588 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



July IS 



or at least one in the rear and two in front; 

 and for shipping-, at least, I would strongly 

 urge four fastenings. The advice we give 

 in a general way to the public should err, 

 if at all, on the safe side. — Ed.] 



W. GuENTHER says in Centralblatt that, 

 in spite of the mild climate and plants 

 blooming the entire year, bee-keeping in 

 Brazil is not remunerative. Pollen is al- 

 ways to be had, honey not always, and the 

 constant flight of bees throughout the year 

 makes an enormous amount necessary for 

 the support of a colony. Overstocking, 

 abundance of bee-enemies, and low prices 

 make too heavy a combination for success 

 in the business. [This is probably a con- 

 dition that exists in other portions of the 

 world. — Ed.] 



"But why should bees put wax in the 

 bottom of the cells? "We are certain that 

 they remove the shed skins whenever they 

 become too thick." So ye editor, p. 243. 

 Are you sure they remove any thing from 

 the bottom of the cell? If so, how is it that 

 an old septum may be yi in. thick? [While 

 it is true that the old septum may be y% 

 inch thick, yet when a comb gets to be ten 

 years old, and has had five or six broods in 

 it in a season, the cast-off larval skins 

 would accumulate to such a thickness dur- 

 ing that time that, if the bees did not thin 

 the septum, or at least remove some of the 

 surplus from the bottoms of the cells, the 

 cells would be nearly half full. While we 

 have contended that the diameter of the cell 

 does not grow less through age, we may 

 say, also, that the depth of them does not 

 decrease materially during a corresponding 

 period. Bees will allow a certain accumu- 

 lation in the bottom, but little or none around 

 the sides. — Ed.] 



The idea seems to prevail that there is 

 an advantage in very shallow brood-frames, 

 because in them there will be brood to the 

 top-bar, with no honey at the upper part to 

 prevent bees going directly from brood to 

 sections. I wonder if there is a difference 

 in localities. With me Langstroth frames 

 have brood to the top-bars, so that there 

 would hardly be an advantage in shallower 

 combs. [AVhy, certainly, doctor, you do 

 not mean that the majority of your Lang- 

 stroth frames have brood clear up to the top- 

 bars. When I visited you and looked over 

 your frames, my recollection is they were not 

 so filled. It is only occasionally that we find 

 a full frame of brood of Langstroth depth, 

 and that is generally with the Cyprian or 

 yellow stock ; and the most of the yellow 

 stock, from its appearance and nervous ac- 

 tions, I believe had its origin in Eastern 

 blood. I will bet a cookey there is no differ- 

 ence between your locality and mine. If 

 you have lately discovered a method by 

 which you c^n force your queens to fill their 

 brood-frames /■«// of brood without the use 

 of the Eastern or yellow stock, I wish 3'ou 

 would tell me how you do it. Somehow I 

 had come to believe that it was an axiom 

 that the average Langstroth frame would 



be filled about two-thirds full of brood in 

 actual service; the other third, during or 

 after the honey-flow, would have an inch or 

 more of honey under the top-bars. I have 

 just been looking over hundreds of frames 

 in our own apiaries; and I am sure the con- 

 dition you ascribe to your yard does not 

 exist in ours. — Ed.] 



The per cent of water in honey has 

 been given as varying greatly, from 13 all 

 the way up to 32 per cent or more. Prof. 

 Frank T. Shutt, chemist of the Ottawa Ex- 

 perimental Farms, after spending much la- 

 bor on the problem, says, according to are- 

 port in Canadian Bee Journal, that he 

 doesn't know the answer. The trouble is 

 that, at the temperature at which analyses 

 have been made, levulose decomposes, and the 

 loss thus resulting has been counted as so 

 much water. He says: "From the first 

 weighings we calculated the percentage of 

 water, and got numbers in the neighbor- 

 hood of 14, 15, 16; after 12 hours more we 

 obtained to 18, and then another twelve 

 hours gave us 20 and 25 per cent; and then 

 continuing, the per cent of loss went up to 

 28, 30, and 32. Evidently there was no 

 stopping-place, and what we were calculat- 

 ing as water was really in large part due 

 to the decomposition of honey." So he 

 thinks the great discrepancy does not re- 

 sult from the difference in the honey itself, 

 but from the difference in time used by the 

 diff'erent analysts. He thinks the per cent 

 of water in honey will be found nearer 15 

 than 30. 



R. C. AiKiN, in Review, arraigns the en- 

 tire fraternity of manufacturers because 

 ten-frame hives are too narrow to admit 

 properly a dummy, and eight-frame hives 

 are so wide as to require two dummies. I 

 don't know about the ten-framers, but I 

 stand up for the eight-framers being all 

 right. Formerly they were too narrow, but 

 now they are 12>s in. inside measure. With 

 spacing l^s from center to center, there will 

 be a space of 1^'s to \f^ left at one side. 

 Put in the center of that space a y'V dummy, 

 and the space each side of the dummy will 

 be 1% when every thing is new, becoming 

 less as propolis accumulates and combs be- 

 come old. Whether new or old, I have 

 never known comb to be built back of the 

 dummy, as Mr. Aikin says happens. [If 

 we had had it to do over again, we as sup- 

 ply-manufacturers would have left the eight- 

 frame hive as we originally got it out — im 

 inches — so that it would have the same 

 amount of room relatively as the ten-frame 

 hive. I find in actual practice that, in the 

 manipulation of Hoffman frames, at least 

 in ten-frame hives, I do not find any need 

 of a dumm3^; and in handling the eight- 

 frame hive with a dummy in, I find it is 

 easier to remove the Hoffman frame direct 

 than to take out the dummj^; and usually I 

 can ascertain all I need to know about a 

 colony by removing one frame. We had 

 contemplated making the ten-frame hive 

 wider; but my advice was to leave it just 



