Aug. 20, 1903. 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



537 



swarm of bees come to them, and would like to know what 

 to do with them. 



It is not an easy thing to prevent all swarming at best, 

 and this year it has been much more difficult than usual. It 

 is an exceeding difficult thing to prevent prime swarms, but 

 these after-swarms that are so annoying can be almost cer- 

 tainly prevented. The old queen comes off with the first 

 swarm, and she is not so llighty and hard to manage as a 

 virgin — not so likely to abscond. 



All after-swarms will have virgin queens. When your 

 first swarm issues hive it and set on the stand of the old 

 colony. Set the old colony close up to the swarm, letting 

 it stay there about seven days then remove it to a new 

 place. The flying force, when they go to the fields, instead 

 of returning to the hive from which they came, will go 

 back to the old place, and join the swarm, and the old col- 

 ony weakened by losing all its flying force, and having no 

 honey coming in, will conclude it doesn't want to swarm, 

 and. you will have no further trouble with it. 



Your plan of returning swarms was all right, but you 

 will have to keep on returning them until the last queen 

 emerges from the cell. You see, it is this way : 



When an after-swarm issues, one or more queens that 

 have been kept in the cells are allowed to emerge, and when 

 the swarm is returned a battle royal takes place among the 

 free queens, only one surviving. If all have been allowed 

 to emerge from the cells, the one return of the swarm will 

 be the end of it ; but if any are left in the cells you have to 

 return the swarm again, perhaps the next day. So you will 

 have to keep on returning the swarm as often as it issues, 

 which may be only once, or it may be several times. 



You can prevent all increase by returning the first 

 swarm, and all succeeding swarms, but it may make a good 

 deal of work. 



A Beg'inning' Sister— Honey for Sting-s. 



I might say I am a beginner in the business. I started 

 last year with one colony, and July 20 our first swarm 

 issued, and as we had a clipped queen it was simply fun 

 handling them, but when our second swarm came it was not 

 so pleasant. We hived them, and after two days they left 

 the hive and never waited to cluster, but went up over the 

 tree-tops and out of sight, and we saw them no more. Our 

 third swarm went back to the parent colony, so we had but 

 two to winter, and they came out fairly well ; only our 

 clipped-queen colony is very weak, but it seems to be very 

 industrious at present. We have not examined them yet, 

 as the weather is too cool, and it might chill the brood, if 

 there should be any, but I fear she has been hurt in the 

 caging last summer, as the colony has simply dwindled 

 ever since. 



I am very fond of the bees, but I find they don't make 

 very good pets ; but I hope they will be more gentle this 

 summer. They seem so busy now they have not time to 

 sting. 



I think the Bee-Keeping Sisters department of the Bee 

 Journal the best corner in it, and that is the first I read 

 when I get the paper. I would like to see many more let- 

 ters every week. 



Do any of the sisters ever get stings ? If so, try honey 

 on them. That is my cure. Mrs. Peter Cameron. 



Polk Co., Minn. 



I Hasty's Afterthoughts ) 



The " Old Reliable " seen through New and Unreliable Glasses. 

 By E. E. Hasty, Sta. B Rural, Toledo, Ohio. 



THE DEBT OF AI,!. TO ALL. 



He'll never see a word of it, but others may who are in 

 danger of feeling like him a few years hence — that man 

 who stops his bee-paper because he doesn't get the wrappers 

 off it. I know right well the disagreeable feeling of having 

 baskets full of unopened papers around ; and so I am qualified 

 to scold him considerately. I scold. Is it right to take a 

 course which, if generally followed, would deprive us of 

 bee-papers? His duty to the American Bee Journal may 

 not forbid, but how about his duty to the rest of us ? I'm 



presuming that he's a good man all through, and wishing to 

 meet all his just obligations. It is not only the journal that 

 needs him ; ive need him. And we think that if he would 

 hold on a bit there would come sooner or later a revival of 

 interest (" Left thy first love "), and that that revival of in- 

 terest would do him good, both personally and financially. 

