May, 191 ^ 



American ^ae 'Journal 



ure great. If well cared for and well 

 ed, a colony of this kind may produce 

 two or three queens in a season and 

 more than pay for all the trouble. But 

 to rear good queens in it, we must have 

 it strong in bees. 



Even through the neglect of its 

 owner, an observing hive may teach us 

 lessons, if we will only examine the 

 behavior of its bees in all circum- 

 stances. A hopelessly queenless hive 

 of this kind will give us the spectacle 

 of drone-laying workers whose exis- 

 tence we have known some really good 

 beekeepers to doubt. 



When the summer is ended the bees 

 of the observing hive may be united to 

 any colony in the apiary, unless we wish 

 to try upon it some of the problems of 

 wintering. 



Beekeepiuff in Cana«ia 



Morley Pettit is still doing things 

 across the border, in spite of the war 

 and the bad season of 1914. He re- 

 ports that the average crop for the 

 province of Ontario " was about 16 

 pounds per colony as opposed to an 

 average of over 100 pounds per colony 

 in 1913." There were 541 beekeepers 

 engaged in co-operative experiments 

 with instructions and material sent out 

 by Mr. Pettit, and the experimenters 

 reporting on their crops had an aver- 

 age of 35 pounds per colony. The sig- 

 nificance of this seems to be that the 

 wide-awake and-up-to-date men who 

 are getting twice as much as the general 

 average are the very ones who are 

 eager for light to do better. "To him 

 that hath shall be given." 



The experiment for the prevention 

 of natural swarming in the production 

 of extracted honey resulted in reducing 

 swarming to 5 percent instead of 35 

 percent with an increase of the average 

 yield per colony. 



It appeared to be " a great advan- 

 tage to give the queen an extra brood- 

 chamber of empty combs for a week or 

 two before the opening of clover flow, 

 provided the colony is strong enough 

 to need the extra space." Also "that 

 it pays to give hives extra protection 

 when they are taken out of the cellar 

 early in the spring. The extra warmth 

 so obtained is of great value to them in 

 the early brood-rearing. (It would be 

 interesting to know how early the 

 taking out would have to be to make 

 the extra protection pay.) 



Arthur C. Miller's smoke method of 

 introducing a queen to a full colony 

 proved entirely satisfactory with two- 

 thirds of the experimenters. 



To each of of lOG applicants an un- 

 tested Italian queen purchased from 

 some reliable queen-breeder was sent, 



the queen to be tested as to her effi- 

 ciency in struggling against European 

 foul brood. Later reports were re- 

 ceived from 3(i that the queens had 

 been successfully introduced (presum- 

 ably into affected colonies), and that 

 the colonies were going into winter 

 quarters in good condition. The re- 

 port states : 



" In all there are 7222 colonies of 

 Italian bees, 5422 crossed Italian and 

 black bees, and the balance, 2846, are 

 principally common black bees. This 

 shows a marked gain in the number of 

 Italian bees kept." 



Wonder if Mr. Pettit would make his 

 affidavit that among those 2846 there 

 are 100 sure enough simon-pure blacks. 

 If so, pure stock of that sort is probably 

 easier to find across the line than here. 



C. f. M. 



Co-operatioii 



In that article on page 129, Mr. 

 Rauchfuss, acting for the association 

 of which he is secretary, has done a 

 very unselfish thing. He has given 

 away all the secrets of their success, 

 upon reading which one is inclined to 

 say, "And why shouldn't they suc- 

 ceed ?" And the question arises, 

 " What is there to hinder others to 

 succeed in the same way ?" The plans 

 that have been such a great success in 

 Colorado are not patented, why have 

 they not been adopted elsewhere ? It 

 looks as if they might be. To be sure, 

 the personality of the manager is a 

 large factor, and a Frank Rauchfuss is 

 not to be found growing on every tree, 

 but now that the program has been so 

 plainly made out it is to be hoped that 

 the right man may be found in other 

 places, and that we shall hear of the 

 same success being repeated elsewhere. 



C. C. M. 



What is Old Coiiib Worth Per 



POUIMl ? 



That is a very difficult question to 

 answer as it depends upon how much 

 pollen or perhaps honey it contains. 



Very old combs cut from the bottom 

 of the brood-chamber might not con- 

 tain more than 10 percent of beeswax. 

 Usually the honey in them has been 

 taken out by the apiarist or robbed out 

 by the bees. But at times such combs 

 contain a large amount of pollen 

 which is only dead matter when comes 

 the rendering into wax. The upper 

 part of the combs is always richer in 

 beeswax because it is reinforced every 

 year with new wax at the time of the 

 honey harvest. This is readily proven 

 when we see the bees whitening their 

 combs, which is simply adding new 

 wax. In a similar way, the extracting 



combs are every season strengthened 

 so that they become tougher and 

 tougher, even though no brood is 

 reared in them. Even the section 

 boxes have their combs reinforced 

 when they are used the second season 

 after a failure to fill them and seal them 

 fully the first year. 



The lighter the combs are the greater . 

 the percent of pure wax in them ; such I 

 combs as have been used only one or 

 two seasons, if clean, might contain 90 

 to 95 percent of beeswa.x. 



Owing to these facts and the irregu- 

 larity of old combs it is impossible to 

 answer the question of how much old 

 combs are worth per pound, especially 

 as the beeswax which they contain has 

 itself a fluctuating value. However 

 we can say that brood combs of Lang- 

 stroth size contain from 3 to 5 ounces 

 of wax in ordinary circumstances. 

 When the value of beeswax is known 

 it only remains to figure the expense 

 of extracting it to reach the value of 

 the combs. 



The older the combs of the brood- 

 chamber, the more cocoons thev con- 

 tain and the more difficult it is to ex- 

 tract the wax, as more of it will be 

 absorbed by the residues than in new 

 combs or in super combs containing 

 mainly beeswax. 



Much of the wax rendered at the 

 beekeeper's home is only partly se- 

 cured from the slumgum, owing to the 

 lack of proper devices or because too 

 little time is taken The methods used 

 by some apiarists are so crude that I 

 have often heard old beekeepers say 

 that no wax can be obtained from 

 black combs. This is true when the 

 work is attempted with a solar extrac- 

 tor. We are steadily coming to the 

 European custom of leaving to spe- 

 cialists the rendering of the wax from 

 the combs, with profit to all concerned. 

 c. p. D. 



Foull>roo«l Insuraiioe 



Dr. E. F. Phillips, of the Bureau of 

 Entomology, and in charge of the Api- 

 ary work, who is well-known to our 

 readers, sends us a copy of the Monthly 

 Bulletin of the International Institute 

 of Agriculture, containing a relation 

 of Swiss insurance against foulbrood. 

 We have made mention of this insur- 

 ance in the " Notes from Abroad" for 

 September last, page 306. The bee- 

 keepers of German Switzerland have a 

 voluntary organization for this pur- 

 pose, and the cost per colony is one 

 cent per annum. 



The Swiss Federal Government has 

 declared foulbrood an infectious dis- 

 ease, but it has left to the Cantonal 

 Governments the authority for regula- 



