86 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



Feb. 5, 1903. 



the week, would hardly work up here. The fishing on Yel- 

 low river is good, but the mosquitor,s here in the woods are 

 No. 12 size, and the way they attack a man, piercing right 

 through a thick coat and gloves, makes it impossible to fish ; 

 to me every bite is worse than a bee-sting. 



Four hundred pounds surplus per colony, at IS cents — 

 6000 pounds $900, a la Dr. Gandy. Investigation proved 

 only a small garden patch of catnip was growing in his 

 vicinity, and no honey in sight. I think catnip and sweet 

 clover good honey-plants, and the planting should be en- 

 couraged, but none of us expects to get 400 pounds surplus 

 percolonj', with $60 worth of seed sown, and few will make 

 a living at bee-keeping and go a-fishing 5 days in the week. 



PROLIFICNESS OF QUEENS. 



Mr. W. J. Stahmann, page 776, speaking of prolificness 

 of queens says we cannot have prolific queens without a 

 large hive, and in his experience a queen reared and allowed 

 to lay eggs for a space of a week or more in a small hive, 

 or having a small amount of bees, will seldom make a pro- 

 lific queen, regardless of the stock she comes from. I have 

 been a queen-breeder quite extensively for 20 years, and 

 have all my queens mated in 2-frame nuclei, keeping them 

 there until I have orders for them or want to use them 

 myself, and I often keep them one or two months in such 

 nuclei with a small force of bees, without in any way affect- 

 ing their prolificness. When introduced to a mammoth 

 colony they are just as prolific and long-lived as though 

 mated in a big hive. In fact, I think all queen-breeders 

 confine young queens to small quarters for a longer period 

 than one week, without injuring them. 



TROUBLE IN INTRODUCING A ODEEN. 



On page 779 (1902) if Washington had placed his queen 

 in a Miller cage at once instead of waiting 48 hours, then 

 in 48 hours removed the plug, filling the entrance with a lit- 

 tle comb and honey, then close the hive, in two days she 

 would have been laying. Waiting 48 hours after removing 

 the old queen gives the bees time to start queen-cells, then 

 they will continue to rear them and become hostile to a new 

 queen. My plan is to run their own queen into the intro- 

 ducing cage, let her run around a few minutes, then de- 

 stroy her and run the new queen in the same cage, thereby 

 getting the scent of their own queen, then no trouble will 

 occur. 



The question was once asked Josh Billings which was 

 best, a large or a small hive, and arguments of advocates 

 of each presented. He said both were right. The man 

 with a small hive was right, for he never had bees and 

 honey enough to fill his hive ; and the one with a large hive 

 was also right, for he couldn't get a hive large enough to 

 hold his bees and honey. Hence it is a matter of location. 

 This is the reason we all differ. Disposition of bees are 

 changed by location. Chippewa Co., Wis. 



Chunk Honey— Various Apiarian Kinks. 



BY J. M. YOUNG. 



EVERY fall, after all the supers are taken from, the hives, 

 I overhaul all the unfinished sections, cut out what 

 honey there is in them, trim the unfilled cells all off, 

 and sell this as chunk honey. By putting it in a vessel of 

 some kind, it can be sold to the grocers very readily, and 

 can be put in common wooden dishes the same as butter is 

 sold to customers. IJy this means the bee-keeper can get 

 rid of everything in the comb-honey line that will not do to 

 sell otherwise. 



PAINTING HIVES AND SUPERS. 



I don't see how an up-to-date bee-keeper can get along 

 without having his hives painted. It certainly pays. The 

 advantage of having them look clean and nice is one big 

 item. I would paint the supers one color, and the hives an- 

 other ; the edge of the queen-excluders would be of a differ- 

 ent shade, as well as the edges of the honey-boards. I now 

 have hives in my apiary that have been painted 20 years 

 that look very well yet, although they have been painted a 

 time or two within this time. The advantages of having 

 them painted are many, and a hive should not be set out 

 even one season without being painted. 



