iEntered as seoond-olass matter July 30, 1907, at the Post-omce at Chicago, 111., uader Act uf aiareb s, 1879. j 



Published Monthly at $1.00 a Year, by George W. York & Company, 146 West Superior Street, 



GEORGE W. YORK. Editor. 



DR. C. C. MILLER. Associate Editor. 



CHICAGO, ILL, OCTOBER, 1910 



Vol. L-No. 10 



Editorial Notes and Comments 



Prevention of Hone.v Orauulatiou 



Some producers and dealers have so 

 educated their clientele that granulated 

 honey is preferred to the liquid. But 

 in most cases there is a very decided 

 preference for the liquid, and in lack 

 of any way to prevent granulation 

 many bee-keepers take back from the 

 grocers bottles of honey that have be- 

 come granulated, and liquefy by heat- 

 ing. And to do that satisfactorily is 

 something of a trick, to say nothing of 

 the time and trouble. Now comes the 

 Canadian Bee Journal, and says : 



" A tablespoonful of glycerine to one gal- 

 lon of honey will prevent it from granulat- 

 ing ! Stir it a little and it will be found per- 

 fectly soluble We have this on the au- 

 thority of a first-class chemist, who has sold 

 honey in his drug-store, and has by this 

 means kept it in liquid form for ready sale." 



Looks as if it might be all right. No 

 doubt the question will be raised 

 whether there is danger of conflict 

 with the pure-food law. None what- 

 ever so long as there is no deception 

 on the label, which should tell exactly 

 what is imder the label. 



Foiil-Brootl Legislation 



It has sometimes been argued that 

 the work of foul-brood inspectors has 

 been a failure, since foul brood still 

 continues where they have operated. 

 Well, suppose it does. Suppose in the 

 district covered by a certain inspector 

 the disease is not only unconquered, 

 but that it is twice as bad as it was 

 when he began fighting it. That by no 

 means proves that his eflforts have been 

 fruitless. For if it had been allowed 

 to run unhindered it might by now 

 have been four times as bad. 



To this it might be replied, " If, in 

 spite of the inspector's work the dis- 

 ease is twice as bad each year as it was 

 the previous year, how many years, at 

 that rate, will it take to clean it out ?" 

 Of course, there is only one answer to 



that : The disease will never be over- 

 come. 



But why not increase the effort ? 

 With a double force on the same 

 ground, or a greater force, if necessary, 

 there is every reason to believe that 

 the scourge may be held at bay, if not 

 entirely wiped out. 



Some better argument against foul- 

 brood legislation must be advanced, if 

 it is to appeal to intelligent bee-keepers. 



Clipping the Queen's Wing 



Each year there seem to be more 

 bee-keepers who advocate and practice 

 clipping queens. The great argument 

 in its favor is that a clipped queen can 

 not go off with a swarm. For most 

 bee-keepers that alone is a sufficient 

 advantage to pay for clipping, ten times 

 over. There is another advantage that 

 some might not think worth consider- 

 ing, while others lay great stress upon 

 it. It is that clipping shows at a glance 

 whether there has been a change of 

 queens. In a certain hive is a queen — 

 at least was a queen — known to have 

 been clipped in a certain year. If, 

 upon looking into the hive, the owner 

 finds a queen with whole wings, he 

 knows at a glance that there has been 

 a change, and that a young queen has 

 taken the place of the old one. 



Honey-Dew— Secretion or Excre- 

 tion 



D. M. Macdonald said honey-dew, in- 

 stead of being excreted by the plant- 

 lice, is a secretion. Then some of the 

 scientists said he was mistaken. But, 

 Scotchman that he is, Mr. Macdonald 

 does not easily yield his ground. In 

 the British Bee Journal he quotes no 

 less authorities than T. W. Cowan and 

 M. Gaston-Bonnier. Mr. Cowan says : 



"Although perfectly aware that opinions 

 are divided on the subject, we believe with 

 those who think it generally to be an exuda- 

 tion from the pores of leaves under certain 



atmospheric conditions, altliough it may 

 sometimes be produced by aphides. At 

 Howald. in Alsace, we watched bees collect- 

 ing honey-dew. but found hardly any insects. 

 This year we have seen lime-trees from 

 which the sweet liauid was falliiit; in drops, 

 and yet very few insects were found. We 

 have specimens of excellent flavor quite 

 free from any admixture of faecal matter." 



M. Gaston-Bonnier says this on the 

 subject : 



"The presence of plant-lice on trees has 

 no connection with this nectar [mielleel. 

 The excremental liquid of aphides is not 

 equally sweet in all the species, and the bees 

 harvest only that which is very sweet. They 

 generally prefer the true honey-dew which 

 exudes from the leaves at certain times, and 

 contains mannite and saccharine matter. 



"Thetrue mielleeof trees may fall in _mall 

 drops, and some observers conclude from 

 this fact that it is produced by aphides. I 

 have, however, often seen some trees, and 

 even all the trees of a wood, covered with an 

 abundant miellee falling in small drops, 

 although there was not a single louse on the 

 higher limbs. We must not confound the 

 true miellee produced on the surface of 

 leaves without the action of aphides, and 

 the excretion, more or less sweet, containing 

 very little sugar, produced by plant-lice." 



Bee-Hou.se Wagons 



In Germany considerable use is made 

 of wagons for migratory bee-keeping; 

 not merely wagons to haul the bees 

 from one place to another, but wagons 

 constructed so as to have the hives re- 

 main in them permanently. One would 

 suppose this a rather expensive way of 

 doing, but the Germans are not a peo- 

 ple to lose sight of the matter of econ- 

 omy. S. Husser says in Praktischer 

 Wegweiser that he has made 30 of 

 these wagons, and has 4 of them in use 

 for himself. As he makes them, each 

 wagon has 28 hives built in the wagon, 

 with opportunity for 6 more when the 

 wagon is in place, making 34 in all. 



If such a thing is profitable in Ger- 

 many, is there no place in this country 

 where it might be equally profitable ? 



Natural or Artificial Increase 



Whether it is better for a beginner 

 to depend upon natural swarming for 

 increase or resort to artificial increase 

 is not a matter so easily settled. There 

 is something to be said on both sides. 

 On the whole, perhaps natural swarm- 

 ing gives less trouble. One can get 

 along with it with no other trouble 

 than to hive each swarm when it is- 



