Feb. 12, 1903. 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



105 



never found anything about a queen starting to lay at this 

 time of the year. 



I commenced with 2 colonies, then I found one of thetn 

 was queenless, so I united them, and increased to 7 colonies 

 during the summer, and they are in pretty good shape. 



I am a little girl, 8 years old, and I enjoy reading Yon 

 Yonson's letters in the Bee Journal. What has become of 

 him ? Was Dr. Miller after him with a sharp stick, or 

 what is the reason he has no more letters in the Bee Jour- 

 nal ? E. W. Abel. 



Northampton Co., Pa., Jan. IS. 



You don't say whether your bees are outdoors or in the 

 cellar. I judge from what you say that they are out-of- 

 doors. 



In cold weather we keep up the heat of our houses by 

 burning fuel, coal, wood, etc. The bees do the same, only 

 honej' is their fuel, and it is burned inside their little bodies. 

 Th€ colder the weather the more fuel is needed. 



The heat of the cluster must be kept at about 50 de- 

 grees. In very cold weather to keep the outside of the 

 cluster at 50 degrees, the inside of the cluster must be very 

 much warmer, and contradictory as it may seem, the colder 

 the weather the warmer it will be in the center of the clus- 

 ter. After all, that isn't any different from what it is in 

 our homes, for the colder the weather the hotter must our 

 fires be to keep up the proper temperature. So the heat 

 being so great in the center of the cluster it is no uncom- 

 mon thing for the queens to begin to lay in February, or 

 even in January, when wintered out-of-doors. 



They will not begin to lay so early when wintered in 

 the cellar, because there is not so much heat in the center 

 of the cluster. 



I didn't know what had become of Yon Yonson, but 

 hoped he was not sick. Many of us, with you, missed his 

 quaint sayings ; but he is with us again, I see. 



"The Sisters " will be glad to make the acquaintance 

 of a bright little up-to-date bee-keeper only 8 years old, who 

 enjoys reading the Bee Journal. I hope this is not the last 

 time we are to hear from you. I, for one, will be anxious 

 to know how you succeed. 



i ^ The Afterthought. ^ 





'Old Reliable" jeen through New and Unreliable Qla^ses. 

 By E. E. HASTY. Sta. B Rural, Toledo, O. 



A NEW HUMORIST. 



Our new humorist who has three-year-old workers and 

 ten-year-old queens, look out he doesn't get your scalp 

 hanging at his belt. Page 829. 



RELIQUEFVING HONEY IN GLASS JARS. 



How to reliquefy honey in little glass bottles without 

 spoiling the labels is quite a problem. Can be done in the 

 kitchen oven. Don't 1 First you know you'll forget and 

 explode a lot of them— and there are too many divorces now. 

 Solar extractor no doubt splendid; but that is just the time 

 of year when few want to reliquefy. Where there is much 

 such work to be done no doubt a huge heating-box, with 

 thermometer inside, would be the thing. Heating arrange- 

 ments such as would not be liable to run very much too high 

 anyhow. Page 3. 



COMBINATIONS, COOPERATIONS, EXCHANGES, AND "SICH." 



I'm like a big dog chained under the hind axle of a big 

 wagon. (Perhaps a small dog would be a more suitable 

 figure. I 1 hang back awfully and persistently ; occasionally 

 I bark ; but the wagon goes right on, oft in the precise 

 direction I don't want it to go. What is said.on page*) 

 (19031, for the moment e'en y most made me slack my chain and 

 walk right up under the vehicle. Perhaps the orange and 

 lemon growers endured the business conditions of our fathers 

 as long as they ought to. Not sure it was their duty to 

 keep on sending oranges East and getting expense bills in- 

 stead of cash. Nice — to be able to double their acreage and 

 get satisfactory returns on SU, 000,000 worth of fruit. (Let's 

 see, sin has a reputation of looking nice, has it not ?) But 

 what shall we do with the claim that they 7vere sin- 

 ning, sinning against wife and babies, in the old competi- 

 tive way ?^Competition is sneaking and cruel; combina- 



tion is soulless and cruel — about the choice between a thief 

 and a robber — and often financially foolish to boot. Wick- 

 edness develops so that in time it blinds even a soulless cor- 

 poration's eyes so it cannot see its own interests. O that 

 impossibilities might melt into possibilities I O that some- 

 body might invent a corporation with a Christian soul in- 

 side of it ! We'd vote him up to be the brother of the arch- 

 angel Michael. 



