1908 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



203 



With small entrances we have had ideal 

 wintering in our bee-cellar; but' when, last 

 year, we gave a large amount of ventilating 

 space under the hives, something "happen- 

 ed." We are not positive, of course; but it 

 looks very much as if too much ventilation 

 for indoor- wintered bees was bad. It seems 

 reasonable that a colony of bees should have 

 a warm hive, even in the cellar. If a third 

 of the bottom is open to cellar air, then they 

 must consume too largely of their stores in 

 order to keep up animal heat. This results 

 in the clogging of the intestines, and then 

 dysentery. If there is a furnace in the cel- 

 lar this large amount of ventilation would 

 do no harm, because the atmosphere wou'd 

 be reasonably dry and fairly warm. 



HONEY AS AN ARTICLE OF FOOD AT OUR 

 LEADING HOTELS. 



The editor has been making numerous 

 trips in various directions over the State of 

 Ohio, and he has been gratified to see that 

 honey and maple syrup are now being placed 

 side by side as two standard delicacies and 

 desserts at our leading hotels. The day was 

 when honey was never mentioned; but since 

 the advent of national and State laws the in- 

 ferior and spurious sweets have been so thor- 

 oughly tabood that the leading hotels do not 

 care to recognize them. They take pride in 

 offering only the best in the line. 



We wish to offer a suggestion right here to 

 our readers; and that is, that they see to it 

 that the leading hotels in their vicinity are 

 supplied with a first-class article of honey. 

 Do not let them go to the local retailers and 

 get an inferior product. 



Traveling men are great advertising me- 

 diums. Supply them with good honey, and 

 the demand for the article will increase enor- 

 mously, as they will introduce it in their 

 homes and talk about it to their patrons. 



Our own local hotel-keeper of the Ameri- 

 can House finds an increasing demand for 

 honey on his table; but he stipulates that his 

 patrons shall have the very best that money 

 can buy. His customers come from all over 

 the United States; and when they arrive at 

 the town where there are so large invest- 

 ments in bees and bee culture, they natural- 

 ly expect to find the finest and best of honey, 

 and they are not disappointed. We are fur- 

 nishing to the hotel alfalfa because we have 

 not much else of late. These traveling men 

 are loud in their praises of this honey, even 

 inquiring where it can be obtained, in order 

 that they may keep it in their homes. 



THE WELLS SYSTEM. 



The present discussion regarding the pos- 

 sibility of retaining more than one queen in 

 a hive brings back memories of the time when 

 the pages of the British Bee Journal teemed 

 with references to the Wells hives, which 

 were (and are) worked with two queens. In 

 this hive the queens are separated by a wood- 

 en division-board having perforations \ inch 

 in diameter. This does not allow the bees 

 to pass, but allows the same odor to perme- 



ate the whole hive. In some cases the bees 

 were allowed to work together on the same 

 sections, the latter being placed above a 

 queen-excluding honey-board. The reason 

 why a wood division-board was used was to 

 allow the bees to form one cluster, one colo- 

 ny clinging to one side of the board, and the 

 other to the opposite side. The division- 

 board gets clogged with propolis, and it is 

 quite a job to clean it; but some hold there 

 is no need of cleaning it very often, as the 

 colonies retain the same odor in any case. 



In the years 1893, '94, '95, '96, the British 

 Bee Journal gave all due aid and encourage- 

 ment to the double-queen system; but we see 

 little about it now. 



Dzierzon was a strenuous advocate of more 

 than one colony in a hive, twin hives being 

 his favorites, and he also had four-colony 

 hives in his apiary. He did not advocate 

 these hives to be worked as single colonies, 

 but merely from the increased warmth and 

 comfort engendered by the bees being asso- 

 ciated together under one roof. 



Some experimenters with the Wells system 

 actually kept as many as four queens— two 

 above the zinc and two below — the two up- 

 per ones being young queens to take the 

 place of those below. 



In one instance, at least, a swarm issued 

 from a Wells hive which weighed 14 pounds. 

 It does not follow, because the Wells system 

 did not succeed in establishing itself, that 

 the underlying idea should be discarded. 

 The two-queen system requires rather skill- 

 ful management, and for that reason it ap- 

 peals more to the specialist than any one 

 else. w. K. M. 



"ARE bees reflex MACHINES?" 



Don't be scared at the title. It is not so 

 "reflex " or, rather, complex, as it may seem. 

 The title means, in other words. Are bees 

 purposive or reasoning machines, or do they 

 act automatically and unconsciously through 

 instinct? We may say that scientific men 

 are not agreed as to where instinct ends and 

 reason begins in animals. This whole ques- 

 tion is discussed in a masterly way; and so 

 far from being dry scientific reading it is in- 

 tensely interesting. 



It has been some time since we promised 

 to begin the publication of this valuable 

 work; but we have been delayed by one 

 thing and another until some of our readers 

 began to wonder whether we were going to 

 make our promise good. This, it will be 

 noted, we are doing in this issue on p. 223. 



Dr. von Buttel-Reepen (whose picture ap- 

 pears on p. 222), the author of the paper, is 

 not only a practical bee-keeper, but a man 

 of science. His deductions and conclusions, 

 therefore, on the natural history and hab- 

 its of the honey-bee will be read with 

 more than ordinary interest. He strikes on 

 a number of interesting problems, viewing 

 them not only from the standpoint of science 

 but from practical every-day work. He does 

 not claim to be infallible, for, in fact, he 

 leaves his readers to do some of their own 

 thinking, placing before them a collection 



