43d YEAR. 



CHICAGO, ILL, JULY 23, 1903. 



No. 30, 





Editorial Comments 





Do Things on Time. — Promptness in doing everything at the 

 right time is important in any calling; perhaps in none more so than 

 in bee-keeping. The delay ol a day in giving a super to a crowded 

 colony may be the straw that decides the colony to swarm, materially 

 interfering with the harvest. 



A nucleus has its hive partly tilled with frames. You fail to note 

 its increasing strength till one day upon opening it you find a lot of 

 crooked work. Comb has been built to the side of the frame and on 

 the cover, and it takes you ten times as long to straighten it up as it 

 would in the first place to have filled the hive with frames, to say 

 nothing of the loss. 



Tou are running short of sections in the harvest time. You 

 thought you possibly had enough, and so kept postponing the matter 

 of ordering till the last section was on the hive. Others have been 

 like you, there has been a rush on the factory, so that it is behind 

 orders, and the dealer can not possibl}- send you the sections without 

 delay, and as a result you lose a part of your crop. The loss and the 

 vexation might just as well have been avoided if you had sent your 

 order early. 



It is not necessary to cite further instances. Be on time, or ahead 

 of time, and you will make more money, live longer, and be happier 

 while you do live. If you're so built that you must be behind all the 

 time, give up bee-keeping and go to shoving a wheelbarrow — you can 

 shove better by being behind. 



Getting Bees Out of Sections is a very simple thing with 

 the white-clover flow that is now on in some places (July 4). All that 

 is necessary is to takeoff the super — no need to drive out a single bee — 

 after putting on the cover set the super on end on top, and leave it 

 there till later in the day, when it will be found empty of bees. The 

 bees will form a line of march down the side or front of the hive to 

 the entrance, and after a little all will have joined the procession. If 

 the sections be left thus exposed all day long, not a robber will touch 

 them. 



But wo betide you, oh inexperienced beginner ! if you get it into 

 your head that this is to be the unvarying program each year. Next 

 year the flow may not be so good, and a very little exposure may start 

 such a bad case of robbing that you will wish you had never seen a 

 bee. Even in the best of years there will come a time when there will 

 be a let-up in the flow, and then the least exposure must be avoided. 

 80 keep a sharp eye on your sections, and if at any time you see a 

 bee flying with its head toward the sections, get them under protec- 

 tion immediately. 



Feeding and Caressing of Queens. — In an article in the 

 Bee-Keepers' Review, in which he pleads for fresh investigations on 

 different points, Arthur C. Miller says: 



But what can you expect of others when you write of "bees 

 caressing the queen and offering her food when she pokes her tongue 

 from the partly opened cell." That surely is a relic of the dark ages. 

 The tongue is probably put out as a " feeler," for ills often used thus. 

 Bees never offer food to the queen, or to each other, it always has to 



be asked for, and, sometimes, almost taken by force. From long 

 observation I am satisfied that it is never given on or by the tongue of 

 the "giver," but is taken from the mouth of the "giver "by the 

 tongue of the taker. 



Mr. Miller has given evidence that his observations are entitled to 

 consideration, but in the present case it need not be wondered at that 

 some hestitation will be shown as to believing that bees never caress 

 nor offer food to a queen. When bees are seen stroking and appar- 

 ently dressing a queen, it is hard to believe that it is not meant some- 

 what in the nature of a caress. The tongue may be put out, as he 

 says, as a feeler, but a feeler after what? Why not a feeler after food? 

 If bees never offer food to a queen, and, as he says, it has always to be 

 asked for, does not the queen ask for it by thrusting out the tongue? 

 and if so when out of the cell, why not when in the cell? 



Brood for a Nucleus With a Virgin Queen. — The prac- 

 tice of many is to give a frame witli eggs and young brood to a 

 nucleus having a virgin queen. This for more than one reason. If 

 the young queen is lost, the bees will show the loss by starting a num- 

 ber of queen-cells. If no queen-cells are started it is safe to say a 

 young queen is present, no matter if the most careful search fails to 

 discover her. It is possible, however, that one or a few cells may be 

 started even when a young queen is present, the cells not being de- 

 stroyed till near maturity. 



Behavior of Queens at Different Ages. — When a young 

 queen has just emerged from the cell she is easily found, making no 

 attempt to get out of the way. When a little older, a virgin queen is 

 shy, scurrying with great rapidity from one part of the hive or comb 

 to another, and makes such a success of hiding that the novice may be 

 persuaded there is no queen in the hive. When about to assume the 

 duties of egg-laying, she again becomes moderate in her movements, 

 continuing thus through life, and in many cases continues depositing 

 eggs in the cells when the comb is taken from the hive. 



The Scarcity of Bas.svvood is constantly becoming more 

 pronounced. Lately in a private conversation a well-informed supply 

 manufacturer said that the increasing diJIiculty of securing basswood 

 lumber, and the constant advance in the price of the same was becom- 

 ing a very serious matter. The amount used for sections is compara- 

 tively small, and if not a section were made, the great quantity used 

 lor so many other purposes would in not a great while use up the sup- 

 ply. He suggested the possibility that in the not very distant future 

 it might become necessary to abandon the production of section 

 honey, allowing extracted honey to take its place. 



Such a result is not likely to occur. There is a demand for sec- 

 tion honey that is separate from the demand for extracted honey, and 

 consumers who prefer section honey are willing to pay several cents 

 a pound more for the appearance, or whatever you may be pleased to 

 call it. If basswood lumber should cost five times as much as it does 

 now. it would not increase the cost of a section more than a cent, and 

 the advance of a cent in the price of section honey would by no means 

 kill the demand. 



But even it basswood should entirely disappear, there would still 

 be left the possibility of four-piece sections from any one of severaj 

 different woods, some of them better in appearance than basswood. 

 And it is just within the range of possibilities that the time may come 

 when some will choose four-piece sections rather than to pay the in- 

 creased price of one-piece sections made from basswood. 



