Ft-liruary. 191 . 



J^^^^=^ 



American liee Journal 



10. Arr (Irone-cclls larger than worker- 

 cflls? Indiana. 



Answers. — i. If the bees have plenty 

 of food, better not distiirl) them till warm 

 weather. No harm if the packing is left 

 .>n till May or June. 



_>. Yes. bees will take water without 

 any sweet in it. and they will be likely 



10 po after water about as soon as the 

 weather is warm enough for tliem to fly. 



1 1 is a good plan to have water provided 

 close at hand, so they need not have to 

 fly far for it with the risk of gettin.a 

 chilled. A good way is to have a vessel 

 of water in a sheltered or warm place 

 near the apiary, with 2 or 3 inches of 

 .ork-chips on the water. You can get the 

 .<'rk-chips from any grocer who has 

 i;rapcs come in kegs, as generally he 

 throws them away. 



V Rye-flour and other meals are given 

 to the bees as a substitute for pollen. 



4. If you want to put it in the hive, 

 you can sprinkle it into the cells of a 

 comb. But it is not generally put in the 

 hive, but outside. Put it in a shallow dish 

 • •r box outside in the sun. and if the bees 

 :irc in need of it they will take it from 

 there. But if they can get plenty of 

 natural pollen they are not likely to touch 

 the substitute. 



5. Unless a colony is very strong, one 

 story Ls enough for it. If strong enough, 

 it can have 2 stories up to the time of 

 the harvest, when one brood-story will be 

 left. 



6. No. there is only one queen. 



-. Such shelter answers a good pur- 

 pose ; only it must not be so close as to 

 hinder the free entrance of air into the 

 hive. 



S. There must be a queen-excluder be- 

 •ween the 2 stories. Even then you will 

 ikely find one of the queens missing be- 

 :'"re a great while. 



0. Drone-comb may be cut out any 

 time after it is wann enough for the 

 I'ces to be flying freely. But the bees 

 will be likely to build drone-comb in the 

 vacancy unless you fill in patches of 

 worker-comb or comb-foundation. 



10. Yes. drone-cells measure about 4 

 ■o the inch, and worker-cells 5 to the 

 incli. 



Candy-Cakes for Winter Feeding. 



I:ast season (loii) was a total failure 

 ,- to the honey-crop, and the bees hardly 

 . it enough to live on during the summer. 

 iiid consequently did not get any stores 

 ir winter use. I started to feed them 

 -;. rup the last part of September and the 

 nrst of October, but on account of my 

 biusiness keeping me away from home 

 ■Host of the time, the feeding became very 

 nsufficient, and unless the bees are fed 

 M some way soon, they will starve before 

 -!)rin,g opens, which here is not until May. 

 Will it do to take granulated su.gar mixed 

 '.n honey, make it into quite solid candy. 

 to]] it out nearly the size of the top of 

 the hives, and lay the candy flat over the 

 top-bars, and cover it with cloth or 

 gunny-sacks? I keep my bees in the cel- 

 lar in a dark place, where the tempera- 

 ture during the winter varies from 36 

 to 45 degrees. I have kept bees for 3 

 winters, and they have always come out 

 in nice shape, but they have always had 

 plenty of stores before. I have i6 col- 

 onies. This country is probably not the 

 1)est honey-producing country, but last 

 year (1910) I got from 50 to 100 pound" 

 per colony. 



I do not know whether the above suf- 

 nested feeding will work or not, but I 

 thought this way would be least disturbing 

 to them. Possibly the candy will melt 

 and run down on them. The colonies 

 ^re small so the heat will probably not 



be very great. I have no frames with 

 honey, and cannot get them. 



Minnesota. 

 .•\nswer. — You're all right in your plan. 

 The only question is : How do you mean 

 to make that cand.v? If you mean to heat 

 it so as to melt both honey and sugar and 

 m.ike it into a "solid candy." all right : 

 only be ti'r.v careful you don't overheat it. 

 It will be cheaper to let the bees starv.. 

 than to kill them with scorched candy. 

 If you mean to make so-called "Good" 

 candy, all right again. i)rovided you don't 

 do exactly as you say. but use powdered 

 sugar instead of granulated. Maybe you'll 

 get it under the name of confectioner's 

 su.asar. It would do to use granulated 

 sugar, only it may he too wasteful, for 

 the bees are likely to reject the coarse 



grains of the granulated. No doubt you 

 have books that tell you just how to make 

 this candy, but it may be no harm to 

 give a few hints. 



You can make it by using the honey cold, 

 merely mixing the honey with the fine- 

 grained sugar, but there is danger, espe- 

 cially in cold weather, that you will not 

 get enough sugar kneaded in, and then 

 the candy may become thin afterward and 

 run down. It is better to have the honey 

 warm — hot, if you don't scorch it — and 

 then stir in all the sugar you can. When 

 you have stirred in all the sugar you can. 

 then knead some more in. Then let the 

 candy stand in a warm place -• or 3 days 

 and you will find you can knead in some 

 more. 



