350 



THE BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW- 



H. C. Osborne in the American Bee 

 Keeper, page 289, warns against making the 

 entrance too small when a colony is strug- 

 gling against an attack by robbers. Practi- 

 cally the same thing as shutting the hive up 

 tight, and speedily reduces the defenders to 

 such a state of panic that there is no more 

 fight in them Guess he is right. I have 

 found a big apiary-sheet thrown over the 

 hive, and quickly turned the other side up 

 every few minutes, the best first move in a 

 bad case. If this is done skillfully very few 

 robbers succeed in getting in, and all that 

 will come out are soon outside. Then you 

 are ready to adopt what further means you 

 deem best. Practically most robbing afifairs 

 result from opening hives ; and the apiarist, 

 if he knows his biz, will usually see what is 

 going on soon enough to stop it by the con- 

 venient piling up of wet grass or hay. 



Here is a strong sentence from J. E. Pond, 

 found on page 209 of the American Bee- 

 Keeper ; 



" Any preparation in the fall that will allow a 

 colony to hold its cluster, and still be able to 

 reach its stores will enable.it to live through 

 any degree of cold that I liave ever known in my 

 locality ; and 20 degrees below zero F. is not un- 

 common. ■' 



Doolittle's method of filling combs for 

 feeding bees, given in the American Bee- 

 Keeper 2^\r>, is especially worthy of atten- 

 tion — all the more so as that style of feed- 

 ing is quite off the ordinary track. I feel 

 quite impressed with the idea that the gen- 

 eral adoption of comb feeding, and a rele- 

 gation of the feeders to the rubbish heap 

 would be a decided gain to the fraternity. 

 And I would by no means except the case 

 where a lot of colonies have to be fed for 

 winter. I rarely feed at all ; but when I do 

 this has long been my way of doing it. An- 

 other method of filling has been published 

 which friend Doolittle does not allude to 

 ( and which I have never tried ) which strikes 

 me as likely to prove one of the best. Sub- 

 merge the empty combs in warm honey ;and 

 rub the honey in ( or rather rub the air out ) 

 with the hand. Whether the comb should 

 be horizontal with the honey an inch or so 

 deep over it while the air is rubbed away, 

 or whether a deep utensil like a wash boiler 

 should be used, in which the comb could 

 stand vertically during the process, I am 

 not able to tell. Possibly a little implement 

 like a tiny hoe would carry off the bubbles 

 of air better than the hand. Little streams 

 falling a foot or so formed the basis of the 

 Doolittle methods. 



Nature inclines to render abortive organs 

 that are not used ; and this is a standard 

 argument against clipping. Dr. Miller 

 makes an unusual and forcible rejoinder on 

 page .599 of the American Bee Journal. He 

 asks how about the case where a queen lives 

 three years without once using her wings, 

 would cutting the wings away render the 

 disuse any more complete? Although I am 

 a fanatical anti-clipper I don't think the 

 danger in this direction is very great. I 

 understand that in many species of ants and 

 termites the workers themselves remove the 

 queens' wings as soon as they become fertile 

 — and you know Dr. Franklin gave up his 

 six-weeks-old doctrine that it was wicked to 

 eat fish when he observed that fishes ate 

 each other — and he smelled the tempting 

 odor of fishes browning in the spider. 



I failed to notice friend York's disclaimer 

 of the A. B. J. losing any part of its inde- 

 pendence, else most likely I should not have 

 written the inquisitive part of last View. 

 See A. B. J. page G20. 



Auent the controversy of large brood 

 chamber versus small ditto, Langstroth, in 

 one of the last articles of his life, puts him- 

 selfs pretty decidedly on the side of large 

 hives for extracting — not merely ten frame 

 hives but thirteen frames. A. B. J. fiSl. 



In Query 990 of the A. B. J., page 643, the 

 questioner wants to know about the safety 

 of letting the queens fight it out when col- 

 onies are united. It of course occurs to an 

 intelligent beginner that both might be kill- 

 ed, or the survivor seriously injured. About 

 1.') out of 2() give answers that show that they 

 think the danger either slight or non-exis- 

 tent. None give evidence of any serious 

 percentage of colonies so united turning up 

 queenless. Several speak of the danger 

 that both queens might be balled aud killed, 

 or one killed and the other injured. Quite 

 likely that danger should be kept in mind in 

 spring and summer : but in the fall, with 

 the uniting properly done, it ought not to 

 occur. It has long been a " notion " in my 

 mind that fall unitirg furnishes about the 

 only way we have to discover which of 

 several queens is really the best— best queen 

 sure to be the first one to get infuriated ;and 

 her antagonists are stung and dead before 

 they get their fighting trousers on. I like 

 to unite a half dozen or more colonies into 

 one great one with just this object in view, 

 to discover an extra nice queen. 

 Richards, Ohio. Dec. 4th 189.5, 



