AUGUST 1, 1912 



ony ; and as often as we would introduce a queen 

 they would kill her as soon as she had laid a few 

 eggs. We finally let them rear a queen of their own 

 from the eggs left by the last queen ; and this one 

 they allowed to stay in the hive; but why, we can 

 not understand. We do not know of any thing bet- 

 ter you can do than to let this colony raise a queen 

 of its own. If they kill her, we would brimstone 

 them. Hybrid colonies are more apt to cut up 

 capers of this kind than pure bees of either race. 

 — Ed.] 



Uniting by the Newspaper Plan 



. I have ten colonies of bees — six strong, one fair, 

 and three small ones, about a gallon or a gallon and 

 a half, and I want to join the fair one and one of 

 the small ones and make a strong one out of it, and 

 the other two together will make a fair or strong 

 one. The one that I am going to join is in an eight- 

 frame hive I made myself. It has a movable bot- 

 tom. The fair one is in an eight-frame bought hive, 

 and the other two are in a box. The one that I am 

 going to join first is in the hive that I made. I am 

 going to make a hole in the bottom about two inches 

 across, and put it on top of the small one in the box, 

 and put a hole in the lid of the box about the same 

 size, with a screen on top of the box, and set the 

 other hive on top of it, and leave it on two or three 

 days or a week — long enough so that the bees on top 

 will have the same smell as the one in the box, and 

 then take the screen off and put a perforated zinc so 

 that the bees will go from the box to the hive on top, 

 then the queen can't go up; then if they don't go up 

 I can shut up the bottom doorway in the box, and 

 they will have to go up to fly after they get joined. 

 Then I want to transfer them to a ten-frame double- 

 wall hive. When will it be best to join and transfer 

 them ? 



The other two, I want to put one in the box with 

 the one in the eight-frame bought hive. What is the 

 best way to join them? The ones that I want to 

 transfer into the double-walled hive, will it be best 

 to put them in the frame full of foundation or the 

 frame with the bees and combs on ? 



Leigh, Neb., June 26. Wm. F. Glandt. 



[We are not sure but that it would be better for 

 you to follow the newspaper rather than the wire- 

 cloth plan which you refer to. The newspaper plan 

 is really simpler. Remove the cover of the lower 

 hive, place a single thickness of newspaper on top, 

 and set the second hive on top minus the bottom- 

 board. By the time the bees gnaw through the 

 paper the uniting will be so carefully and slowly 

 done that there will be practically no fighting, and 

 the moved bees, says Dr. Miller, will stay v/here they 

 are put. A little later you can easily transfer the 

 bees to a 10-frame hive by picking out 10 of the best 

 combs that contain brood and some honey, and 

 merely lifting them into the ten-frame hive. Then 

 shake the bees from the rest of the combs from the 

 empty hive before the entrance of the ten-frame hive 

 which should now stand on the old stand. 



Regarding the other colony that you want to 

 transfer to the double-walled hive, if the combs are 

 straight and practically all worker size of cells, it 

 would not be necessary for you to shake the bees on 

 new frames of foundation ; although if there were 

 any trace of disease or suspicious brood in the old 

 combs it would undoubtedly pay you to shake the 

 bees on to the new foundation. — Ed.] 



Supersedure of Queens; How to Recognize Super- 

 sedure Cells from Swarming Cells 



I have a colony that is an exceedingly powerful 

 one, built up from a swarm in the latter part of 

 May. They began working in splendid style, draw- 

 ing out foundation, and then for some unaccount- 

 able reason they began building queen-cells, which T 

 as persistently continued to cut out. As I know 

 now, it was a case of supersedure. I found the 

 queen, only a year old, clipped, ten or twelve feet in 

 front of the hive one day, surrounded by only a half- 

 dozen bees, and as she seemed to be in good condition 

 I went through the hive very carefully, cut out every 

 appearance of a cell and restored her. There was 

 absolutely no pretense of swarming, as one or two 

 people were in the vicinity of the hive all day. 

