788 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



Dec. 10, 1903. 



out those first inserted and substituting a new batch. " Oh, that's 

 nothing new," you say. Now hold your tongue and wait until I am 

 through. 



My cell-building colonies are broodless — composed of bees not one 

 of which is under ten days old. You say, " Why go contrary to all 

 orthodox rules?" Because young bees like " pap " better than old 

 ones. To satisfy yourself upon this point, just give a frame of eggs 

 to a colony with no bees under ten days old, and another to a colony 

 which has just been deprived of all brood and eggs. You will find 

 that the former are much better fed than the latter. 



Now, for my plan of selecting queen mothers: I select a queen 

 that has just begun laying, regardless of what she may prove after- 

 wards, a.s to color, etc. I closely follow up this method from genera- 

 tion to generation, from April to October. Thus, it will be seen, it 

 is possible to get ten generations in one year — 40 generations in four 

 years — which Is about the extreme limit of a queen's life, which is used 

 as a drone-mother. Now, observe that it is thus possible for a queen 

 to be a half-sister to her fortieth grandmother. You inquire, " Well, 

 what do you gain by all this?" Well, I gain along stride ahead of 

 Nature, and, I believe, a queen whose workers have few equals and no 

 superiors. 



This is interesting, if for nothing else, for its audacity in going 

 square against all established precedent. Bees under ten days old are 

 cho.sen to rear queen-cells because " young bees like ' pap ' better than 

 old ones." Are we to understand that " pap " is prepared by the older 

 bees and fed to those under ten days old? Is there any proof for this 

 new doctrine? Mr. Crum says that by taking queen-mothers at ran- 

 dom, only so they are young, he gains a long stride ahead of Nature. 

 One would be better satisfied to have something beyond the mere 

 assertion that there is great gain. Is there any gain beyond that of 

 rearing from young queens? and is that a gain at all? 



Taking the Candying Notion Out of Honey. 



H. G. Quirin gives, in Gleanings in Bee-Culture, an account of 

 some experience in the matter a dozen of years ago. He says : 



" In June, or when the first white-clover honey came in, we ex- 

 tracted a gallon, which we wished to use for making queen-candy. As 

 the honey was rather thin, we placed the jar on the reservoir of the 

 kitchen stove, with the injunction that it was to stay there till we re- 

 moved it. Well, it stayed there for perhaps two months, the tempera- 

 ture varying all the way from 7.5 to 150 degrees, or perhaps a little 

 higher at times. This honey was kept for two years, and part of the 

 time in winter, when it went as low as zero, but it never candied. At 

 present we keep our honey in five or six 60-pound cans blocked up 

 back of the kitchen stove for several weeks before bottling. We be- 

 lieve this will keep it from going to candy until the grocer sells it. We 

 find alfalfa honey quite stubborn. You can melt this honey in the 

 oven, and it's ready to sugar the next day or two." 



This is interesting, not because new, but because it corroborates 

 the view that honey kept for a sufficient length of time at a high tem- 

 perature, whether it be comb or extracted, will remain free from gran- 

 ulating. Not only that, but comb honey thus treated will stand zero 

 freezing without cracking across the face of the comb, as honey gen- 

 erally does. 



If you have a garret up against the roof, where the heat is suffo- 

 cating on warm days in summer, try putting some honey there, leav- 

 ing it throughout the summer, and then see how much better it will 

 stand the cold of the following winter. 



A Peculiarity of Eucalyptus Trees. 



At least of some of the characteristics of eucalyptus trees can not 

 fail to impress those who see them for the first time. The leaves of 

 the lower part of the tree differ in size and color from those on the 

 rest of the tree. There is not merely a little diflerence, but the differ- 

 CBce is striking. Neither is there a gradual shading from one kind 

 to the other, but an abrupt change, so that one seeing a tree of the 

 kind for the first time is likely to think some small bush with larger 

 leaves is growing at the foot of the large tree. 



Cold Water Introduction of Queens. 



