Gleanings In Bee Culture 



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



H. H. ROOT, Assistant Editor 



A. I. ROOT, Editor Home Department 



E. R. ROOT, Editor 



A. L. BOYDEN, Advertising Manager 

 J. T. CALVERT, Business Manager 



VOL. XXXVI 



AUGUST 1, 1908 



NO. 15 



Stray Straws 



Dr. C. C. Miller 



Did you notice in the platforms of the two 

 great political parties any thing said about tiie 

 greatest public question of the day, the saloon 

 question? 



Hermaphrodite, that's what the queen- bee is 

 — Bee-keepers' Reviezv, 205. Doesn't that go 

 pretty well with the " sting trowel " and the " um- 

 bilical cord".^ 



I've always supposed it was cheaper to buy 

 new plain separators than to clean old ones. I'm 

 not so sure of it after reading E. F. Atwater's way 

 o( cleaning them, p. 878. 



Likely you are right, Mr. Editor, p. 868, that 

 my tags were oil-soaked, and not paraffine-boiled. 

 Allee samee, I hope this country will some day 

 catch up with Germany on the tag question. 



Basswood flow (very little basswood here) last- 

 ed 11 days. [It did not amount to much here. 

 In our locality a good year for the clovers means 

 a poor one for basswoods. But this is not inva- 

 riably so. — Ed.] 



Bro. Doolittle gives sound advice, p. 871, 

 about mastering " awfully cross bees," only for 

 one thing; he doesn't tell us how he'd do if he 

 wanted to find a queen; for after pounding them 

 into subjection his chances would be small for 

 finding a queen on that trip. 



Louis Scholl, do we understand from what 

 you say, p 872, that you have tried bottom-bars 

 with only X 'rich between them, and that the 

 space was filled with glue.!" I've supposed this is 

 a gluey locality, and I've never found that space 

 filled with glue — never once. 



Referring to the question whether abundance 

 of stores in sight has a stimulating effect on bees. 

 Editor Hill says, American Bee-keeper, 190, "Mr. 

 Hand contends that the influence would be the 

 same on the bees as that of bins full of wheat on 

 a flock of hens. It should be noted, however, 

 that it would probably make some difference in 

 results as to whether the bees or the hens had ac- 

 cess to the surplus-food supply. Food locked up 

 in the granary would hardly influence the egg- 

 laying of the flock, nor would tons of honey 

 stacked away in the loft of the house have any 

 stimulating effect on the bees in the hive." 



Heating honey for extracting late in the sea- 

 son is a fine thing; but Allen Latham gives a 

 needed caution, Re-Tne-xv, 214. Late in Novem- 

 ber he had the honey stacked in an old hen-house, 

 paroid-covered; ran the lamp slowly Friday, fast- 

 er at night, and still faster Saturday morning. 



The sun came out warm, and he says that, on 

 opening the door at noon, he found all the top 

 supers had melted down, and the honey was driz- 

 zling all over all the supers in the place. Some 

 sixty combs melted down, and 100 to 200 pou nls 

 of honey was lost. Even then the lower tiers had 

 not become nearly warm enough to extract. 



J. E. Hand, p. 881, seems to think that natu- 

 ral supersedure and deterioration go hand in hand. 

 Did you ever stop to think, friend Hand, that, in 

 the case of bees not under man's control, unless 

 the whole colony dies, e-uery queen before her 

 death pro'uides for a successor by natural superse- 

 dure? Do you think an all-wise Providence 

 would thus deliberately plan for deterioration? 

 And if that deterioration has been going on ever 

 since creation, ought not wild bees to be about 

 deteriorated out of existence? [We find superse- 

 dure cells generally quite etjual to those reared 

 during the swarming impulse. But cells reared 

 under ordinary conditions are much inferior to 

 either. — Ed.] 



More than one egg in a queen-cell is a very 

 reliable sign of laying workers. But lately I 

 found five eggs in a queen-cell in a nucleus with 

 an old laying queen. [If you were raising queens 

 in baby nuclei, doctor, you would find that, 

 when the queen had laid every available cell full 

 of eggs, she will begin to stick in two or three 

 and even five eggs to the cell. This is a very 

 common observation in our queen-rearing work; 

 and, of course, under those conditions we do not 

 expect any laying workers. But we may safely 

 say that, when there is plenty of egg-laying room, 

 cells empty, and other cells containing a plurality 

 of eggs, there is probably a laying worker or 

 drone-layer in the hive. — Ed.] 



H. C. Daniels, you ask us to take a backward 

 look, p. 894, to see if we can not see bad results 

 from having bees in the shade. When I look 

 back I see the very best results from bees under 

 good apple-tree shade. [Here too; and, what is 

 more, we believe that bees are a little more quiet 

 in the shade than out in the hot sun; or perhaps 

 we should put it this way: When hives are ob- 

 scured by shrubbery, trees, and the like, cross bees 

 are not quite as likely to follow one as where there 

 is clear unobstructed vision. For example, be- 

 fore our grapevines leave out, robbers and cross, 

 bees will follow one much more persistently than 

 afterward. Of course, it might be said that, when 

 the vines are in full leaf, then is the time when 

 the bees are approaching the honey-flow or are in 

 it. But there is a condition after the honey-flow 

 in August, in our locality, that is far worse for 

 robbers than in that season of the year prior to 

 the full leaf of the grapevines. But as has been 

 pointed out by others, we believe that too dense 



