296 



THE BEE-KEEPERS li 



width 12 feet ; cost per running foot, $4.80. 

 or $:33(> for the building ; all work hired. If 

 you do all the work yourself, the cost would 

 be about ii^'JO.OO less. 



Bees locate themselves nicely by the colors, 

 very few bees going into the wrong hive or 

 different color. I happened to see some- 

 thing a few days ago that convinced me that 

 bees can tell colors. The north end of the 

 building has no bees in it, but there are 4G 

 in the south end. I noticed that they were 

 flying out and in the yellow color in the 

 north end, and thought it was rather funny ; 

 thought possibly a new swarm had gone In 

 there. In the south end there was one 

 colony that was flying strongly — young bees 

 out for exercise. They were from the first 

 hive in the yellow toward the north. The 

 bees were also returning, some of them, to 

 the flrst entrance toward the north in yellow 

 color in the north end. After the bees in 

 the south end had quieted down, there were 

 nobees goine out and in the other in the 

 north end. The entrances were 27 feet apart. 

 This is plain evidence to me that bees can 

 tell colors ; and, mind you, they entered the 

 entrance in the north end of the building, 

 and the same relative position of the yellow 

 color, and not any other. " 



A Condensed View of Current 



Bee Writings. 



E. E. HASTY. 



IT seems by friend Thompson's gather- 

 ings that an Italian brother ( if not 

 more of them ) has tried feeding up for 

 winter on watermelons. A plan which 

 seems eccentric at flrst sight may after all 

 be a sound and valuable one — and quite 

 possible this is a case of that sort. It is not 

 uncommon for a big pile of watermelons — 

 or a carload, — to fail of a market; and when 

 they can be had for about a cent each it is 

 submitted that it pays to feed them to bees. 

 Slice them up neatly at the rate of twenty or 

 more per day for a fair sized apiary. But 

 then I reflect that a cent will buy over three 

 ounces of sugar — and is there more than 

 three ounces of sugar in a watermelon? 

 The amount of sugar named I find to be 

 12 teaspoonfuls, each of which will sweeten 

 a glass of water to the drinkable point, and 

 the 12 glasses weigh 5 pounds. 'Spects the 

 red pulp of the average melon will not have 

 so much as "> pounds of juice; but it may be 

 quite a bit sweeter than I aoi figuring on. 

 Leastwise the northern half of our country 

 must go a little slow on melons till their 

 wintering record is assured. 



Perhaps the most valuable new thing in 

 the rec^int journals is friend .J. A.Golden's 



brine treatment of combs to make them 

 worm proof. ( American Bee Journal 582. ) 

 The brine is simply salt and water strong as 

 it can be made. One side of a comb being 

 filled full to begin with, he finds that the 

 brine can be jerked from one comb to 

 another, thus going over the combs quite 

 rapidly. Quite an invention. A frame with 

 no comb in it, and with screen wire tacked 

 on one side, is interposed between the two 

 combs when the jerking is done. After 

 thorough wetting with brine the combs are 

 hung up to dry. For two years not a worm 

 has touched the original 40 combs experi- 

 mented on. Of course the value of the 

 above depends on its being confirmed by 

 general use. The miller, like his good 

 namesake the Dr., may have said " I don't 

 know, " when Mrs, Miller asked if it would 

 do to lay in those salty combs; and she may 

 some time get new woman ideas and venture 

 to try it. 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL, 



This paper deserves a good word for the 

 way it has kept up its interest of late. Sev- 

 eral other papers have done fairly well; but 

 it rather seems to me that for the current 

 year this one deserves first prize. At pre- 

 sent it dissects somewhat as follows. 



First a department of contributed articles. 

 It is in this that its value and freshness spec- 

 ially appears at present. A review entitled 

 What Dr. Miller thinks is sandwiched in 

 regularly. Then there is the Southern De- 

 partment of Dr. Brown; and the Canadian . 

 department — of we know not whom; two ) 

 pages or so of Dr. Miller's answers to mis- 

 cellaneous questions, a department of ex- 

 tracts from other bee papers, which is also 

 Dr. Miller's; E. T. Abbott's department of 

 Notes and Comments; the page of editorial 

 notes; the general items and letters ( strung 

 out from page to page to please the adver- 

 tisers ) and last of all the Question Box. 

 The genial Dr. Peiro seems to have grown 

 small by degrees and beautifully less, even to 

 the vanishing point. So the A. B, J. runs to 

 departments, and Dr. Miller has three of 

 them. If asked whether he was editing the 

 Old Reliable, we can imagine him saying "I 

 don't know." And the " gentle, reader " 

 might go him one better by saying " I don't 

 know, and I don't care, so long as it is as 

 good as it is now." 



Charles Dadant has just closed his series 

 of articles on extracted honey. His finality 



