862 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Nov. 1 



have had better success than in any other 

 way. I have not lost out of the 25 a single 

 queen. 



When the queen is balled, do the bees try 

 to sting- her, or do tliey simply smother her? 

 I should think they w^ould very quickly kill 

 her if they tried to sting- her. 



If I remove the queen from a hive in which 

 there are plenty of drones, would the bees 

 save these drones until they could rear an- 

 other queen ? J. S. Wise. 



Hazlehurst, Miss. 



[Daubing- the queen with syrup or honey 

 to introduce has been practiced with more 

 or less success for the last 20 years. The 

 object is to get the bees to clean her off, an 

 act which gives her the same scent as the 

 bees to which she is being introduced; but 

 the plan is not to be recommended in all 

 cases; indeed, I believe it is rarely used. 

 Sometimes the bees will attack the queen 

 as soon as they get her well cleaned off, 

 and there are cases on record where the 

 queen has been attacked before she was 

 hardly clean. It is a risk^^ job at best to 

 daub a queen with honey in order to get 

 the bees to accept her. 



There are some instances where it is ev- 

 ident a balled queen was smothered to 

 death, and there are other instances where 

 it is perfectly plain that she has tictually 

 been stung. 



Removing a queen from a colony in which 

 there are drones will usually have the ef- 

 fect of keeping the bees peaceable toward 

 the drones, or until a laying mother is sup- 

 plied or reared. — Ed.] 



THE PROPORTION OF SUGAR AND WATER FOR 

 SVRUP. 



Would 10 lbs. of sugar and 10 to 11 lbs. of 

 water be reckoned as 20 lbs. of syrup for 

 feeding bees for winter, or what amount 

 would it be reckoned at, as the bees evapo- 

 rate it some? Joseph Cooke. 



Enderby, B. C, Sept. 28. 



[The proportion you name would be all 

 right, although those who advocate feeding 

 syrup thin recommend 10 lbs. of water to 

 10 lbs. of sugar. This, when fed, would 

 make 20 lbs. of sj'rup; but the bees would 

 eviiporate it down, probably, to about 13 or 

 14 lbs. of sealed stores. If they are fed 

 very late, it is advisable to make the pro- 

 portion two of sugar to one of water. — Ed.] 



FOUL BROOD not AFFECTING DRONE BROOD. 



I noticed in Gleanings, page 685, the re- 

 quest that any one having foul brood in a 

 frame, and also having drone brood not 

 affected, would report. We had a case of 

 it in my bees here. They would die in the 

 cells while the drones would grow and 

 crawl from their cells. Maggie Rich. 



Mahaffey, Pa. 



[But we have since had other instances 

 reported where the drone brood was also 

 affected.— Ed.] 



TRANSFERRING AND ITALIANIZING AT ONE 

 AND THE SAME 0PP:RATI0N. 



I have only two colonies of bees, hy- 

 brids, which I wish to Italianize this fall. 

 They are in hives of late pattern, contain- 

 ing Hoffman frames ; but, owing to the 

 small amount of foundation used, and the 

 manner in which it was fastened in the 

 frames, the bees did not build their combs 

 straight, and consequently it is very diffi- 

 cult, if not altogether impossible, to manip- 

 ulate these frames. 



Now, my idea was this : When I am 

 ready to Itali^mize, I shall, no doubt, in 

 order to find the queen of said hives, have 

 to use the method you describe on page lb3 

 of your ABC book ; i. e., remove the old 

 hive a short distance. Place an empty hive 

 on the old stand, putting on it an entrance- 

 guard. Now take the frames from the old 

 hive, and (one at a time) shake them in 

 front of the empty hive. The queen, not 

 being able to pass the entrance-guard, will 

 be easily' found. 



Now, if I should have this hive full of 

 comb foundation, why could I not, when 

 the bees get nearly all inside, introduce my 

 Italian queen? and, after so doing, would 

 not the bees stay and build new combs in 

 the frames of foundation ? 



You understand my idea is, to get frames 

 of straight comb. I could, no doubt, find 

 one or two frames of comb that are nearly 

 straight, and I could place these in the new 

 hive, and in the rest of the frames have 

 comb foundation. Harry Griffin. 



Alcona, 111., Aug. 19. 



[The plan you describe would work all 

 right, providing you gave the bees a stimu- 

 lating feed of '2 pint of sugar syrup daily 

 until the combs were built out and filled. — 

 Ed.] 



the value of bee-papers. 



From what I can glean, Mr. G. R. Frye 

 and m}'self are the only ones who have se- 

 cured a good crop of hone3^ We owe our 

 success to Gleanings and other bee-papers. 

 We improved our scrub stock that we start- 

 ed with, by buying queens of different 

 breeders; and the result is, there is a little 

 more vigor in our bees than in our "fence 

 corner" bee-keepers'. 



River Falls, Wis. A. D. Shepard. 



FOUL-BROOD inspections FOR VENTURA 

 COUNTY, CAL. ; A CORRECTED STATE- 

 MENT. 



On page 779 you quote the Pacific Bee 

 Journal to the effect that I have found 625 

 cases of foul brood in Ventura Co. This is 

 as wide of the truth as some of the esti- 

 mates of the California honey crop. I have 

 found, up to date, just 103 cases of foul 

 brood in this county this year. I expect to 

 find a few more, but not many. The num- 

 ber is as large as it is because we have 

 had no inspector for the last year or two. 



Sespe, Cal., Oct. 9. R. A. Holley. 