Cans of Hot Water in the Bee-Cellar 



Honey was a failure witii me last year; 

 too nuicb rain. It rained nearly the whole 

 season, but we had a fall How. so my bees 

 tilled their hives for the winter. I put in the 

 cellar 100 colonies, and ever since Xew 

 Year's Day I have bad to fi-bt to keep the 

 temperature at 41 degrees. I put in the cel- 

 lar s-Eallon cans of hot water, nitrht and 

 morning, and I succeed in keeping the tem- 

 perature 44 to 4ti degrees. The warmest it 

 has been outside in the last 10 days is 4 de- 

 grees below zero, and 47 and so degrees be- 

 low 4 times, but most of the time ^5 below, 

 and some days with a gale of wind. Yes.it 

 is cold! G. C. Chase. 



Robbins, Wis. 



Nectar-Dearth and then Severe Cold 



Hemmed in between city houses I have 15 

 colonies of the finest Italians hereabouts. 

 But immediately after a cold snap of 20 de- 

 grees below zero, a heavy snow fell closing 

 the fronts of the hives for several days. 

 .\fter the cold spell a pint or more of dead 

 bees lay on the bottom-boards, which I 

 scraped out with a yard-stick. Of course, I 

 take it that the cold killed the bees, as tliey 

 had abundant stores, but have wondered if 

 the snow closing the entrances may have 

 conduced to the wholesale slaughter. Last 

 summer's dearth of nectar, with this win- 

 ter's severe cold, has been a severe test for 

 bees, although 1 have hives wrapped with 

 tar-paper, and supers filled with autumn 

 leaves and grass. Some of my colonies were 

 weak in the fall, but all have pulled through 

 so far. Mrs. Fkederuk Griffith. 



Kansas <_'ity. Mo.. Feb. i. 



Cold Weather- Feeding Bees Loaf Sugar 



Beginning with the last day of December, 

 and continuing for two weeks, the mercury 

 fell below zero every night but one. The 

 range was from 4 degrees below to 32 below. 

 Last Sunday morning it was a few degrees 

 above, but on Monday morning it was 20 be- 

 low. Since then the weather has warmed 

 up a little. There is considerable snow on 

 the ground, and there has been much drift- 

 ing. The entrances of my bee-hives have 

 been closed with snow most of the time, and 

 1 did not make any great haste about remov- 

 ing it. Yesterday, and a few times before. I 

 lifted the cushions and quilts of some hives 

 in order to note the conditions, as far as a 

 momentary glance would enable me to do 

 so. and to insert a little feed right over the 

 cluster. In order to do this I needed to 

 raise only one end of the covers for an 

 instant, and then they were dropped 

 back. I found the bees much livelier than I 

 expected, and also found they had not lost 

 their disposition nor ability to sting. The 

 interview was so short, and the weather so 

 cold I had not thought they would welcome 

 nie in that way. 



rhefeed I gate was. at first, cube loaf- 

 sugar slightly moistened. about a cinart to the 

 colony, but the supply failed and there was 

 none in town. Ihen 1 went to giving un- 



tinished sections that had honey in them 

 but shall return to the cube loaf-sugar as 

 soon as I can get a supply from Chicago. 

 The grocery men here have the face to ask 

 i2'/2 cents a pound for it. A mailorder 

 house's price is $1.60 for a 2s-pound sack, 

 and a trifle more per pound in smaller lots. 

 I do this feeding as a precautionary meas- 

 ure. Some colonies do not need it. and some 

 mm: You do not know which is the needv 

 one, and can not find out at this time of the 

 year. Edwin Bevixs. 



Leon, Iowa, Jan. i3. 



Entire Failure from Dry Weather 



The past season was almost an entire 

 failure. In the middle of the season we 

 were obliged to feed to keep the bees from 

 starving. I have fed 20 pounds of sugar and 

 honey to all each colonyi of my bees for 

 wintering. Forty years ago we had a simi- 

 lar experience. This isowingtodry weather, 



Lee, Mass., Dec. 2'3. .A. Bradi.ev. 



Following Up Experiments 



While it is not best under all circum- 

 stances to try everything we read in the bee- 

 papers, the fact still remains that "in a 

 multitude of counsellors there is wisdom." 

 and it only remains for the recipient to 

 use it properly. If no one bad thought 

 enough of Benjamin Franklin's experiments 

 to have followed them up. see the conven- 

 iences this age would have lost. 



Rocky Ford. Colo.. Jan. 8, A S. Parson, 



A Badly Bee-Diseased County 



Monterey county is rotten with foul brood 

 at the present time, and all our bee-keepers 

 will lose considerable. We have a county 

 bee inspector who has no advice to give in 

 the least, or rather knows nothing about any 

 bee-disease whatsoever, and is about in 

 years behind the times. The only thing he 

 can do very well is to destroy an apiarv 

 when no one is at home, by ransacking every 

 hive and turning them inside out looking for 

 disease, and knows nothing after doing so; 

 while the average apiary is as nearly rotten 

 with foul brood as it could be throughout 

 the county Almost all the bee-keepers liave 

 the common California black bees, and they 

 go like hot-cakes when anything hits them. 

 Nearly all have the common cracker-box 

 hives. The American Bee Journal is the 

 only thing that does the bee-keeper any 

 good. Some inspectors know nothing, and 

 at the same time rob the county of so much. 



Salinas, Calif.,. Ian. 8. Wm. F. Ha< kmas. 



Done With Sealed Covers 



The winter of 1011-12 will long be remem- 

 bered by the bee keepers of this locality. 

 For one thing, it has forever knocked the 

 sealed-cover business in the head for me. I 

 winter and have for years before without 

 the loss of a single colony with a feeding- 

 board over the colony with 2 holes for feed- 