The Australian Bee-Bulletin says- "A Frenchman, in introduc- 

 ing queens, puts the caged queen in the mve. Next day he takes 

 the cage (queen included), puts it in a cup of cold water, and then 

 turns the wet queen loose, lie says he never lost a queen in this way." 

 However French may be the man who introduced that custom, he is 

 none other than our own Adrian Getaz, down in Tennessee. 



The Premiums we offer are all weH worth working for. 

 Look at them. 



( 



Miscellaneous Items 





Clipping Queens has become quite the fashion in this coun- 

 try, but the British Bee Journal says it has never found favor in 

 England. 



Math. AV. Krudwig, an Iowa bee-keeper, while working 

 around his bees the past season, was slung on the tongue by a bee. 

 His tongue swelled up terribly, and was unable to talk for several 

 hours. He was obliged to seek medical aid to relieve the pain and 

 swelling. 



Mr. Will. Hoss, of Ventura Co., Calif., passed through Chi- 

 cago recently on his way home, after spending a week or two in Can- 

 ada, where he used to live before going to a sunnier clime. Mr. Ross 

 is the bee-keeper who had a summer tent-cottage on Catalina Island. 

 He helped make our short stay there pleasanter. 



The Chicago-Northwestern Convention was held last 

 Wednesday and Thursday as announced. It was a " great meeting " — 

 so " they say." About 100 bee-keepers were in attendance, and from 

 beginning to end it was one continuous stream of good bee-talk. We 

 believe it will make one of the very best reports that was ever pub- 

 lished. It was all taken in shorthand by and for the American Bee 

 Journal. So look out for the report in these columns later on. 



Secretary H. C. Morehouse, of the Colorado Bee-Keepers' 



Association, writing us Nov. 38, said this concerning their annual 

 meeting held in Denver last month : 



" The meeting was the best one ever held in the name of the 

 Colorado Association, and the subjects presented were of great in- 

 terest to bee-keepers throughout the West. The spirit of absolute 

 harmony prevailed at all of the sessions." 



We expect to publish a report of the Colorado convention soon. 

 It is always one of the best of the whole year. Those Colorado bee- 

 keepers are great folks. 



Little Miss Hope H. Able, of Northampton Co., Pa., wrote 

 recently, and her letter appeared on page 746. Referring to it, she 

 writes again : 



My Dear Editor : — I was glad to see my letter in the American 

 Bee Journal, but very sorry to see that you had a mistake in it. You 

 said we increased from " to 8 colonies. It should have been from 7 to 

 18 colonies. 



1 am 9}4 years old. From your friend, 



Hope H. Abel. 



We are glad to make the correction, for increasing from 7 colonies 

 to 8 is quite different from 7 to IS. 



Mr. Gus Dittiuer, who is a Wisconsin bee-supply dealer and 

 comb foundation maker, thinks that in referring to the Weed process 

 of sheeting wax, as we did on page 739, we may possibly have done 

 him an injustice. We simply said that " the bulk of the comb foun- 

 dation sold to-day is made by the Weed process," which " will not 

 work adulterated wax.'' We understand that while Mr. Dittmer's 

 process may be different, nothing but pure wax goes through his 

 sheeting machines also. 



Mr. Dittmer is an honorable manufacturer and dealer, as his in- 

 creasing trade easily testifies. 



Mr. H. H. Chase, a bee-keeper of Manistee Co., Mich., sent us 

 the following clipping from a local newspaper, dated Nov. 23, which 

 is interesting even if not " all about bees:" 



" H. H. Chase has recently found two mounds on the north side 

 of Bear Lake from which he obtained two skeletons, a beveled stone 

 instrument, two pieces of ancient pottery, about 30 bone beads, and a 

 few clippings of black flint. One bone of the arm had evidently been 

 broken and healed. The shape and size of the skulls varied, one 

 having double teeth all around. 



" These specimens are unmistakably of a prehistoric race, as the 

 manner of burial indicates, by an upright kneeling position facing the 

 water and the west, and they have, in all probability, been buried 

 from 500 to 1000 years. These findings, added to other tools, axes, 

 arrowheads, etc., make a choice collection, which will doubtless find 

 its way to a museum later." 



