JourHaiJ 



• DELVoTL 

 ♦To'BELE.^ 



•.-.ndHoNEY 

 'jmn home: 



♦JNTE.FIEST^ 



hedWTHEAll^OoYCO. •, 

 lJ,$.la2p[R\tfcR'^_^@"^EDlNA•OH10• 



Vol. XXX. 



DEC. 



1902. 



No. 23 





"If the plant [sweet clover] is left un- 

 til there is no honey in the blossoms, and 

 the blossoms have gone to seed, it will be 

 too tough and woody to make very good 

 hay," p. 917. Better cross out that "very." 

 Might leave out the "good" too. [I will 

 accept the correction. — Ed.] 



KiEFFKR PEARS are praised by some and 

 decried by others. I had a few from some 

 young trees last year, and they were not fit 

 to eat. This year the same trees gave near- 

 ly a bushel. They ripened up into red- 

 cheeked beauties, and we thought we had 

 never eaten finer pears. I don't know what 

 made the difference in the two years. 



Speaking of boiled honey, page 947, re- 

 minds me that for a week or two I have 

 been using every morning honey that had 

 not been boiled, but had been heated to 

 somewhere near the boiling-point. It is 

 possible that it might agree with some 

 stomachs that could not endure honey never 

 heated, but the taste is so injured that not 

 many would persevere in its use, even if the 

 stomach would stand it. 



Editor Hdtchin.son says some pretty 

 things about me, and commends me for op- 

 posing the use of the term ' ' shook swarms, ' ' 

 and then says: "'Shook' swarm is terse, 

 expre-isive, and catchy, and I doubt if we 

 can do better than to adopt it." "Ettu, 

 Brute?" [While he commends you for op- 

 posing ungrammatical terms in a general 

 way, he himself is against you to the ex- 

 tent that he favors my idiosj'ncrasy for 

 "shook." See editorials. — Ed.] 



GuBLER had a queen whose eggs never 

 hatched either into drones or workers. 

 Mentioning this in the Atnerican Bee-keeper, 

 F. Greiner says: "The writer had such a 



queen some years ago. She filled the combs 

 with eggs, but none ever hatched. Finally 

 the queen disappeared." I think such 

 queens are scarce. I have had just one — 

 that is, a queen whose eggs would not 

 hatch during the usual season of breeding. 

 I've had lots of queens whose eggs did not 

 hatch late in the fall. I suppose every one 

 has them. 



The right time to take bees into cellar 

 is often asked for. Wait till they take 

 their last flight in fall or early winter. 

 Then take them in the next day. "What 

 date will that be?" I don't know. You'll 

 have to use your best judgment and then 

 it's largely a guess. I knew one winter in 

 this locality when there was no chance for 

 bees to fly after the last of October till the 

 next spring. This year acts as if it might 

 go to the other extreme. This is the 20th 

 of November, and bees are still flj'ing al- 

 most every daj' — at least a few bees, and 

 some days many. Generally you are safe 

 not to cellar bees till the middle of Novem- 

 ber. 



After reading over three times what 

 you. say, p. 931, Mr. Editor, I think I un- 

 derstand your position to be that combs 

 partly drawn out on foundation will be 

 preferred by a queen to old black combs. 

 Please paste in your hat a memorandum to 

 give the thing a trial next summer, and 

 then tell us what you find. Here's what 

 Editor Hutchinson saj's in last Review: 

 " In examining nuclei to see if queens had 

 begun laying, I found that the place to look 

 for the first-laid eggs was always in old 

 black brood-combs — not new combs." [I 

 have done it. I have pasted it in my hat; 

 and if 3'ou do not hear from me again, well, 

 I'll not tell you unless I am right. — Ed.] 



The chief argument for being satisfied 

 with forced swarms as against no swarms 

 lies in the advantag'e forced swarms g'ive 

 over foul brood. I confess it's a strong if 

 not an all-sufficient argument, wherever 

 foul brood prevails. But then, we don't all 

 have foul brood. [One in my position has 

 opportunit}' for knowing that foul brood is 

 on the increase at a fearful rate over the 



