector must be large enough to 

 cover the whole of the cell after all superf- 

 luous wax has been trimmed away from the 

 cell. The point of the cell is put in the hole 

 of the protector, and then the 4 corners of 

 the protector are pulled up about the cell 

 and the 4 points of the wirt*-cloth twisted 

 together. A slender wire has one end fast- 

 ened to the protector and the other end of 

 the wire is fastened to the middle of a nail. 

 Two frames are pulled apart, the cell is let 

 down between tliem. so that the cell will be 

 at the middle of the frames, and the nail 

 across the top-bars prevents the cell from 

 falling down. Generally, however, there is 

 no need of the nail, for the frames come 

 near enough together to hold the cell; the 

 wire serving to hold the cell in place till the 

 frames are shoved together. 



A Beginner's Questions 



1. How long oui,'ht a colony to be on old 

 comb ? 



2. What is tlie best way to keep moths 

 from the bees ? I see where you say you do 

 not pay much attention to them. They are 

 the worst drawback I have. Roaches are 

 next. 



3. I have a colony I transferred to a framt^ 



hive in June, and I thought they were doing 

 all right. 1 was surprised, 3 weeks ago. to 

 see the swarm out. On examination I found 

 moths had completely ruined everything 

 they had. I put them in a new hive with 

 HotTnian frames filled with sheets of foun- 

 dation, and am feeding them sugar syrup. 

 They have drawn about 2 sheets, have 

 sealed brood, and the queen is laying. Is it 

 too late to try to carry them through the 

 winter ? 



4. How do you introduce drones into an- 

 other hive? This colony has none. Will it 

 be necessary for them to have any ? 



5. What would you call my bees? Some 

 are black, some have i. 2. 3. and 4 bands. 

 The queen in this colony is a golden color 

 all over. I see some drones of the other 

 colonies that way. 



6. Is it a fact that queens mate but once 

 during the season ? 



7. My bees all came from one colony, but 

 if I do as you say, "Take somt- from one- 

 hive and put them with another." they in- 

 variably kill them out. Now why is this ? I 

 have several weak colonies that 1 would 

 double up. but I dare not on this account. 



8. They are in box-hives. Do you think 

 this has anything to do with it ? 



MiSSISSIIMM. 



Answers.— I. I don't know. I have never 

 used combs more than 40 years old or so. 

 and have never rejected a comb merely be- 

 cause it was old. 



2. Keep all colonies strongand have Italian 

 blood, and you ought to have no trouble with 

 moths. When I kept blacks there was 

 trouble, but with Italians or vigorous hybrids 

 the bees take care of themselves. 



3. If you have kept up the feeding when 

 the bees were not gathering, so that they 

 will have enough stores for winter, there 

 ought to be a fair chance for their wintering. 



4. What do you want to introduce drones 

 for? Drones are only needed to mate with 

 the young queens, and one colony that has 

 drones will do for the whole yard, for the 

 queens mate with the drones outside the 

 hive, perhaps half a mile away. 



5. They are called hybrids, being a cross 

 between blacks and Italians. Your yellow 

 queen mated with a drone of darker blood. 



b. Not only that, but she mates only once 

 for life, although there may be occasional 

 exceptions, 



7. Yes, being in box-hives has much to do 

 with It. You can not lift a comb out of a 

 box-hive, but you can lift it. bees and all, 

 out of a movable-frame hive, and if you 

 quietly set it in another hive close up to the 

 brood-nest, at a time when bees are at work, 

 there will be no trouble. Neither will there 

 generally be any trouble after the working 

 season is over. 



Colors of Bees. 



What is the name of the yellowest race of 

 bees known ? What color are the Cyprian 

 bees ? Are there any worker-bees yellow all 

 over? If so, where do they come from? 



Subscriber. 



Answer. — Until of late years there have 

 been no yellower bees than the Italians, al- 

 though the Cyprians look very much like 

 them. But there has been developed in this 

 country what are called Goldens, and these 

 are practically yellow all over. 



Uniting Two Colonies of Bees. 



' 1. I wish to unite 2 colonies in one, so 1 

 \\ ill have the empty hive for next season. 

 Please give your method. I have placed the 

 one hive over the other, but the bees are in 

 both stories when it is time to carry them into 

 the cellar. Could you suggest a way so 1 

 could have all the bees in one hive when it is 

 time to place them in the cellar, as the 2 

 colonies united in one hive is very bulky and 

 heavy to carry ? Illinois. 



Answer. — As you are successful in uniting 

 by placing one colony over the other, it is 

 hardly worth while to suggest any other way, 

 but merely to say how to reduce to one story. 

 You will proceed to do this any time after 

 the bees have peaceably united together, and 

 that may be within a day or two, or you 

 may wail later, only it should be done early 

 enough so the bees will have plenty of time 

 to arrange their winter lodging to their satis- 

 faction. On the whole you will find it more 

 satisfactory to do the work while bees are 

 still doing some gathering. Lift oflf the upper 

 story, setting it close by. Lift the frames out 

 of the lower story, one after another, to in- 

 spect them, putting back into the hive such as 

 contain brood, and putting the others into an 



