JULY 15, 1913 



Stray Straws 



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



J. E. Crane, p. 402, while j^ou're about 

 it you may as well have wire cloth with 

 mesh just small enough so that a bee can't 

 get through. That would be a shade less 

 than 1-6, which would obstruct the vision 

 about three-fourths as much as Vg mesh. 



June 30 the average number of sections 

 over each colony was 10.3.04, and 15.36 had 

 already been taken off. Of course, part of 

 those on the hives — i:)erhaps one-fourth — 

 were empty sections; but eA^en so, no such 

 stoi^' could ever be told in June before. 

 Certainly I never knew such a flow before. 

 One factor in the case is the alsike, which is 

 increasing wonderfully, springing up on the 

 roadside and other jilaces wliere one would 

 suppose no seed could have fallen. 



Pollen in sections is spoken of as a 

 matter of location, p. .388. Isn't it rather 

 a matter of shallow brood-combs? [Yes, 

 the depth of the brood-chamber will have 

 a great deal to do with the absence or pres- 

 ence of pollen in the supers; but is it not 

 true that there are other factors? For ex- 

 ample, if there are no outside brood-combs 

 in the brood-nest in which pollen may be 

 stored, and the rest of the brood-nest filled 

 with brood and honey, the bees are more 

 inclined to store pollen in the sections. 

 They must put it somewhere. The advice 

 has often been given to see that there be 

 empt}' comb in the brood-nest next to the 

 hive walls to catch pollen. Some of the 

 users of shallow brood-chambers have stated 

 that this is an absolute remedy. — Ed.] 



Arthur C. Miller, what you going to 

 be up to next? The cheek it must take to 

 tell us, p. 370, that not onlj^ may a queen 

 be successfully inti'oduced within an hour 

 or so after the removal of a laying queen, 

 but that virgins or laying workers are no 

 hindrance. "Well, there ought to be enough 

 try it before the summer is over to know 

 how it works. But, say ; you talk about bees 

 tolerating a plurality of virgins. You hard- 

 ly mean that more than one virgin Avill be 

 out of the cells, do you? Any way. it's not 

 a question of the bees tolerating virgins, is 

 it? Isn't it the virgins that won't tolerate 

 one another? I suppose in one sense it 

 might be said the bees tolerate a plurality 

 of virgins in their cells when they stand 

 guard over them to defend them against 

 their murderous elder sister. 



A Sunday-school field-woi-ker of Illinois 

 surprised me by saying he thought cigar- 

 ettes worse than whisky. I'm slowly com- 

 ing to believe lie's right. I'm pretty sure 



little boys in Marengo are in greater dan- 

 ger of becoming users of cigarettes than 

 • users of whisky or beer. Even if the cigar- 

 ette does only half as much harm as drink 

 lo its victim, if it catches three times as 

 many victims it is the greater curse. And 

 I'm not sure that the cigarette is at all be- 

 hind drink in destroying the physical and 

 moral stamina of a boy. I don't know how 

 it is elsewhere; but here the cigarette seems 

 to get hold of boys at an earlier age than 

 drink. Somehow boys can hide cigarettes 

 from their parents longer than drink. If 

 the cigarette curse increases in the next ten 

 years as it has in the past ten, we're going 

 to be a nation of imbeciles. 



An unsupi3lied want is a set of grader's 

 balances for grading honey. We have scales 

 galore for getting the weight of honey, but 

 we don't want to know how much a given 

 section weighs. Take the Colorado rules. 

 There are just two questions to which the 

 grader may want an answer: "Does that 

 section weigh ' less than 131/2 ounces '? " or, 

 " Does it weigh ' less than 12 ounces ' ? " 

 The exact weight he cares nothing about. 

 So he wants two balances, one having on 

 one side of it a weight of 13^/2 ounces, and 

 the other having a weight of 12 ounces. 

 Then if the section goes down it goes, and 

 if it doesn't go down it doesn't go. And 

 these two balances should cost a good deal 

 less than a-nj' single weighing machine. H. 

 H. Root, here's a chance for your inventive 

 genius. [A pair of balances might be made 

 to take two different weights, as you indi- 

 cate; but they would cost more than regu- 

 lar scales; and is it not true that it is more 

 practicable to make three or more gn:'adings 

 as to weight if there is any difference? — ■ 

 Ed.] 



" Bees can build comb in confinement, 

 but it is a very unusual procedure," p. 388. 

 I wonder if it is. The first package of bees 

 I got from Medina last year had built about 

 two square inches of comb. [Perhaps we 

 put it too strongly. If so, we are subject 

 to correction. Some 25 years ago Mr. Paul 

 L. Viallon, of Baj^ou Goula, La., who was 

 then quite active with bees, reported that 

 it Avas with difficulty that bees could be 

 made to build comb in confinement ; but 

 when they could fly out every day they 

 would build it much more readilv ard with 

 less stores. He was testing out tlie truth of 

 the oft-repeated statement that it takes 20 

 lbs. of honey to make 1 lb. of wax. He 

 found that it would take about that amount 

 if the bees were confined ; but if thej' had 



