THE BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW. 



349 



Dr. Miller's way of wetting sections, given 

 in Progressive ;!02. is worth repetition lor 

 the rest of you. ( Doubtful if I get to try 

 it, its so wholesale and hit-or-miss. ) Just 

 take a box of r>00, tear off the two proper 

 sides of the crate, and mount it edgewise so 

 you can see under it. Now from a tea-kettle 

 partly full of boiling water pour a steady 

 stream the size of a goose (juill, and slowly 

 travel over the three rows of holes that ap- 

 pear on top of the stripped package. Time 

 your effort so iis to have quite a bit of the 

 water come through and out the bottom. 

 He says it's lovely. 



Mrs. Hallenbeck in Progressive, 200, gives 

 us a fact pertinent to the blood and origin 

 of the five banded bees. She had a queen- 

 less colony of them that raised a batch of 

 cells. Several of these were saved, and in 

 due time sent forth young queens. One of 

 these proved the blackest bee she ever look- 

 ed upon. 



About the danger of getting useless con- 

 sumers just as the main harvest is over there 

 is a liability to go too far, as S. E. Miller 

 points out in Progressive, 192. A bee too 

 young to go to the fields itself can take the 

 place of one that is just coming old enough ; 

 but without the young bee the older one 

 might have to keep on at in-door work. 

 Sound as a bell. 



Frank Benton of Washington D. C, in 

 his occasional publication "Bees, " ( repub- 

 lished Progressive 24(> ) writes quite entic- 

 ingly on a subject most of us have nearly 

 given up as hopeless, planting for honey. 

 He is into it on quite a large scale, furnish- 

 ing the ground, and using out-of-hours time 

 on it — doesn't ask Uncle Sam to pay for 

 this part of his service to apiculture. The 

 government employe who will do this de- 

 serves to turn up something. The especi- 

 ally hopeful part of his work is that given to 

 plants which furnish both forage for stock 

 and honey for the bee, such as sulla clover, 

 serradella clover, and some others. He got 

 buckwheat to fill when sown in June ; but 

 having few acres and many bees he has to 

 admit that not much buckwheat honey was 

 visible in the hives. 



I had written a great lot about E. T. Flan- 

 agan's attempt to feed back honey and so 

 stack money, and lo, Review arrives with 

 the whole thing copied and commented on. 



Doolittle in Gleanings «^r)() holds forth on 

 the same subject. His experiments were 



long ago, but he says more recent ones turn- 

 ed out nearly the same. While Flanagan 

 got more than half of his honey into the 

 desired shape Doolittle in getting Vl}4 

 pounds there, fed 42 pounds. At pulling 

 out foundation and storing honey in it the 

 result was still worse ; to get i:^ pounds of 

 the finished product 184 pounds had to be 

 fed. In this case there were 49,^2 pounds of 

 unfinished sections. The other 71,^2 pounds 

 were either stored elsewhere, or eaten, or 

 wasted, or due to the chemical loss incident 

 to rectifying. Who knows what does become 

 of all this honey? At building comb with- 

 out foundation fid storing honey in it noth- 

 ing was finished at all. Doolittle's climate 

 is cooler than Flanagan's, and his bees are 

 pretty deeply Italians, circumstances quite 

 sufficient to account for his worse results. 

 The following is my condensation of the 

 chapter on feeding back in Advanced Bee 

 Culture. 



1. Early — between basswood and fall flow. 



2. Simon pure blacks if you can get them. 

 ?>. First put the cases on other hives awhile : 



then carry them bees and all to the se- 

 lected colonies. 



4. Have not niore than five combs below — 

 and they not old black ones, else your 

 sections will show color. 



5. Use the new Heddon feeder. 



C. One quart of boiling water to ten 

 poinds of hin^y. 



7. The first feed must be given at dusk ; 

 but afterward this is not absolutely 

 necessary. 



8. Hard to make them finish capping. 

 Intermit and taper off the feeding ; or, 

 better yet, interpose a case with plenty 

 of empty comb between the cases and- 

 the feeder. 



9. After a while they will plaster wax 

 around unless allowed to build some 

 comb. 



10. Except to prevent wax daubing, and 

 to hasten capping, it never seems prof- 

 itable to have the comb built outright 

 when feeding back. 



11. At best this kind of product is a little 

 oflf flavor, and candies in the comb 

 worse than ordinary section honey. 



12. It may be called good ( backed by an 

 experience of 18,000 pounds ) if three 

 pounds extracted make two pounds of 

 comb ; but it has been done at the rate 

 of four pounds from five. 



