524 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



Sept. 1 



Stray Straws 



By Dr. C. C. Miller 



I'M HAPPY. Just been down to the apiary, 

 middle of the day, Aug. 18, and bees seem 

 working hard — first time since the long, long 

 dearth. Oh, but it has a beautiful sound! I 

 may yet have fall flow enough to save feed- 

 ing for winter. Won't that be fine? 



Been having the fight of my life with 

 black brood, and rm on top. Whoop-de- 

 dooden-doo! [The sympathies of all of our 

 readers will go out to Dr. Miller in his fight 

 against black brood. We also hope he will 

 get a fall crop, because that will help him 

 materially to stay the ravages of the disease. 

 —Ed.] 



Allen Latham has sent me foundation- 

 splints of common chair-seat cane, and a very 

 slight trial makes me think it possible they 

 may be an improvement. Their hardness is 

 in their favor. He says, "They leave no 

 ridges at all in the comb, and the queen lays 

 in cells over them more readily than in ceils 

 over the wood splints." But in this locality 

 the splints are no hindrance to laying. 



I dos't know the answer to W. M. Whit- 

 ney's question, p. 514, and can not verify his 

 statement about greasy-looking brood-combs : 

 first, because I haven't a brood-chamber 

 that hasn't been disturbed; and, second, be- 

 cause I haven't had a honey-flow. He is 

 quite right, that watery combs are different 

 from travel-stain and glue, and has some 

 ground for accusing Editor Root of unfairness 

 in arraigning the Funics as gluers when wa- 

 tery sections were under discussion. But 

 Editor Root's sin was one of omission 

 rather than commission. That is, he failed 

 to emphasize as much as he should the fact 

 that Funics are the worst ever at making 

 watery sections as well as being the worst 

 gluers. 



It does seem that bees that fill up close to 

 the cappings ought to store more than those 

 that fill their cells partly with wind; and yet 

 the fact remains that my biggest yields have 

 come from bees that capped white. 



The dry wave may be somewhat fairly 

 measured by the falling-off of Uncle Sam's 

 revenue from the liquor business for the fis- 

 cal year ending July 30 last, as compared 

 with the previous year. It was $7,641,978. 

 Yet theysay, "Frohibition doesn't prohibit." 

 [Brewers and distillers generally are loud in 

 their statement that "prohibition does not 

 prohibit." They even go so far as to get 

 statistics (or so-called statistics) that are ei- 

 ther garbled from actual reports or manu- 

 factured to fit the statements they are trying 

 to prove. But the significant fact is, if pro- 

 hibition does not prohibit, why do they use 

 their millions to fight it? Why do they try 

 to get bankers and others who hold brewery 

 stock to oppose local option and prohibition 

 whenever such measures como up for con- 

 sideration in our State legislatures? As 



sure as fate, if brewers sold more beer in dry 

 territory, as they claim, you would find those 

 fellows working every time on the side of 

 the drys. Oh, no! they know their business 

 too well. They work for open saloons and 

 a wide-open town every time. O consistency! 

 thou art a jewel. — Ed.] 



"The greater energy of a natural swarm 

 has been admitted by practically all authori- 

 ties and writers," p. 496. Guess that's true; 

 but I'm looking for the fallacy to be explod- 

 ed some day. R. C. Aikin has already ex- 

 pressed some doubts. Whatever spurt a 

 natural swarm may make for a short time, in 

 the long run it loses. With me swarming 

 always means cutting down the yield, and 

 my bumper crops come from colonies that 

 have little or no thought of swarming. [Un- 

 derstand, we do not claim that bees ran not 

 be artificially put into the condition of a nat- 

 ural swarm after it has been hived. We do 

 not kudw; but we do know that a natural 

 swarm is much more active, both in the fields 

 and in the hive than an ordinary colony left 

 to itself. On this point we can not think 

 that Lingstrnth or any other authority has 

 made a mistake. But you have presented 

 quite another angle to the proposition. We 

 are inclined to agree with you, that a colony 

 of bees that never thinks of swarming, and 

 that has been bred up to a state of extra en- 

 ergy, will gather as much or more honey 

 than a colony, and its swarm that loafs sev- 

 eral days, swarms, and then gets down to 

 business. — Ed.] 



Careless gossip does a lot of harm. 

 There's Editor Root — looks like a right nice 

 sort, and yet on page 488 he says what will 

 be understood to mean that bees that have 

 once engaged in robbing "are of no further 

 use to their owner. ' ' A base libel «n the bees. 

 [Here is a question that admits of honest 

 difference of opinion. While we admit that 

 bees that have engaged in a case of wholesale 

 robbing can gather honey afterward from 

 the fields in an honest way, yet those same 

 chaps are ever on thealert; and if any honey 

 is scattered, or if any neighbors are canning 

 fruit, they will do more than enough damage, 

 twice over, to compensate for the little good 

 they do after they went to the bad. In 

 a queen-rearing yard especially, the sooner 

 such bees are dead, the better. 



We have proved it now to our own satis- 

 faction that most of the robbing, if it has not 

 continued too long, comes from one or two 

 colonies or at most a very few. While it is 

 true that a whole yard might be involved, 

 yet as a rule robbers come from comparative- 

 ly few hives in the whole apiary — usually 

 not more than one or two in a hundred. If 

 robbing were not contagious the case would 

 not be so bad; but a colony in a bee-yard that 

 is inclined to rob whenever it gets a chance 

 should be put out of the way. We would 

 not destroy the young bees that have not 

 learned robbing of course, but put out rob- 

 ber-traps and catch and kill the old hardened 

 sinners. No, sir, doctor; we will not retract 

 the so-called libel. — Ed.] 



