GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



to touch the comb with their wings. I take it that 

 Mr. Miller refers to action of the wings on the comb 

 on which the queen is resting, not the one behind 

 her. It is likely that stunted queens laying in work- 

 er cells, or perhaps other queens laying in drone 

 cells may touch the comb with their wings. Neither 

 of these cases seems to have any practical interest. 

 Harrison H. Brown. 

 La Plata, N. M., May 17. 



Ignorance of the Market Value of Honey Lowers 

 the Selling Price 



Many beekeepers in this locality do not read a 

 bee paper. A great deal of the honey they bring in 

 indicates this. If they would read some bee jour- 

 nal they would not only be able to produce a better 

 grade of honey but also realize the market valua- 

 tion of it. As it is, they put it up poorly and sell 

 it on the market for what they can get, as it can 

 not stand shipment. Honey, this season, was selling 

 at 15, 18, and 20 cents per section, according to 

 grade. One farmer brought in 1000 lbs. of this 

 poorly put-up honey, and a storekeeper bought it at 

 11 cents per lb. and sold it at 15, actual weight. 

 This, of course, made a crash in the price in a place 

 like this. I see no reason why a pound of good 

 clean comb honey should not be equal to a pound of 

 cheese which sells at twenty cents. 



O. J. GOODMANSEN. 



Little Falls, Minn., Dec. 9. 



Coal Oil to Stop Robbing 



I want to tell of an experiment I tried to stop rob- 

 bing. I made two nuclei of four frames each, and 

 set them on new stands near the main yard, with an 

 entrance of about 4x^. The bees were all young, 

 and robbing set in. The robbers were in droves. 



I quickly grabbed a handful of wet grass and put 

 it in front of the entrance which I had contracted 

 in the meantime ; then I took a paint-brush and a 

 can of coal oil and spread the oil the width of the 

 brush, all around the hive. The robbers came out 

 of the hive loaded, and went back to their colonies ; 

 but when they came back they smelled the oil in 

 front of the hive, and then, going around the sides, 

 found it there also. In three hours there was not a 

 robber around these hives, and robbing has stopped 

 throughout the apiary. 



Manchester, Tenn. W. T. Sale. 



Will Chickens Eat Bees ? 



I would thank you very much to let me know 

 whether chickens will eat bees. I asked several 

 people this question, and some said yes and some no. 

 We have chickens and a garden, and I have heard 

 that bees should not be put close to any thing grow- 

 ing such as grass, etc., so the only place left for me 

 to put them would be in the chicken-yard. 



Richmond, Va., July 22. Douglas M. Stith. 



[As a rule chickens pay no attention to bees. A 

 few cases, and only a few, have been reported where 

 they do so, and even then we suspect they eat fresh 

 dead bees, live drones, and young brood when it is 

 thrown out. If they once acquire a taste for live 

 drones they may eat live worker bees. If any one 

 has positive evidence that they do, let him report. 

 — Ed.I 



Flags to Show Virgins which Hives they Came From 



After reading William A. Sedding's article on 

 tacking up playing cards above the entrances for 

 sign-boards, I wish to mention a plan I have 

 adopted which has proved very satisfactory. All 

 colonies in Imperial Valley are placed under shades 

 called ramadas, made of brush covering about 12 

 feet in width, and in length to accommodate from 

 50 to 200 colonies. The hives are placed at the 

 sides with entrances facing out, in straight rows. 

 Naturally, the hives being uniform, and being 

 placed evenly in rows, a great number of virgins are 

 lost unless some distina-uishing sign or mark is 

 made. 



I take a lath and fasten it lengthwise on the 

 cover with a projection of from twelve to eighteen 

 inches over the front of the hive. On the end of 

 tliis I fasten a piece of cloth, forming a flas. The 

 virgin locates her hive by this flag, and hardlv any 

 are lost. 



El Centro, Cal., June 24. A. F. Wagner. 



