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Vol. XXIX. 



AUG. 15, 1901. 



No. 16 



When a colony is ripe for swarming, says 

 Oesterreichische Bienettseitutig, smoke is a re- 

 liable means to make the swarm issue. Some- 

 times a few pufiFs will start the swarm at once, 

 sometimes it takes several minutes. This 

 helps against several swarms issuing at once. 



A BIG VEIL, I thought, would be a fine thing, 

 so I had one made wide and long. Didn't like 

 it at all. It floppe 1 around loose and got in 

 folds so I couldn't see well through it. I now 

 prefer one as narrow as it can be for the hat- 

 brim, and as short as it can be to pin down 

 tight in front with a safety-pin. 



Drone destruction is thus advised in 

 Revue Eclectique : After dinner put a strip of 

 excluder zinc at the hive-entrance ; very early 

 next morning, while the drones are chilled at 

 the entrance, scrape them with a trowel into a 

 dish of cold water. [This plan is all right if 

 one happens to have chilly weather toward 

 morning ; but during the last two or three 

 weeks, in most localities, drones would have 

 been any thing but chilled. — Ed.] 



"If your bees have plenty of honey in the 

 hive, don't bother about feeding them now," 

 p. 646. That's what I should have said two 

 months ago ; but I find there may be excep- 

 tions. The last half of July brood-rearing 

 largely ceased in my colonies. In some of 

 them were eggs and sealed brood, but no un- 

 sealed brood. In some were eggs, but no 

 brood of any kind. Heavy with honey. I fed, 

 not to start the queen to laying, but to start 

 the workers to rearing brood, because I want 

 bees for a possible moderate fall flow. 



Here's the way I fed my bees to start 

 brood-rearing about July 22 (ought to have 

 done it sooner): I laid 53 empty brood-combs 

 on the bottom of the shop-cellar ; filled them 

 with water with a water - sprinkler ; sifted 

 handfuls of sugar over them ; then several 

 times a day sprinkled them again with water. 

 Sprinkling water on the bees didn't hurt them 

 a bit. The sugar was put on at night — about 



25 lbs. each night. [I believe your plan is all 

 right; but should not the beginner use some 

 method of feeding in the hive rather than in a 

 wholesale way as you describe, where all the 

 bees can help themselves ? — Ed.] 



I wonder if that charge against black lo- 

 cust, p. 647, is not like the hue and cry raised 

 against silver linden in Europe. Thousands 

 of dead bees were found under the silver lin- 

 dens, but it seems to be now agreed that the 

 lindens had nothing to do with killing them. 

 [I hardly think this can be true in this case. 

 Several at Hanford, Cal., called my attention 

 to the fact that the bees were found dead un- 

 der the black locusts. I thought there must 

 have been something wrong somewhere ; but 

 when F. E. Brown, a careful bee-keeper, cor- 

 roborated the statement, I believed it ; and 

 yet the bee-keepers in Colorado told me the 

 black locust was one of their good honey- 

 plants, and that the bees had never been 

 found dead under it. — Ed.] 



Reading, p. 653, about that spring water 

 at 44° to 47°, I fell to wondering at what tem- 

 peratute it would be best to have our drink- 

 ing-water. Ice water, we are told, is certain- 

 ly not the best to quench thirst. I went to 

 the pump, and found the water fresh from the 

 well was just 50°. I wonder if any thing 

 colder than that is really desirable. [Perhaps 

 you will remember that, about 15 years ago, I 

 tested a good many wells for their tempera- 

 ture. The average, in and about Medina, was 

 50° Fahrenheit. Some went down as low as 

 45, and the temperature of the well seemed to 

 be the same winter and summer, providing 

 the water from the surface of the ground was 

 20 feet down. In California and Arizona, 

 well water would be as high as 70°, and some- 

 times it would be almost as cold as it is here. 

 —Ed.] 



Complaint is occasionally made that bees 

 do not gnaw the pasteboard off shipping- 

 cages. Possibly that is because the cage is 

 put in the wrong place. Bees can hardly be 

 expected to gnaw the pasteboard if it is where 

 they must go out of their way to get at it. 

 The pasteboard end of the cage should be 

 right on the brood, where bees are sure to be 

 all the time. [You are probably right ; but 



