245 



American Hee Journal 



and of the present, universally follow 

 Mr. Langstroth's fundamental rule to 

 "keep your colonies strong." They 

 differ only in their idea of " strong," 

 but niine of them have any use for 

 " small " or " reduced " colonies at any 

 time. That rule should be constantly 

 in the mind of every honey-producer, 

 and, furthermore, he should have the 

 first and last words l)lazed in letters of 

 lire, KKKi' STRONc. When that rule is 

 observed to the letter, and when the 

 maintained strength is secured by nat- 

 ural, simple means, the value of par- 

 ticular apparatus or method suddenly 

 disappears. 



Select your apparatus to suit your 

 lOin'eiiience. and that only. The " strong" 

 colonies will get the honey and store 

 it for you if any is to be secured, re- 

 gardless of all the " theories " on which 

 your appliances are built. And the 

 "strong" colony will winter "in spite 

 of" all the ideas you have on the sub- 

 ject. Follow Langstroth's great rule, 

 " KKEi' your colonies strong," and you 

 will soon be asking yourself the ques- 

 tion, is it " Because of" or "In Spite 

 of " any scheme under test that the re- 

 sults are as they are ? Then you will 

 begin to progress. 



Providence, R. I. 



Hints for Apiary Work 



BY V. GRF.INER. 



On account of my not producing 

 very nuich extracted lioney, I ha\e n.ot 

 thought best to invest in capping-mel- 

 ters. I let the cappings drain in the 

 roomy uncapping-trongh, then wash 

 them in water, using the sweet mi.xture 

 either for feeding back or, if handier, 

 ■ for making vinegar ; finally I melt them 

 in the solar wax-e.xtractor. The wax 

 thus obtained is of the best quality, 

 and no honey is lost or injured by 

 overheating. 



Wry dry sections cannot be folded 

 without a considerable amount of 

 breakage; it has, therefore, been ad- 

 vised to dampen them by pouring water 

 from a tine spout through the grooves 

 of the sections before removing from 

 the crates. Thus, a whole thousand 

 are dampened, and have to be made up 

 at one time, which is not always de- 

 sirable ; besides, after being thus treat- 

 ed, it would not be best to lill the sec- 

 tion-holders with these damp sections 

 at once. .\ little time has to be given 

 to let them become dry. The wetting 

 of sections in this wholesale manner 

 has other bad effects. They lose their 

 smoothness wherever water touches 

 them, and often they do not fold per- 

 fectly square. The tension of the V- 

 groove, diagonally opposed to the dove- 

 tailed corner, is not balanced by an 

 equal tension by that last-named cor- 

 ner, and so the folded section stands 

 diamond-shaped. Even after becoming 

 dry again, the trouble, we find, has not 

 disappeared. Diamond-shaped sections 

 give us the least trouble with our wide- 

 frame supers; with T-supers, when we 

 are using such, they are simply hor- 

 rible. Luckily, there is no need of 

 moistening sections by pouring water 

 on them. We keep ours in a basement' 

 and they seldom become so dry but 

 that they may be folded without 

 breakage. In a very dry time it may 



be necessary to wrap up a crate in a 

 wet blanketfor a day. I generally cover 

 the whole with an oilcloth besides, to 

 prevent evaporation. So treated, not 

 one section need break in folding ; the 

 smooth finish is preserved; the grain 

 of the timber in the grooves lias not 

 been raised to produce the diamond 

 shape, and we may fold as few, or as 

 many at a time, as we wish. 



A hinged cover to a smoker has the 

 disadvantage of being glued or stuck 

 up with creosote, and if, after using it 

 hard, it is left without first raising the 

 cover slightly, it is sometimes, yes, 

 very often, next to impossible to pry it 

 loose without doiiig some damage. It 

 is true, by heating the smoker, by hold- 

 ing the cover part overa burning news- 

 paper, shavings or something of that 

 sort, a process which melts the creo- 

 sote, the implement may be opened and 

 filled for lighting ; but a better smoker 

 is made which has a telescoping cover, 

 and this works perfectly. 



To prevent the bees from liberating 

 a queen too quickly by eating out the 

 candy, the latter is sometimes fortified 

 by tacking a piece of pasteboard over 

 it. This is usually effective, and too 

 much so in some instances. I have 

 found queens still in the cage after a 

 week. It is my belief that queens are 

 often injured by lon.i; confinement. We 

 should eliminate imprisoning our 

 queens entirely, and the one practical 

 method is by rearing one's own queens 

 and then uniting the nucleus contain- 

 ing the laying queen with the colony to 

 be re-queened. Then there is a proper 

 time for re-queening, and this time is 

 not after the honey season is entirely 

 over, although we see it thus advised. 