BXTR ACTING-COMBS PREFERRED TO SUPERS. 



In the early part of the season I select all such colonies 

 as seem a little weak, or that are not likely to work in the 

 supers, and fit them up with extracting-combs for extract- 



ing purposes ; by this means every colony in the yard can 

 be made to bring the bee-keeper in some revenue, that 

 otherwise would lie around idle. Of course, plenty of combs 

 should be given these weak colonies, and they should have 

 good queens to start with. Colonies that won't work in the 

 supers will store honey in the combs if given them. It will 

 be a surprise to see the amount these weak colonies will 

 store. 



ROTTEN WOOD FOR SMOKER-FUEL. 



I notice that some of the bee-keepers are talking up 

 smoker material. I have always used rotten wood for 

 smoke, and it is best and cheapest. Every spring I take 

 the team and go to the woods and select old rotten logs — 

 basswood if I can get it, and I usually do — and haul home 

 a wagon-bos of it, put it some place where it will dry 

 quickly, and when dry it will light instantly with a match 

 after being put in the smoker. It makes a good smoke, and 

 is cheap, and it can be obtained wherever there is timber. 

 I sometimes put it up in barrels, and put it away in some 

 out-building. 



BEES UNDER SNOW. 



Whenever the snow begins to melt then it is time to 

 shovel it away from the entrance or the front part of the 

 hives, but not until it does begin to melt. Disturb the bees 

 as little as possible, unless they begin to fly. The more 

 bees are disturbed when it is cold, the worse it is for them. 

 If there is snow on the hives, or in the corners, I would get 

 it away from them, for when it begins to melt it will run 

 into the hives more or less and wet the bees over the pack- 

 ing. Bees in the winter season must be kept dry if they 

 are wintered successfully. It will not hurt them to be in a 

 snow-drift — I don't advise their being covered clean up, but 

 it will not hurt them for a short time. Since we have been 

 in business my bees have been covered up several times by 

 snow-drifts, so that if I didn't know where they were I could 

 not find them. My experience has been that they won't 

 smother if they are covered clear up with snow, if the hive 

 is kept so that it will not leak. Cass Co., Nebr. 



Convention Proceedings. 



Report of the Ontario Bee-Keepers' Convention, 



Held at Barre, Ont., Canada, Dec. 16, 17 



and 18, 1902. 



REPORTED BY MORLEY PETTIT. 



ICootiatted from page 70.) 

 PERCENTAQE OF WATER IN HONEY. 



Frank T. Shutt, M. G. F. I. C. Chemist, Dominion Ex- 

 perimental Farm at Ottawa, outlined some important 

 experiments which he has been conducting relative to the 

 percentage of water in honey under various conditions. His 

 first work was to lay the foundation for his experiments by 

 demonstrating that the method of determining the per- 

 centage of water in honey followed by other chemists who 

 have published reports, is unreliable, because to expose 

 honey for a length of time to a very high temperature 

 causes it to lose weight by decomposure of levulose, as well 

 as by evaporation. This he explained to the bee-keepers' 

 convention at Woodstock last year. 



The method which he adopted and found satisfactory is 

 to expose the honey on sand or pumice for a length of time 

 at a comparatively low temperature, ()0 degrees C, and in a 

 partial vacuum. He then experimented with honey from 

 uncapped, partly capped, and capped comb, kept in glass- 

 stoppered and cheese-cloth-covered bottles, in a dry and in 

 a moist atmosphere. The results show that while honey in 

 an ordinary atmosphere lost slightly, that preserved in a 

 saturated atmosphere gained considerably in weight, due to 

 absorption of moisture. Where honey was exposed to a 

 saturated atmosphere the normal percentage of moisture — 

 about 15 percent — increased in one case to 31 percent, and 

 in another instance where the honey was exposed in a flat 

 dish, to 48 percent. Throughout the experiments honey 

 was found to ha.ve a great affinity tor moisture. That from 

 partly capped combs contains less water than that from un- 



