500 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



June 15 



where this smoker can be obtained, have 

 two of them sent to The A. I. Root Co. at 

 once, at our expense. One of them we will 

 forward to you, and the other we will test 

 ■ourselves. While from my present stand- 

 point an automatic or mechanical smoker of 

 this kind is not really demanded or needed, 

 yet I am anxious to test the idea. — Ed.] 



I ENDORSE what G. M. Doolittle says, p. 

 588, about replacing- queens every two years. 

 If a queen is bad, replace her any time, 

 even if less than a year .old, but don't re- 

 place an old queen simph^ because she is 

 old. I have a queen five years old that is 

 to-day doing- just about as good work as 

 any other queen I have. A sufficient rea- 

 son ag-ainst replacing- all two -year -old 

 queens, if there was no other, is that you 

 can hardly decide the character of a queen 

 until she is two years old; and if she has a 

 g-ood record when two years old, every year 

 of good record after that increases her val- 

 ue as a queen to breed from. 



Doolittle's " Queen - rearing " (au- 

 thorized translation) has been published in 

 German, edited by A. Straeuli. Those 

 Germans know a good thing when they see 

 it. [It is my own private opinion that Doo- 

 little's queen-rearing has done more to put 

 the rearing of queens on an advanced basis 

 than any other book or plan hitherto put 

 out. We all owe Doolittle a vote of thanks 

 for putting so much emphasis on good 

 queens, and using nature's ways to secure 

 that vigor of stock that can not be obtained 

 in any other way. While I am satisfied 

 there will be some substantial improve- 

 ments made on the Doolittle plan, yet he 

 has done the bee-keeping world a good 

 turn by starting the ball rolling in the right 

 direction. — Ed. ] 



My brother-in-law has just returned 

 from spending the winter in Phoenix, Ari- 

 zona. He went to a grocery and asked for 

 extracted alfalfa honey. "Extracted hon- 

 ey? what's that?" After a little explana- 

 tion the grocer said, "Oh! you mean strain- 

 ed honey." Then he started to get some, 

 but returned in a short time saying, "I 

 can't draw it, it's froze." Mr. Stull laugh- 

 ed. "Oh! you needn't laugh; it always 

 freezes when it gets cold enough, and then 

 it must be thawed out." Mr. Stull was 

 quite pleased with a visit to the boy bee- 

 keeper, Mr. Chambers, of whom he formed 

 a very favorable opinion. [It seems strange 

 that, in a locality that probably has as 

 many bees to the square mile as any place 

 in the world, a retailer of honey can be 

 found who does not know what extracted 

 honey is, and who should then be so igno- 

 rant as to say that honey "freezes." I am 

 satisfied that this retailer was not very 

 well acquainted with our boy friend Mr. 

 Chambers. — Ed.] 



A GOOD THING is the plan Doolittle offers, 

 p. 457, to graft cells in a colony with a 

 queen that the bees are trying to supersede. 

 As beginners are not likely to have many 

 such queens, but are likely to have plenty 



of colonies preparing for swarming, why 

 not graft swarming-cells? They could be 

 cut out two or three days before time for the 

 queens to emerge, and quite a batch might 

 be secured. [The best time in the world 

 for the honey-producer to rear queens, and 

 a very choice lot of them too, is during the 

 swarming season. He can well afford to 

 take the time to graft some of his swarming- 

 cells with larvas or eggs from a choice breed- 

 er; then when those cells are capped, cut 

 them out and put them in nuclei. This is 

 a very simple and easy way to raise queens, 

 and is, in fact, if I mistake not, the one 

 practiced by some of our most successful 

 honey-producers who have become convinced 

 that such queens are remarkably strong 

 and vigorous. The next best colony, ac- 

 cording to our experience, is the one that is 

 trying to supersede queens. Indeed, we 

 consider such a colony a prize, and set it 

 apart and keep it breeding and filling out 

 cells. — Ed.] 



Now Boer and Britain ground their arms 



And cease the carnage red ; 

 While Edward VII. mounts the throne 



The peace-dove flies o'erhead. 



Many reports from various sources have 

 shown lately that the replacing of queens 

 every year or every two years is not best 

 nor even desirable, some queens improving 

 up to four years of age, and some doing 

 well at five. This, however, does not ap- 

 ply to W. Z. Hutchinson's reasons for his 

 early replacing of queens. 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 

 Concerning the tenacity with which the 

 British press maintains that cane sugar 

 has a higher sweetening value than sugar 

 from beets, Mr. E. E. Hasty ventures to 

 make the following suggestion, which has, 

 by the way, been lingering in the mind of 

 more than one person: 



Sad to relate, governments sometimes go into sj'S- 

 tematic lying for a purpose. Without suflScient eVi- 

 dence I rather " smell " that the cane-sugar versus 

 beet-sugar question is kept from being settled mainly 

 by the British Colonial Office, and that they engaged 

 in that sort of thing for the benefit of British colonies 

 which produce cane sugar. But certainly there may 

 be one real difference. The two kinds of svigar quite 

 likely go through different processes in contact zvith 

 different chemicals. If so, they can be exactly alike 

 only in the improbable case of getting all the chemi- 

 cals out of the finished sugar. But does this amount 

 to a practical distinction, or is it infinitesimal and non- 

 practical? 



It seems to be granted by all that there 

 is a wide divergence between unrefined 

 cane sugar and unrefined beet sugar; but 

 after refining, the difl^erence between the 

 two sugars has not yet been detected. The 

 British are great on raising cane. 