 There can be no objections raised 

 against replacing old or undesirable 

 queens with good, ripe queen-cells 

 from superior stock at this time, but it 

 is not best to introduce queens at so 

 late a date if it can be avoided. To 

 keep the queens confined over 3 or 4 

 days is poor policy. Direct introduc- 

 tion is the best. 



The most favorable time for queen 

 introduction is when bees are very anx- 



ious to rear brood. We kmiw from 

 experience that bees accept a queen 

 early in the spring, even when there is 

 no honey to be had in the field, while 

 late in the season, even with a fall flow, 

 we have to be very cautious, and have 

 to confine her majesty in some sort of 

 cage for a time before liberating. 



It has never appeared to me fair to 

 sell comb honey by the case, on ac- 

 count of great variations in the net 

 weight of honey that a case may con- 

 tain, although each may contain the 

 same number of boxes. I do not deny 

 the desirability of such a course, nor 

 do I deny that there may not be any 

 more difference in section honey than 

 there is in "eggs" that are sold the 

 world over by tlie piece. Still, I have 

 not yet met the dealer who will buy 

 my honey in that way. I sell by weight, 

 which is the only just way, fair to all 

 parties concerned. My practice has 

 been to balance each empty crate or 

 case on the scales, then proceed to fill 

 it and mark the net weight only on 

 one corner. ?ome years I have tried 

 to put an even number of pounds 

 in each case. This year I thought it 

 would save me a little extra work to 

 crate the honey just as it came, and \ 

 marked the exact net weight to the 

 /arZ/'-pound on each. This proved a 

 loss of five dollars to me, for when I 

 received my check for the 1.50 cases of 

 white honey, I found that the half- 

 pounds had been thrown out. By 

 changing a few heavier sections for 

 lighter ones, or f/Vc ;w.w, the differ- 

 ence of a half-pound can be easily 

 made, and I shall resort to my old 

 practice in the future, viz : have an even 

 number of pounds in my honey-cases. 



Recently I melted a lot of propo- 

 lis, or scrapings, accumulations from 

 cleaning section-honey and wide 

 frames. I obtained a number of pounds 

 of very nice wax out of that lot, which, 

 separated from the propolis, was dipped 

 and poured off. It paid well for the 

 trouble. Who wants to buy the propo- 

 lis ? 



Naples, N. Y. 



Dr. Millers 



Answers^ 



Send Questions either to the office of the .American Bee Journal or direct to 



Dr. C. C Miller. Marengo. III. 



He does not answer bee-keeping questions by mail. 



Prevention of Swarniing.~Giving Bees Room Under 

 the Brood-Chamber 



1. Having a colony of bees not very strong, 

 and a sliallow super with only foundation, I 

 propose to place this super under the pres- 

 ent brood-chamber, put the queen down in 

 it. witli an excluder to keel) her there; three 

 weeks before the fall How. which begins 

 here, say about Sept. i. I will reverse the 

 position of the brood-cliamber and super, 

 puttintr the super on top. the queen below, 

 and the excluder between. Cl'his reversing 

 could be done at any previous time should 

 the super become in any sense crowded ) 

 Queen-cells to be taken care of properly. 



I expect, by these manipulations, to get 

 the combs drawn in the super; to promote 

 brood-rearing with the additional help of 

 stimulative feeding, and incidentally to pre- 

 vent swarming should there be any chance 

 of that happening. Is this a practical plan? 



2. I liave a rousing big colony which has 



not given any signs of swarming, but has the 

 brood-chamber filled with brood, a section 

 super being on top. I place under the brood 

 chamber another hive-body with fully-drawn 

 combs, and no excluder. How will this 

 affect work in the super? Will it probably 

 iuHuence any to swarm ? New .Jersey. 



Answers.— I. Yes; it is a variation of a 

 plan given to prevent swarming in "Fifty 

 Years Among the Bees." I may mention a 

 chance for trouble in one respect. It may 

 happen, especially if the colony be weak. 

 that the bees will desert the queen, leaving 

 her alone below the excluder. I don't know 

 whether this has any tendency to make the 

 bees swarm out. So it is a good plan to 

 have at least a little brood in the lower 

 story to hold both bees and queen. 



2. The colony being very strong, there 

 may be no immediate difference apparent 

 in super-work, tlie colony being strong, 

 enough to do good work above and below. 

 But it is a pretty safe guess that the bees 



