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•INTERESTS 



Vol. XXX. 



MAY 15, 1902. 



No. 10 



If I LIVE till next winter I think I'll try 

 a few colonies, taking' them out every day 

 warm enough for them to fly and then re- 

 turning after the flig-ht. [Yes, do. — Ed.] 



March 27, three days after the blooming' 

 of soft maple, my bees were taken out of 

 cellar. The next three or four weeks were 

 pretty bad; and if bees will stay contented 

 after returning', it mig'ht have been better 

 to have returned and left them in the cellar 

 till April 21, when dandelions were in 

 bloom. [Yes, I think so. — Ed.] 



Arabian hives are long, and it is almost 

 impossible to drum bees out of them. M. 

 Bourgeois, at Tunis, says in Pyogres Api- 

 cole that he gets them to swarm out in the 

 following manner : He catches the young 

 queens of a second swarm (in one case 53 

 in one swarm), cages them, and puts the 

 cages in colonies he wishes to swarm. In 

 two or three days the swarms issue. 



Adrian Getaz figures in Americari Bee 

 Joiu'nal that a colony of normal size uses 

 for its own support at least 200 pounds of 

 honey in a year. If that be so, it makes it 

 easier to understand how it is that, while 

 one colony stores a surplus of 40 pounds, 

 another beside it stores twice as much; for, 

 as he explains, the better colony will not 

 need to gather twice as much, but only a 

 sixth more, one gathering 240 pounds and 

 the other 280. 



Adulterators are having a bad time 

 elsewhere as well as here. One Breiten- 

 stein at Stein, Switzerland, was selling 

 Chilian honey as Swiss honey.- The Bee- 

 keepers' Association prosecuted him, and 

 he was glad to get off b}^ pa3'ing costs and 

 making a signed paper for publication con- 

 fessing the fraud, and promising not to do 

 so again. [The adulterators in this coun- 

 try are not having nearly as bad a time as 

 they ought to have. If bee-keepers will 

 look to their State legislatures we can make 



it much hotter for the mixers than we are 

 able to do now. — Ed.] 



Editor Doolittle says in Progressive 

 that queens giving peaceable bees in the 

 South are quite the opposite with him and 

 further north. A queen returned to him 

 from Wisconsin because her bees were in- 

 sufferably cross was sent by him to the ex- 

 treme South, and the report upon her work- 

 ers was, ."They are the most peaceable bees 

 I ever saw." Now, is it possible that all 

 queens sent from the South produce such 

 vixens in the North ? 



For the first time I find a reason giv- 

 en why queens prefer new to old comb. Le 

 Progres Apicole says it is because new 

 combs are more easily warmed. But so 

 are they more easily cooled; and the im- 

 portant thing is to have combs that will 

 not allow the brood to become chilled on 

 cool nights. Moreover, whatever may be 

 true in France, in this locality old black 

 combs are always preferred by the bees, 

 either for brood or honey. 



Formalin should have a fair trial for 

 foul brood this 3'ear. If it kills spores in 

 larv^, sealed cells, and honey, it's a boon. 

 [Can't you tell us, doctor, just how the Eu- 

 ropean bee-keepers administer formalin to 

 a colony of bees — the quantity of drug, etc. ? 

 It can be easily obtained in this countr3'; 

 but I should doubt very much whether it 

 would kill the spores of foul brood. If they 

 can resist a temperature of boiling water 

 for an hour or two, the drug must be ex- 

 ceedingly powerful. — Ed.] 



It's possible, Mr. Editor, that "one-sid- 

 ed board combs," mentioned p. 387, maybe 

 better than you think. The cells do not 

 need to be any deeper than usual. Don't 

 bees do nearlj^ as well with separators in 

 supers as without? and would not the pro- 

 posed plan nearly double the number of 

 separators? At any rate, it could be easily 

 tried. [You just try putting a separator 

 down between your extracting-combs, and 

 see how well the bees will do in storing 

 honey. Don't j^ou recall how disinclined 

 the bees are to go outside of the division- 

 board and store honey in a comb that may 



