154 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Mar. 15 



Stray Straws 



Dr. C. C. Millep, Marengo, III. 



Uncapping with an upward stroke has been 

 getting out ot style lately; but W. A. Chrysler, 

 p. 130, makes It look all right when done his 

 way. 



Some day there will be an uncapping-knife 

 made with two handles like a drawing-knife. 

 [We doubt whether such a knife will ever be 

 practicable. — :Ed.] 



Ulrich Kramer, the indefatigable Swiss bee- 

 master, has been titled " Ehrendoktor " by the 

 University of Bern. Congratulations, Herr Prae- 

 sident Dr. Kramer! 



C. B. Palmer, page 140, asks in what part of 

 the super to put bait sections when we do not use 

 an excluder. Frankly, I don't know. I gener- 

 ally put one in the center of the first super. If 

 plenty are on hand it might be better to put one 

 at each corner. 



F. DuNDAS Todd, p. 141, has put a blight up- 

 on my young life which I may never outgrow. 

 To think that, without a word of warning, he 

 would let me go on and do all those dreadful 

 things, and then hold me up as an " awful ex- 

 ample " afteward! I have my opinion of such a 

 man. 



G. M. DooLiTTLE, you've made a good lay- 

 out for the bees, page 126. But why omit soft 

 maple.!' Coming so much earlier, isn't it worth 

 three times as much as hard maple.? Then I 

 should want dandelion — worth moie than apple- 

 bloom here, and we have lots of apple-bloom 

 too. You say basswood after the clovers. Here 

 basswood, what little there is of it, comes in clo- 

 ver-blrom. 



R. F. HoLTERMANN, we mustn't always draw 

 general conclusions fiom a single datum. What 

 is true for M. A. Foure, p. 123, does not settle 

 all. There is no disputing that the flight of bees 

 is affected by the position of the sun. I've often 

 noticed that, in rather cool air, bees in the sun 

 would be flying, and those in the shade still. En- 

 ticing them to fly may be a good thing — it may 

 be a bad thing — depends on circumstances. 



F. W. Redpield, p. 133, says, " If honey must 

 be sold at a reduction, then why not to outside 

 States to the large dealers, rather than to the lead- 

 ing merchants of the home town?" That's all 

 right if your honey nets you more by shipping to 

 the other State. But that " If honey must be 

 sold at a reduction " sounds as if he would send 

 to an outside State, even at a loss. But how 

 about the other fellow? If he follows the same 

 rule and ships into your State at a loss, where are 

 you? 



M. H. Mendleson, you're right, p. 128, that 

 top-bars sag with vertical wiring. Before hori- 

 zontal wiring was known 1 had hundreds of 

 frames wired vertically, and some top-bars sagged 

 badly. But the foundation didn't sag; and with 

 horizontal wiring I think foundation stretches at 

 the top more than is generally noticed — although 

 the queen notices it and doesn't use it. Better 

 avoid both errors and use vertical splints. [We 

 shall be glad to get reports from those who have 



used the splints. Thousands of them were made 

 and sold last season and the year before. Frank- 

 ly, we have been afraid the bees would gnaw 

 around them, as was shown in the Atwater frame 

 shown on page 1127, Sept. 15ih issue of last year. 

 —Ed.] 



Wax production, is it involuntary? Cer- 

 tainly, I think, in some cases. Stufi^ a bee with 

 honey, and make it stay stuff^ed, and likely you 

 are as sure of wax as you are of milk when you 

 stuff a cow with pumpkins But under ordinary 

 conditions, if the bee doesn't want wax she dis- 

 gorges the honey, and the cow doesn't disgorge 

 the pumpkins. Take two strong swarms, side 

 by side, in a bumper season, equal in every re- 

 spect. Give to the one fully drawn combs for 

 brood-chamber and supers, and give to the other 

 not even a foundation starter. The one without 

 combs may fill supers enough so that, if all the 

 combs are melted up, there will be, say, 10 lbs. of 

 wax. If wax production is entirely voluntary, 

 the other colony also produces 10 lbs. Where is 

 it? R. C. Aikin accounts for it, p. ^2, by saying 

 it is made into burr-combs, filled into cracks, etc. 

 Do you really believe they use 10 lbs. of it in that 

 way? 



Let X represent the number of pounds of wax 

 obtainable from the combs given to the first col- 

 ony if they had been melted at the time of giv- 

 ing. Let J represent the wax obtained from all 

 the combs of the second colony at the close of 

 the season. At the close of the season, also ren- 

 der all the combs of the first colony. If the se- 

 cretion of wax is the same in each case, the total 

 wax from the first colony must be.v+>'- 'n 

 other words, from the first colony you will get 

 as much wax as from the other, plus the wax that 

 was originally in the combs given. Has that 

 ever been achieved? [You admit that bees would 

 secrete wax involuntarily if compelled to retain the 

 honey. In the time of a honey-flow, especially 

 basswood, is it not generally considered that the 

 bees consume very largely of their product? If 

 you feed bees for stimulation, and measure up 

 the amount fed by the amount stored, there is a 

 loss. Has it not been pretty well proven that the 

 amount of honey that the bees actually store is by 

 no means as large as the amount they actually 

 gather? Of course, we know there is a vast shrink- 

 age by the evaporation of water in the nectar as 

 well as a loss of that used for brood-rearing, but 

 even leaving that out of the account, there is a loss. 

 Well, this loss must be accounted for by the fact 

 that the bees consume it. If they grow fat on it, 

 why should they not involuntarily secrete wax 

 scales? But you ask what becomes of the wax. 

 It is dropped in the form of scales which (the bees 

 being too busy to gather up) is left there and wast- 

 ed. Has it not been proven that there are large 

 numbers of wax scales in the dirt on the bottom- 

 board during and immediately after a honey-flow? 



We are not supporting the theory that bees se- 

 crete wax involuntarily under all conditions. We 

 believe there are enough data already to make us 

 believe that, under many conditions at least, wax 

 is secreted involuntarily, and, if not used in comb- 

 building, it is actually wasted. We hope some 

 experiment station will test this matter by a series 

 of careful experiments. The dirt from the bot- 

 tom-board should be carefully examined and an- 

 alyzed. — Ed.] 