To Get Combs Built to the Bottom-bars 



I have found that the half-inch bottom-bars men- 

 tioned by Fritz Bohne, p. 339, June 1, do not always 

 result in having the combs built clear down to them. 

 I am going a step further and putting a line of melt- 

 ed wax in the middle of these bottom-bars ; and from 

 preliminary tests I believe it is going to be a suc- 

 cess. The half-inch bottom-bars are a good thing. 



I believe in feeding the bees of a newly hived 

 swarm until they get the combs drawn out, and 

 then they will do wonders if a good flow foUows 

 from the fields soon. 



Jonesboro, Ind. C. A. Nkal. 



Is the Breeding of a Yellow-to-tip Bee an Impossi- 

 bility ? 



I wish to take issue with the editor on page 393, 

 July 1. If by breeding and selection we have ob- 

 tained a bee that shows five bands yellow from the 

 original stock of three band, is it asking too much to 

 expect to eliminate the last dark band? 



Again, the editor says: "Yellow-to-tip bees or five- 

 band bees — according to my light, is only the 

 six-band yellow bee that will be yellow to the tip." 

 Does "to the tip" mean all but the last segment, or 

 does it mean literally yellow to the extreme end of 

 the bee? 



Such a bee is yet to be produced, according to 

 my knowledge ; yet I deem it no impossibility. 



Swarthmore, Pa. P. G. Snydee. 



[As you say, a yellow-to-tip bee is yet to be pro- 

 duced. We have never seen any workers of that 

 sort. We believe that they can be produced; but so 

 long as it seems to be very difficult to raise queens 

 that will produce all or 75 per cent five-banded 

 bees, the prospect for producing six-banded or yel- 

 low-to-tip bees is not very reassuring. By "yellow- 

 to-tip" we mean yellow all over the abdomen. — Ed.] 



Where Did the Eggs in the Queen-cells Come from? 



The other day when working with my bees I 

 noticed that one colony had no young bees nor 

 queens, but I found eggs in five queen-cells. I can 

 not understand where the eggs came from when 

 there were no other eggs in the comb. I watched 

 closely, and found that the eggs never hatched. 

 There was no evidence of laying workers, no drone 

 brood, nor any thing of the kind. I gave the bees 

 of this colony some eggs from another colony, and 

 they reared a fine queen. 



Yeager, Ky. John A. Dambon. 



[This looks as though those eggs had been stolen 

 by the bees from another colony in an effort to rear 

 a queen. There have been many instances of this 

 kind, even in our own apiaries, and it seems hard to 

 explain the presence of the eggs in any other way. 

 — Ed.] 



How Long Does it Take to Find and Clip 100 

 Queens ? 



How long does it take an apiarist to clip queens 

 in an outyard of 100 colonies if it is done at the 

 proper season ? I am supposing that his time is 

 fully occupied, and that he must work at it when he 

 decides to go to the yard. 



Galena, Kan., July 11. J. P. Brumfield. 



[It depends considerably on the skill of the opera- 

 tor, and also upon what might be termed mere luck. 

 The color of the bees has quite a bearing on the 

 matter also. Small queens are hard to find, espe- 

 cially if they are dark. Even under quite favorable 

 circumstances we doubt whether 100 queens could 

 be found and clipped in much less than ten hours. 

 — Ed.] 



Good Year in Spite of Heavy Losses 



I am getting more honey this year than I ever did 

 before. I started with 20 stands in the spring, 

 some of which were very weak, and I have had 

 nine swarms. We had an immense locust bloom ; 

 then the berries and white clover came on, and the 

 bees filled their supers faster than I could get them 

 ready. The white clover is better, and there is more 

 of it this year than for a long time. I have taken 

 off 400 lbs. of honey, and will likely get 200 lbs. 

 more, for all of which I get 16 cts. per lb. 



Cheat Haven, Pa., July 18. Prank Baker. 