 Papers that I suspect of having something in on one of 

 those topics in which I am intensely interested — they get 

 their wrappers torn off "quick sticks." Probably so with 

 him. 



Somebody in the past has made apiculture into a voca- 

 tion this man and others could make money at ; and the 

 bee-paper has had a notable share in the work. Shall it be 

 killed off, therefore ? Somebody will make the apiculture 

 of the future different— better than it would be if left to 

 itself ; and the bee-paper will have a strong hand in that. 

 Give it, then, its very moderate measure of support. Page 

 403. 



IMPORTANCE OF VENTILATION. 



In case the reasoning of Arthur C. Miller proves to be 

 rock-ribbed all around, and the air of the hive needs to be 

 renewed 2,400 times for each I'z pounds of honey eaten, it 

 calls us (like the cardinals shut up at Rome) to a little per- 

 sonal interest in ventilation. Note how he tells us that 

 this is a complete change every 30 minutes. Well, air is a 

 nimble fluid, and will do a good deal of traveling in 30 

 minutes if we give it half a chance. But perhaps we must 

 give it that half chance a little better than we have been 

 doing in the past. One element of the situation most of us 

 do not have in mind is how much air in 30 minutes can be 

 made to go right through a board, a block of ice, a brick, a 

 stone, almost anything. I have seen statistics on this point 

 that were surprising. Wish I had them boiled down and in 

 my memory so I could give them. Page 408. 



AN ERROR THAT PRODUCED A HASTY LAUGH. 



A crooked mark prominently out of place on page 409 

 made me laugh. Eyes a little dim, I didn't notice the hyphen 

 which gives the whole thing away, and read — 

 " Does the Bee Work Herself ? " 

 — and this in the Sisters department, too. Hires an 

 ant, perchance, or induces an aunt. Looks so supremely 

 wretched over the task she is dawdling at that her "broth- 

 ers" do most of it eventually, just to relieve their minds. 

 Page 409. 



SEVERAL HUNDRED POUNDS OF HONEY. 



In my department, page 410, in place of "several 

 pounds of honey " read, several hundred pounds of honey. 

 Kind o' hope the readers actually got the meaning by cred- 

 iting me with an uncontemplated dry joke. 



PREVENTION OF DRONE-COMB BUILDING. 



Is it true that very deep entrances and much space be- 

 low the frames prevent the building of drone-comb ? Ac- 

 cording to the reasoning of R. J. Cory, page 413, it ought to 

 be. May be suspected that a rousing colony, filling all the 

 bottom and part of out-doors, will forget that the bottotn is 

 an exposed situation. But that would not usually be in a 

 newly-hived swarm, however ; and that's the case when we 

 are most often and most earnestly desirous of having all 

 worker-comb built. Need a collection of experiences on 

 this point, I think. As queenless bees always build drone- 

 comb it may be suspected that distance from the queen has 

 something to do with it even when there is one. 



FOUND IRON IN HONEY. 



And so the German savants have found iron to be a 

 constituent of honey. Some of us knew pretty well all 

 along that there were more things in honey than our pro- 

 fessors would tell us of. Same proportion of iron as in 

 good bread. Makes good blood and strong men. Page 414. 



BALLED QUEENS DIE FROM VARIOUS CAUSES. 



We at once suspect that the suffocation theory would 

 hardly suffice alone for the death of balled queens when we 

 think what a lot of drowning all bees will endure. Pretty 

 plainly she may starve if they keep at it long enough— and 

 don't get violent enough to kill her some other way— and 

 friendly bees don't feed her while hostile ones are mildly 

 hanging on to her. There seems to be all grades of violence, 

 from a mere gentle hug to the most spiteful, hissing, tearing 

 rage— not only killing the queen, but a great lot of the bees 

 also. Mental worry is an ample cause of death in so highly 

 organized a creature as a queen. In fact, I believe a worker 

 can be worried to death— or made to worry itself to death, 

 in about an hour. Angry bees sometimes eject poison, as 



