MAY 1. 191; 



351 



Dr. C. C. Miller 



TMAY STEAW! 



irengo. 



Anothkk siiiu of laying workers 

 luay be added to those on page 312. 

 It is to find an egg laid upon pol- 

 len. 



F. Gkeiner, p. 333, says bait- 

 combs result in poUen-lnden sec- 

 tions. They don't here, friend 

 Ciieiner. 



G. M. DoOLiTTLK.'s description of a pip- 

 ing queen's performance, p. 312, is the best 

 I've evei' seen. But I'm surprised that he 

 has never *' heard a ' pipe ' from any queen 

 while she was on any other place than a 

 comb." A queen often pipe;* in a cage with 

 no comb. 



Eugene Secor has had none of the poet- 

 ry dried out of him yet. In a note dated 

 March l(i he says: " Every thing here is yet 

 asleep. Xo alarm has been sounded by 

 robin or bluebird. But the bees in cellar 

 have shaken off their winter stupor, and are 

 fretting to frolic among fragrant flowers." 



Chalon Fowls quotes Ira D. Bartlett as 

 saying 90 per cent fail in beekeeping, and 

 exclaims. " Ira ! " Then he coolly reads 

 out of the list of beekeepers all farmers 

 keeping a few bees who have a hundred 

 times more capital invested in their farm 

 or stock. Chalon ! Just how many colo- 

 nies should a man have before he should be 

 called a beekeeper, anyway? 



Aster stores are blamed for winter loss- 

 es. Why don't you train your bees to let 

 asteis alone? Asters are plentiful here, but 

 my bees practically neglect them, and they 

 came out of cellar in fine condition April 6. 

 [It is not every j-ear that asters yield hon- 

 ey; and it is not eveiy locality where they 

 secrete much nectar. If we had fed our 

 bees on good sugar syrup or good honey 

 and kept them at home last fall, instead of 

 hauling them ten or twenty or even fifty 

 miles to the aster swamps, we should have 

 been better off. The asters are all right ; 

 but tlie stores, as a general thing, should be 

 used for breeding, and not as a winter food. 

 — Kv.] 



Denatured sugar is of great interest to 

 Euroi»ean beekeepers because of tiie high 

 duty on sugar. But how much could we 

 gain that way? T wish, however, there 

 were a law against feeding bees any thing 

 but deeply colored sugar, so it would show 

 plainly if any of it should get into the 

 surplus. [^Members of the National con- 

 vention at Denver thought it was wise to go 

 slow in making recommendations to the 



national Government to provide for dena- 

 tured sugar to be used for feeding bees. 

 Possibly there would be no very gxeat finan- 

 cial gain — especially so when sugar I'eaches 

 its normal jirice after this senseless war is 

 over. — Ed.] 



L. S. Crawsiiaw, that breezy writer of 

 tlie British Bee Journal, p. 95, says: " Pre- 

 cisely what some few of us 'retrogi'ade writ- 

 ers' have maintained in spite of abuse is 

 that early queens, raised under the natural- 

 swai'ming impulse, are the best." Now, that 

 isn't a bit kind in you, L. S., to be scatter- 

 ing doubts and fears among my hopes and 

 longings. Here I've been rejoiced to find 

 now and then a colony quietly superseding 

 its queen, with no inclination toward the 

 swarming impulse, natural or unnatural, 

 but bending its whole energy toward piling 

 in the honey, and thinking that a queen 

 resulting from such a supersedure was equal 

 to the best, and now you would have me 

 believe it would be still better with some 

 " impulse." " Didn't happen to think of 

 that sort of case? " All right; send around 

 a small boy with an apology, and we'll be 

 friends again. I'm heartily with you, that 

 when, under the most favorable conditions, 

 a colony rears queens in preparation for 

 swarming, the queens reared under that 

 " im])ulse " cannot be improved by the in- 

 termeddling of any two-legged creature so 

 long as the young queens are reared from 

 that same old one. But please remember 

 that, under natural conditions, every queen 

 is superseded by the bees before she dies, and 

 that the superseding imijulse is just as nat- 

 ural as the swarming impulse. Swarming 

 may or may not be, but supersedure there 

 must be if the colony is to continue. So 

 when it's the regular business of old dame 

 Nature to rear queens for superseding, 

 wouldn't you expect a good job? 



Now let me say what further I believe, 

 and I'll be glad if you agree. Take a 

 broad view of the field, or, rather, of the 

 aj)iaiy. Here are 100 colonies, having all 

 degrees of inclination toward swarming. 1 

 can leave them to their own sweet wills year 

 after year, and each will have a queen rear- 

 ed under the swarming impulse. Or, re- 

 membering that liowever good the swarming 

 impulse may be for queen-rearing, the less 

 of it the better for honey-getting, I can 

 lake the matter into my own hands and rear 

 queens from some colony with never a 

 swarming impulse, but strong on stonng. 

 I believe 1 can get bigger crops by taking 

 tlie latter course. I believe I have done so. 



