GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



Stray Straws 



Dr. C. C. Miller, Marengo, 111. 



Light in cellar works in Marengo just as 

 in Borodino, p. 795. As a postscript it 

 might be added that, when bees are in best 

 condition, they will stand a good deal of 

 light ; if in bad condition, light is bad. 



A GOOD strain of Italians will not lay 

 above the brood-nest, p. 798. May be not. 

 Major Shallard, in Australia, where every 

 thing stands on its head; but in tliis coun- 

 try the better the queen the more likely to 

 lay above if crowded below. 



Pfarrer Straeuli thus treats a swarm; 

 He puts two frames of foundation in the 

 center of the brood-chamber; places on it 

 an excluder, and over this a story with 

 empty combs and some honey, into which 

 he puts the swarm. In no case has the 

 swarm reissued. — Deutsche Bzcht. 



G. M. DoOLiTTLE, I had a good laugh 

 over your trousers standing alone starched 

 with honey, p. 795. I dislike honey on my 

 hands exceedingly; but if I had no water, 

 before using my trousers I'd scour the hon- 

 ey off my" hands with earth. "Dirty?" 

 Well, however it may look, soil does not 

 feel so dirty as honey. 



Bees should have a larger entrance in 

 winter than in summer, p. 799. That de- 

 pends, friend Johnson. In this region, bees 

 can hardly have too large an entrance in 

 hot weather. Same in winter, if cellared. 

 But ouldoooi-s they would hardly stand in 

 winter to have so large an entrance as my 

 bees have in summer. 



Contracting the brood-chamber for win- 

 ter is advocated because it ra&kes less room 

 for the bees to keep warm in winter. The 

 editor of Deutsche Bzcht. says, p. 143, that 

 nothing could be more absurd, since for 

 best wintering the bees must cluster in a 

 sphere, and in too small a chamber there 

 is not room for this. [The editor of Deut- 

 sche Bienenzeitung is evidently laboring 

 under a misapprehension as to the amount 

 of contraction that is ordinarily practiced 

 in this country. No full colony is ever con- 

 tracted down to less than five or six frames 

 wide. Such space would give a strong colo- 

 ny all the clustering room it could possibly 

 require. In fact, we have seen powerful 

 colonies contract into a ball during cold 

 weather nearly as small as a doubled fist. 

 Even a three-frame space would accommo- 

 date such a cluster, and of course a five or 

 six frame space would be ample. — Ed.] 



You fellows who have never had any but 

 modern extractors don't know how blest 

 you are. In bygone years, when I produc- 

 ed extracted honey, I had a Peabody ex-" 



tractor, the pioneer extractor, with can and 

 all revolving. This year, by means of a 

 certain editor who is urging the production 

 of comb honey, I got an up-to-date four- 

 frame extractor, too late for anj^ thing else 

 except to extract a lot of unfinished sec- 

 tions; but, oh the delight it was to extract 

 them! Before the extractor came I had 

 studied just how I would manage in lifting 

 and reversing the frames to have as little 

 drip as possible, for the most unpleasant 

 thing in former j'ears had been the messy 

 drip when frames were lifted out. To my 

 surprise, when I now lifted out the frames 

 there was no drip ! I could hardly believe 

 my eyes. And the delightful ease of turn- 

 ing the crank, compared with the former 

 stooping over to revolve the whole ma- 

 chine! I can hardly wait to use that ex- 

 tractor next year, unless the good Lord has 

 something better for me to do before that 

 time. [We hope the good Lord will spare 

 you the pleasure of trying out a modern 

 equipment for taking extracted honey. — 

 Ed.] 



Jos. Koch, Schweiz. Bztg., 310, reports a 

 queen, born in the early summer of 1906, 

 still vigorous and doing good work in 1912. 

 He is sure there can be no mistake as to 

 her age, for she was marked red, and he 

 has marked no queen since with that color. 

 She is of the " Nigra " stock, and was sent 

 to a mating station for pure fertilization. 

 [This is a very remarkable instance of 

 longe\dty. Had not Mr. Koch marked the 

 queen red we should have said he was surely 

 mistaken. The ordinary supersedure takes 

 place so quietly that in most cases the api- 

 arist never gets any knowledge of it ; and 

 when he does see the new queen mother, she 

 often looks so much like the old one that 

 she passes for her. 



But we do not know any way of marking 

 a queen red so that the coloring would not 

 come off in the lapse of six years. If Mr. 

 Koch or anybody else can tell us how to do 

 this with some coloring matter that will not 

 be injurious, he will be conferring a favor 

 on beekeepers generally. As a general rule, 

 however, queens are distinguished by the 

 manner of clipping their wings, either on 

 the left or right side, and by angle cuts. 

 For example, a square-off cut on the left 

 side could indicate 1912; and an angle cut 

 (one each way) could be made to indicate 

 1913 and 1914. Similar markings on the 

 right side could represent three years more, 

 which certainly would be long enough for 

 at least 99 per cent of all queens. — Ed.] 



