January, 1919 



gIjEanings in bee culture 



A 



BEEKEEP- 



e r who 



wants to 

 roar a f o w 

 (]ueen-cells for 

 his own use 

 sometimes puts 

 in the center of 

 a colony having 

 a choice queen a 



frame filled with foundation. After this is 

 drawn out and filled with eggs, it is given 

 to a queenless colony to rear cells upon. 

 When the cells are completed it is annoying 

 to find often two cells at one point, but 

 on opposite sides, only one of which can be 

 saved. A. Chenowith gives in the American 

 Bee Journal a way that nicely overcomes 

 this difficulty, altho he does not give it for 

 that special purpose. Take two sheets of 

 foundation, place these together with two 

 sheets of tissue paper between them, cut- 

 ting the paper a little smaller than the foun- 

 dation and pressing the edges together. 

 When your cells are ready to cut out, trim 

 off the edges of your comb and the two 

 sheets will readily separate, so there will be 



no cells on opposite sides of the same comb. 

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A California correspondent writes: "On 

 page 666, November Gleanings, you say, 

 'Breed from the best; kill all queens that 

 fall below the average. ' Now when is a 

 queen poor?" He goes on to say that some 

 queens start out with a rush and later slack 

 up, while others reverse the process. Well, 

 to decide whether a queen is poor or good, 

 you must not jvulge alone by what she does 

 in any one part of the season, but by what 

 she does — rather by what her workers do — 

 in the whole of a season. From that it fol- 

 lows that you cannot judge by what she does 

 the year in which she is born, for the first 

 part of that season 's work is done by the 

 worker progeny of her predecessor. But in 

 the next year keep tally of every pound of 

 honey taken in the whole season, and if it 

 falls below the average you may count her 



a poor queen. 



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M. S. Phillipps writes: -'It seems that 

 those skyscraper hives would cause the bees 

 to waste a lot of valuable time going up 

 from the entrance to the top super of honey, 

 for, as all beemen know, the bees will stop 

 to finish all frames of honey by sealing over 

 with wax parts of combs that are unneces- 

 sary. I believe that better results can be 

 had by taking sealed brood from those ex- 

 tra-strong colonies and building up the 

 weaker ones; besides, it is possible to have 

 colonies that are too strong, the bees get- 

 ting in one another 's way by overcrowding. 

 It must take a loaded bee a long time to 

 travel thru a crowded hive up to the 4th, 

 5th, or 6th super. ' ' It certainly is good 

 policy, under right conditions, to draw brood 

 from strongest to build up weaker, but 

 when skyscraping begins it is supposed that 

 all are already brought up so that there are 



no weak to help. 

 Isn 't it a mis- 

 take to- think of 

 a field bee car- 

 rying its load to 

 the 5th or 6th 

 super? If it 

 carried honey 

 there, wouldn 't 

 it also carry pol- 

 len, and do you ever find pollen carried to a 

 5th super? If I am rightly informed, the 

 field bee dumps its load into cells in the 

 brood-chamber, and then the young bees 

 take the thin honey into their sacs and 

 evaporate it by thrusting it out with their 

 tongues, and while doing that they may just 

 as well be promenading up into the top 

 stories to deposit their loads there. I've 

 never seen any striking proof that a colony 

 was too strong. 



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I wonder if I couldn't do something to- 

 ward bringing agreement in that little dis- 

 agreement on page 729. Mrs. Demuth says 

 a day came in late fall when every bee ex- 

 cept the queen seemed to fly. Mr. Crane 

 says, ' ' I watched very closely last autumn, 

 but saw no day when it looked as tho half 

 of the bees flew out; " and the editor says it 

 would depend on the lateness of brood-rear- 

 ing. It might be this way: It so happened 

 that in Mr. Crane 's region there were a 

 number of flight-days at frequent intervals, 

 so that at no time did all the bees feel the 

 need of a flight: in Mrs. Demuth 's region 

 it happened that for two or three weeks 

 there was no flight-day, and when a warm 

 day came all wanted to take advantage of 

 it. That is, the longer the confinement the 

 more bees to fly. Another year conditions 

 might be reversed. 



"Can Bees Hear? Who Knows?" heads 

 an item by A. I. Eoot, page 739. One day, 

 years ago, a swarm was beginning to enter a 

 hive, if I am not mistaken returning to its 

 own hive, but I wanted it to enter another 

 hive I had placed for it. I moved the old 

 hive to a new place, sonie of the bees of the 

 swarm still calling loudly at the entrance, 

 but in a little while the swarm found it, 

 and began to enter. Quickly I set the hive 

 on a wheelbarrow and started it to traveling 

 about. So soon as it was on the move the 

 swarm left it, but if I stopped it was not 

 long till the swarm found it. I don 't re- 

 member the outcome, but I know that the 

 swarm found the hive every time I stopped. 

 It could hardly be that the bees found the 

 hive by sight, for we know their hive is lost 

 to them if at any time moved a very few 

 feet; and if they didn't hear the continuous 

 call at the entrance how did they find the 



hive? ■ 



» * * 



lona Fowls does not agree with me that 

 there is less danger of bees starving in win- 

 ter in large hives than in small ones, page 