SMELTER-SMOKE CONSUMER ANH BEES. 



Looks like the Utah brethren are hugging a false hope, 

 if they hope anything in the line of smoke-consumers will 

 save their bees much. Smoke-consumers are to save fuel, 

 and to abate the nuisance of falling soot. I fear they do 

 not make the final products of combustion any more whole- 

 some— if indeed they do not make them worse. Chlorine 

 and arsenic still. Carbon becomes carbonic acid, no longer 

 dirty but much worse for animal life. Sulphur and phos- 

 phorus become sulphuric and phosphoric acids, more vio- 

 lently harmful than before, but liable to seize on moisture 

 near by and not go so far. If arrangements are made to 

 toss the vapors in a heated condition high into the air, that 

 may help some. Page 5. 



SUGAR PER CAPITA. 



If our people eat sugar 68 pounds per capita per year, 

 then (considering the number of babies and extreme poor) a 

 good many individuals must eat twice the ration, or 136 

 pounds. How many ounces would that be per day ? About 

 six. I'm aware that I eat even more than that, but it's al- 

 most hard to believe it of the other folks. Page 13. 



OPEN-AIR COLONY. 



An open-air colony of bees in Central Michigan is quite 

 an interesting freak. Of course they couldn't go through 

 the winter alive there. Possible to take the rail into the 

 cellar — but then there would be the difficulty of their lack of 

 honey. 1 wish very much we could have had that colony 

 carried over somehow, and set back there next spring. Even 

 a few boards laid on the fence till spring rains and winds 

 were over would not deprive them of their claim to be called 

 an open-air colony. Page 21. 



POOR MAN AND CAPITALIST — GREEDY MANAGER. 



Yes, Prof. Cook, we are no less safe in the hands of the 

 humbler than in the grip of the capitalist — or no ? Solomon 

 takes the other side — holds that a poor man when he gets a 

 position to oppress a poor man is like a cloud-burst, that 

 sweeps everything away — has practically no mercy, where 

 the rich oppressor would have 56i;«f. (Prov. 28:3.) It's pos- 

 sible, yes probable, that the masses have risen quite a bit 

 since Solomon's time. But humble little bear, and big, 

 proud grizzly bear — some of us are like way-faring Johnny- 

 cake in the nursery tale. We look at both ruefully ; and we 

 won't climb up unto either of their soft, easy-bed tongues 

 until we are absolutely obliged to do it. 



And so the one-of-a-thousand manager wants a thous- 

 and-to-one salary. Strange. Not in the business for his 

 health, I fear. With both the name and the game of being 

 a greedy grabber for other folks, it's asking too much to ex- 

 pect him to be modest in grabbing for himself. Page 22. 



\ Questions and Answers. \ 



COWDUCTED BY 



DR. O. O. MIJ^I.Ett. Mareago, HI. 



(The Qnestions may be mailed to the Bee Journal office, or to Dr. Miller 



direct, when he will answer them here. Please do not ask the 



Doctor to send answers bv malL — Editor.1 



" Missing Link" in Queens— Iowa as a Honey-State, Etc. 



1. On page 56, and other pages in back numbers, Dr. 

 Gallup speaks of the " missing link " in queens. What do 

 you understand such missing link ? Is it a deficiency in the 

 female organs that make them non-prolific and short-lived ? 

 I have bought quite a number of queens in the last 5 years, 

 and fully - ; of them did not live over a year from the time 

 they were introduced, and none of them lived over 2 years: 

 while home-reared queens, reared by natural swarming or 



