Gleanings In Bee Culture 



Published bv The A. I. Root Co., Medina, Ohio 



H. H. ROOT, Assistanl Editor 



A. I. ROOT, Editor Home Depariineiil 



E. R. ROOT, Editor 



A. L. BOYDEN, Advertising Manage 

 J. T. CALVERT, Business Manager 



VOL. XXXVI 



MAY 15, 1908 



NO. 7 



Stray Straws 



Dr. C. C. Miller 



"Eight queens in one box hive," page 562. 

 That's a stunner. How was it done.? Did the 

 eight winter together.? 



A. I. Root, p. 587, seems to be a little skep- 

 tical about the "good old times when we were 

 young." I arise to endorse him by saying that 

 never was there a year with more fun to the acre 

 since I began to have fun than this good year of 

 our Lord 1908. 



KouMis. One quart of new milk, one dessert- 

 spoonful of honey, one teaspoonful of yeast. 

 Make the milk just warm, add to it the yeast and 

 honey, pour into a large jug, and pass from one 

 jug to another for three or four times. Put each 

 pint of koumis into a quart bottle, cork tightly, 

 and keep in a warm room for 24 hours. — Chicago 

 Record-Herald. 



"Suggestions thankfully received" anent 

 those several thousand pounds of honey candied 

 in the combs, says New Mexico Chap, page 580. 

 All right, here you are. Spread the combs flat 

 on the ground where the sun won't melt them; 

 and as the bees lick them dry, sprinkle them with 

 water from a watering-can. But unless used for 

 brood-rearing I fear the honey would soon be 

 candied again. 



That United States analysis of honey, re- 

 viewed p. 549, surprised me in more than one 

 way. It shows, as mentioned, that what is gen- 

 erally supposed to be honey from one kind of 

 flower contains pollen of several kinds; also that 

 alfalfa pollen was found in white-clover honey 

 from States where alfalfa honey is supposed to be 

 unknown. I had supposed that inversion of nec- 

 tar took place only while in the honey-sac of the 

 bees, but learned from that bulletin that inver- 

 sion continues after the honey is sealed up in the 

 comb. 



B. D. Hall's plan of wintering two nuclei in 

 one hive with a thin bee-tight division-board, p. 

 582, works all right. I have wintered many nu- 

 clei in that way. Looking under I could always 

 see each nucleus clustered up against the division- 

 board, the two forming a single cluster. It is 

 well always to see that heavy frames of honey 

 are up against the division-board, otherwise there 

 is danger that the honey will be eaten away from 

 the center, and one or both of the nuclei will 

 have to move away from the center, losing the 

 advantage of mutual heat. 



My sympathy is with that New Mexico chap, 

 p. 580, in the matter of "taking oflt honey in the 

 afternoon so that the bees will not sting you'and 



the neighbors." In this locality the forenoon is 

 generally the better time to take off honey; but 

 when one makes a business of bee-keeping he 

 can't stop for any particular time of day, but 

 must work "from early morn till dewy eve," and 

 sometimes later. Often we have started to work 

 at 4 o'clock, A. M. , and once we finished the day's 

 work at an out-apiary by finding and clipping a 

 queen by moonlight. 



Ye editor says, page 486, " But what is to in- 

 terfere with the apiarist giving'A an empty comb 

 at the time he gives her a frame of young brood 

 from B.?" A very serious interference is the lack 

 of additional bees to cover the additional comb. 

 [Perhaps; but under the conditions named, if we 

 understand it rightly, there should be a sufficient 

 number of bees to cover the additional comb. — 

 Ed.] 



Endorsing your instruction, Mr. Editor, page 

 584, not to remove the old queen till the new 

 one is in, let me add that, for extra precaution, it 

 is well to go a step further and not remove the 

 old queen till one to three days after the new one 

 is introduced. Put in the new queen, caged, 

 with no chance for the bees to release her; one to 

 three days later take the old queen out and let 

 the bees at the candy. That gives the new queen 

 the same advantage we have in the dual plan of 

 introducing virgins in nuclei. [A good sugges- 

 tion. — Ed.] 



E. H. Shattuck, page 581, I have somedoubt 

 that the dent in your queen had any thing to do 

 with her supersedure. I have had several dented 

 queens that lived long and happily. [If you will 

 look up page 581 you will see that Mr. Shattuck 

 said that the small dent appeared between the 

 "wing-sockets." This shows that the injury in 

 question was in the thorax, in the center of the 

 back, and not on the abdomen of the queen. 

 We have had a good many queens with dents 

 in this portion of the anatomy; and these dents 

 rarely if ever do any harm. Some of the best 

 and most prolific queens we ever had carried a 

 dent in their abdomens during their entire life; 

 but a dent in the back between the wing-sockets 

 would be a very different matter. Perhaps the 

 dent you refer to was in the thorax; but we infer 

 that you meant in the abdomen. — Ed.] 



When bees are placed on a new stand to form 

 a nucleus, they will promptly desert their brood, 

 according to what we are sometimes told. I have 

 formed hundreds of nuclei, and have had very lit- 

 tle trouble from desertion. There is an immense 

 difference between queenless and queen-right 

 bees. While bees taken directly from a laying 

 queen are anxious to get back to their home, 

 queenless bees will mostly stay where they are 

 put. The strength of the nucleus also makes a 

 difference. A very few bees seem lonesome, and 