 About three weeks later I found the clipped queen 

 lying in front of the hive dead; and in going 

 through the colony I found no eggs, no queen-cells, 

 and no queen. Naturally I then concluded the 



queen had died, and that there was nothing left in 

 the hive from which to raise a young queen. Imag- 

 ine my surprise the other day, after putting the bees 

 through a "strainer," to find a magnificent young 

 queen just beginning to lay. Where they raised her, 

 and how they did it, I can not conceive, as I made 

 it a custom to go over every comb in the hive once a 

 week, and I did this very thoroughly and got out 

 every cell I could find. 



The new queen I introduced by caging her on the 

 face of the comb, and every thing is lovely. The 

 bees are working splendidly. In the meantime, I 

 could not make up my mind to destroy the young 

 queen, so gave her a couple of sections of honey and 

 young bees, and started her to housekeeping in an- 

 other hive. 



This matter of supersedure is one of great inter- 

 est to beekeepers, and incidentally must be one of 

 the most puzzling problems by which the beekeeper 

 is confronted — not as to why the bees supersede the 

 queen, but rather how the beekeeper is to determine 

 whether the bees are building cells with the inten- 

 tion of swarming or with the intention of supersed- 

 ing the old queen. ^ ,, „ 



Detroit, Mich., July 10. J. M. FRANCIS. 



[ Supersedure may take place almost any time of 

 the year, or at any time when the queen shows dis- 

 position to fail. This failure may be due to old age, 

 to injury received while in the mail, or to rough 

 treatment she receives at the time she is introduced. 

 It is not possible to detect the difference in ap- 

 pearance between supersedure cells and swarming 

 cells ; but when we find cells built during the swarm- 

 ing season we naturally conclude that they are 

 swarming cells — that is, providing there is a good 

 queen in the hive already. But when we find a lay- 

 ing queen apparently failing, and nicely built cells 

 in the hive at any other time of year, we usually call 

 such cells supersedure cells. 



The size of worker bees will vary a good deal 

 according to conditions. During the midst of a 

 heavy honey-flow, and especially at night, after the 

 bees are quiet in the hive, they will appear to be 

 very large, because they are well filled with honey, 

 and putting it through the process of digestion — or, 

 more exactlv, inversion. 



The young queen .you found after putting the bees 

 through a "strainer" (perforated zinc) was prob- 

 ably from some cell which you missed. — Ed.] 



Motiis in Comb Honey after it Leaves the Hives 



Dr. Miller says, page 36, Jan. 15, "You said 

 moths are liable to lay eggs in S. D. House's combs, 

 or his nice comb honey, after either has been taken 

 from the hives. I supposed his nice comb honey 

 was in sections, so 1 ventured the guess he never 

 had an egg laid in them after they were taken oflc, 

 since the moths don't lay eggs in comb honey here 

 aftei it is taken from the hive. J. E. Crane practi- 

 cally says they do with him. The question now is 

 whether my moths or Bro. Crane's are the excep- 

 tional ones." 



I can not answer as to whose moths are the excep- 

 tional ones; but if Mr. Crane's are exceptional, so 

 are mine; for nearly all my trouble consists in try- 

 ing to keep the moths out after the honey is off the 

 hive. In the yard they never bother unless I am so 

 careless as to leave a colony for some time in a 

 weakened condition. But in the house, especially 

 after about the middle of July, it's a fright all the 

 time. Of course it is the larger moth that gives me 

 the trouble in the comb honey, the smaller variety 

 working on old combs alone. But these large moths 

 will get in and lay their eggs all around the wood of 

 the sections, and many times right on the face of the 

 combs. 



My only salvation is to use sulphur at least once a 

 week, and even then they sometimes get the better 

 of me in some corner that I have overlooked. 



HONEY AS A MEDICINE. 



Yes, honey is being used for medicine, and people 

 are not so slow after all in learning to use it and to 

 appreciate it for that purpose. A large number of 

 my customers use it for medicine alone. I attribute 

 it to the fact that, when selling honey through the 

 neighborhood, I have always mentioned in particu- 

 lar that honey is one of the best cough and sore 

 throat remedies known. I often mention, too, that 

 honey is cheaper than biitter if used in place of that 

 commodity, and that the food value of it is greater 

 than that of almost any other food. By means of 



