THE BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW. 



2u3 



U Apiculteur veieTR to the operation of shak- 

 ing the whole colony in front of the hive, 

 then sprinkling bees and queens with flour. 

 Very likely the shaking without the flour 

 would do as well in the majority of cases. 



Editor von Ranschenfels manages his bees 

 without smoke, and has never had a smoker 

 in his possession. 



According to the observations of Schach- 

 inger, a Hungarian priest, when 20,000 bees 

 gather in one day 8.83 oz. of honey, 30,000 

 bees gather three times, 40,000 eight times, 

 and .">0,000 twelve times as much. The data 

 of these observations are not given. 



La Revue Internationale.— From Hain- 

 ant's Progies Apicole is taken the follow- 

 ing : To test wax for adulteration, heat to 

 boiling one gramme with ten grammes of 

 water and three grammes of carbonate of 

 soda ; let it cool, and if pure, the wax will 

 float and the water remain uncolored ; if 

 adulterated, an emulsion more or less liquid 

 is formed. Five per cent, adulteration can 

 be detected in this way. 



Two correspondents who tried the formic 

 acid cure for foul brood last year have found 

 their bees healthy this spring. All but two 

 colonies of another are now healthy. With 

 another, who had three diseased colonies, 

 the treatment was an entire failure. Two 

 others applied the treatment without deci- 

 sive results as yet. 



BiENEN - Vateb. — Extracted honey was 

 quoted at ten to twelve cents a pound at Vi- 

 enna during the spring months. 



I. Anzboeck contributes the following 

 table : Weekly consumption of honey of a 

 colony from Dec. 30, 1894. to April 20, 1895, 

 with average temperatures at same time. 



Very little brood was reared before the 1st 

 of April. The bees had no flight from the 

 middle of November until the middle of 

 March. Hence this case would seem to show 

 that when not very cold, a rise in tempera- 



ture means a greater consumption of honey, 

 even when the bees do not fly, but that some 

 little time passes before that effect is pro- 

 duced. 



Leipzigeu Bienenzeituno. — From Le 

 Progre's Apicole is taken the item that most 

 stings may be prevented without smoke by 

 using a smoker containing a piece of a 

 sponge wet with an apifuge composed of 

 pulverized Spanish flies dissolved in carbol- 

 ic acid, of which a weak solution is made 

 with water. If there is a bare possibility 

 that some kind of vapor would prove as 

 practical as smoke, it might be well to ex- 

 periment in that line, for the sake of doing 

 away with some of the annoyances connect- 

 ed with the use of fire. 



In a French agricultural journal Carl 

 Krueger finds the statement that the bee is 

 the enemy of the insect which does much 

 damage by laying its eggs in the buds of 

 apple bloom. When the flower opens, the 

 bee is attracted by the nectar, so that the 

 flower is fertilized. As soon as fertilization 

 takes place, the secretion of nectar at once 

 ceases and the petals fall, on which the larviB 

 of the insect referred to depend for nourish- 

 ment and shelter. Hence their development 

 is impossible. 



According to the same journal, the head 

 gardner of the Botanical Gardens at Dijon 

 is authority for the statement that in one 

 parish thirty fruit trees had for twenty years 

 borne no fruit, in spite of every possible at- 

 tention by their owner. But when some col- 

 onies of bees were set near by, their barren- 

 ness disappeared as if by magic. 



Herr Baist gets his extracting combs 

 cleaned of thick honey by carrying a strong 

 colony, well able to defend itself against 

 robbers, some distance from the others to a 

 shady enclosed place where there are no 

 closed windows, such as an empty stable, 

 and setting the combs to be cleaned iu an 

 empty hive close by, which is closed all but 

 the entrance. The bees are shown the way 

 by feeding a little over night, and in the 

 morning setting the feeder with the bees on 

 it in the feed-hive ; or by presenting one of 

 the extracting cumbs to the flight-hole, al- 

 lowing a few bees to crawl on it, then re- 

 placing. When one set is cleaned, they are 

 given another to work on. Empty combs or 

 frames of foundation are given the colony 

 to store the honey in, which is afterwards 

 distributed to weaker colonies which are 

 short of stores. 



