332 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



violin for the bees; he blew the flute, whis- 

 tled, shouted, but they took no notice of it. 

 Others have repeated this experiment with 

 the same result. 



The scientist Ed. Hopper, an authoiity 

 on the bumble-bee, holds that they are en- 

 dowed with a sense of hearing, while Sladen 

 and Wlad. Wagner hold the opposite view. 

 Ed. Hoffer tried the following experiment 

 with Vespa media, De Geer, to see whether 

 or not they would react on sounds the hu- 

 man ear perceives. He hid himself in the 

 bushes, and with a long cane he excited the 

 above-named species by punching and shak- 

 ing the bush on which their nest hung, at 

 the same time whistling loudly. They came 

 out of the nest pell-mell to attack the dis- 

 turber. Later he needed only to whistle to 

 bring them out, full of anger, seai'ching for 

 the otfender they had heard but could not 

 see. 



There is still some uncertainty how ex- 

 ternal impressions are made conscious to the 

 bees. We beekeepers cannot but be thank- 

 ful to the men of science who have already 

 revealed many of the wonders of the make- 

 up of the little honeybee. Just think ! there 

 are .31,000 minute membrane plates with 

 nerve fibers attached to them, called pore- 

 plates, although they have no pores at all, 

 found in the two antennae of the drone. 

 The thickness of these poreplates is 0.002 

 to 0.004 of a millimeter, or 0.00008th to 

 0.00016th of one inch. Their use is uncer- 

 tain. They are considered too thick to 

 transmit odor, as gases would not diffuse 



rapidly enough through them. It is curious 

 that the queen and workers have only about 

 4000 in both antennae, but a little larger in 

 size. The author of the book thinks they 

 may help the drones to find the queen at 

 the mating flight, since that is the only ser- 

 vice the drones seem to render the colony. 



Mclndoo's work on the sense of smell, 

 familiar to American beekeepers, is also 

 considered. Sixty illustrations help very 

 much to interpret the weighty contents of 

 the book. 



BOILED HONEY NOT SUITABLE WINTER STORE. 



Regarding the editorial article, page 4, in 

 Gleanings for January 1, I should like to 

 say that I have often heard the opinion 

 expressed that honey with a comparatively 

 small amount of water gives dysentery. A 

 colony suffering from the want of water 

 becomes uneasy, and dysentery results. 

 Boiling changes honey considerably. The 

 loss of water, and the change in the hygi-o- 

 scopic property, are most impoi'tant for its 

 quality as winter food. 



If honey for winter feeding has to be 

 boiled I would suggest that a liberal amount 

 of water be added, and that the honey be 

 stirred so that it may not get on the walls of 

 the vessel too hot while part of it is barely 

 warm. It is usually recommended to dilute 

 honey with water for feeding purposes, the 

 quantity varying up to equal volumes. [We 

 have always diluted the boiled honey that 

 we use for feeding. — -Ed.] 



Kempten, Bavaria, Germany. 



THE SECTIONAL HIVE 



BY F. GREINER 



In an address entitled " Practical Side of 

 Ajjiculture," delivered before the Ontario 

 County (N. Y.) Beekeepers' Society last 

 January by Mr. S. D. House, Camillus, N. 

 Y., two sentences struck me as of impor- 

 tance. They were as follows : " We handle 

 hives rather than frames;" and "our wide- 

 frame supers assist us in handling the fin- 

 ished product rapidly." Great masters may 

 make mistakes, to be sure. I am renainded 

 what Dr. Dzierzon once said about the la- 

 bor-saving mania of the American beekeep- 

 er. He said in substance: "As though suc- 

 cess depended on the ease or rapiditj^ with 

 which hives may be manipulated, can we 

 not employ women and children (in other 

 words, cheap labor) to do tliis work?" This 

 was many years ago. In the light of our 

 experience of the past years, who of us on 

 (his side of the big water endorses this the- 

 ory of Dr. Dzierzon? 



So, I say, possibly Mr. House is wrong. 

 We hear very little said about the sectional 

 or divisible hive, and still less about the 

 wide-frame super. The different photo- 

 gi'aphs of apiaries appearing in every issue 

 of our American bee journals do not indi- 

 cate that sectional hives are very popular. 

 I have heard extensive and successful bee- 

 keepers say that they had a lot of the re- 

 versible sectional Heddon liives on the rub- 

 bish-pile, and that they could be had for 

 the asking. Notwithstanding all this, one 

 must learn to use a tool right. The besi. 

 kind of razor, no matter how sharp it may 

 be, cannot be used successfully to cut bnish; 

 and the best brush-hook is ill fitted to cut a 

 man's beard if the bristles are never so tiiick 

 and heavy. The sharpening of a razor is 

 one thing, and that of a brush-hook anoth- 

 er. The sectional hive is not to be used in 

 the same manner as the standard L. hive is 



