iHE BEE-KEEPERS' Eh, VIEW. 



297 



on storage (for those who do not ship their 



crop entire ) is to store partly in barrels 



and partly in t!0 pound cau^;, and to draw off 



into small pails and cans as occasion requi 



res. A. B. J. 582. 



Golden sentence from Dr. Miller. 



•'People are willing to pay more for comb 

 honey because it looks better ; but they also pay 

 more for comb honey because in general it is 

 better. " A. B. J. 583. 



And here's a sentence from Thomas Thur- 

 low, A. B. J. 407, that smashes up some win- 

 tery schemes, and will continue to do so. 



'' Bees will ( in this northern cljme ) go to the 

 top of the comb in winter, where it is warmest, 

 even if they have to go through capped honey to 

 get there." 



On page 408 the question whether bees 



ever work at strawberry bloom enough to 



amount to any thing is tackled in rational 



style — questions to large strawberry cultu- 



rists in Colorado, Connecticut, Utah, Illinois 



and Pennsylvania. All but the last give a 



very decided yes. The Connecticut man 



notes that they visit pistillate varieties, on 



which they must be seeking honey, as there 



is no pollen. Of course we all know that 



often in many localities bees do not notice 



strawberry bloom much — and by so much 



the more we should value this reverse side 



of the truth which is out of our reach. 



" Moths cannot live over winter in a honey 

 house where no fire is kept in this climate, and 

 the moths would have to be brought from the 

 outside." Dadant in A. B. J. 454, 



This came to me with great force. I have 

 a nice comb closet, with door of screen 

 wire— and lots of row and loss on account of 

 worms. Have I been making all this trouble 

 for myself by carrying in " seed " in the 

 spring? Looks that way. The present year 

 my combs all kept unharmed until I needed 

 them, and without being fumigated even 

 once. No seed to begin on. I often find 

 moths roosting outside the wires, evidently 

 anxious to get in; and a little carelessness 

 would do the business. 



Doolittle thinks that very heavy ill looking 

 comb ( surplus ) is usually caused byqueen- 

 lessness. 



•' In fact I am often made to understand when 

 a colony has lost its queen by the looks of the 

 comb which they are building in the sections. " 

 A. B. J. 469. 



Here's the way E. T. Abbot hits off human 

 nature in A. B .J. 478. 



" If I am to go [ after Apis Dorsata 1 and there 

 is enough in it, then of coursp, I want her very 

 badly. If the other fellow is to ^et the job, and 

 I am to have nothing to do with it, then I am 

 dead set against having anything to do with 

 Madam Dorsata at present." 



Those bee-killing paddles, to harvest your 

 reprobate bees that eternally follow on, can 

 be made in still another way, as friend C. 

 W. Stephens suggests in A. B. .1. 481. Just 

 shingles with the butts shaved down to 

 handles, and the tops perforated full of 

 narrow holes. He says the handles can be 

 studded with diamonds in case we want 

 things tony. 



The conductor of the Canadian depart- 

 ment sails into the habit of clipping queen's 

 wings on page 495. I'm quite willing to 

 "hold his bunnit " if he finds it at all warm 

 on his head. Says he regards a queen with 

 the same sort of enthusiasm that he regards 

 a beautiful woman, and could no more look 

 with pleasure on the former in a mutilated 

 condition than he could endure seeing the 

 latter trying to be graceful with an ampu- 

 tated arm. The argument about prospective 

 harm to the race of bees may not amount to 

 much perhaps; but my stumper is that the 

 disgusting practice makes more trouble 

 than it saves. 



G. W. Demaree ( page 503 ) finds it prac- 

 tical to spray wormy combs with gasoline. 

 It kills the worms and then evaporates leav- 

 ing no smell behind. I should fear that the 

 rascals' " works of darkness " would not all 

 be reached in the spraying. 



Basswood grows and yields surplus by the 

 ton clear down to latitude 30° in Texas; and 

 we are told to " don't know " how much 

 further. H. C. Loggins, A. B. J. 50G. 



'Pears like my name ought to be Joseph 

 — leastwise I feel strongly inclined to " teach 

 the senators wisdom." Query 989 in the 

 A. B. .1. Question Box is whether bees will 

 open a passage over the bottom bar after it 

 has been closed up once. Nearly all say no, 

 and only two frankly say that they will. 

 Now I have the impudence to " yawp " right 

 out that the crowd are clearly wrong, and 

 the lean minority right. Of course they 

 have all transferred comb from boxes to 

 frames, and have examined the frames after 

 the bees h^d fixed them up, and remember 

 that there was no gnawing at the bottom. 

 This perfectly sound fact — this little knowl- 

 edge which is a dangerous thing — has mis- 

 led them. They just didn't follow on to no- 

 tice that little by little, year after year, the 

 comb next the bottom bar grew lean and 

 disappeared. I plump'y don't believe that G 

 out of 26 can show any number of trans- 

 ferred or inverted combs that have been in 

 use seven years in the brood chamber only, 



