1896. 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



185 



about bees, but wheu he knows nothing about grapes it's carry- 

 ing matters a little too far. Did ever any one see a bee 

 " thrust the tongue through " " near the attachment of the 

 berry with its stallc ?" The tongue is delicate as a camel's- 

 hair pencil. Just try pushing the latter into a grape " near 

 the attachment " or anywhere else. Besides that, if he had 

 ever seen grapes worked upon by bees, he would invariably 

 have found that they were working through a perforation 

 made not " near the attachment," but right through the part 

 farthest away, the perforation being made by birds or wasps 

 before the bee can have the slightest effect upon It. 



The "essence of meanness" is to have a colony of bees 

 without providing a nice little posy bed 10 feet square for 

 each colony, so that no bee would ever go 10 rods from 

 home ' 



Now will Meehan's Monthly do the ame?idc 7io7io7'aii(c by 

 telling its readers no bee can puncture a grape at any part ; 

 that bees fly in all directions a mile or more from their home, 

 and would be likely to pay little attention to flowers planted 

 close by their hives ; that they more than pay for all the i ec- 

 tar they gather by means of the aid they give in fertilizing 

 the flowers; that an acre of flowers planted by the bee- 

 keeper would not ensure that the bees would keep away from 

 a vineyard within half a mile ; that bottles of sweetened 

 liquid would not prove very effective ; that so far as they did 

 trap bees, the man who should hang them up would be guilty 

 of a criminal act, and liable to prosecution ; and that it is 

 sorry such stuff ever got into its usually reliable columns ? 



A many-^amed Honey-Plant.— A " stray- 

 straw " in Gleanings reads thus : "Shamrock, the national 

 emblem of Ireland, is nothing more nor less than our much- 

 valued white clover. It is worn in honor of St. Patrick, who 

 is said to have plucked a leaf of this plant to represent the 

 Trinity. The botanical name is Trifolium repens. It is also 

 called Dutch clover, white trefoil, white meadow trefoil, 

 creeping trifolium, creeping clover, stone clover, honeysuckle- 

 grass, honeysuckle-clover, and, in Germany, sheep-clover, 

 field, bee, and little clover. The French name is triplet, 

 trefle blanche, or blanc; Spanish, trefol bianco; German, 

 weisser Klee ; Italian, trifoglio." 



CONDUCTED BY 



DR. C. C. MIILLER, JiLARETfGO, ILL. 



(.Questions may be mailed to the Bee Journal, or to Dr. Miller direct] 



Feeding Bees Short of IStores. 



I expect to put my bees out the first day of March, if it is 

 not too bad weather. I have them in a good cellar made pur- 

 posely for bees, but they are very light. Yesterday my bees 

 flew — five colonies that I had out-doors this winter. I have 

 71 colonies all together. How can I feed them ? Honey is 

 scarce around here this spring, but some of my bees have 

 more honey than they need. They are all in patent hives. 

 Would it do to take a frame from those that have lots of 

 honey, and put it into another hive ? Is home-made molasses 

 good enough to feed them, and light brown sugar ? 



C. W. A. 



Answer. — It will be all right to take a frame from the 

 colonies that have too much and give to the others. Home- 

 made molasses and brown sugar will do to feed as soon as it is 

 warm enough for the bees to fly every two or three days. In 



fact, when bees can fly all the time you can safely feed them 

 anything they'll take, if it isn't actual poison. But when they 

 cannot fly there's nothing better than sealed honey. When 

 you can't have that, use a syrup of granulated sugar. It 

 wouldn't be best to feed syrup in the middle of the winter, 

 but it's all right for spring. Use the crock-and-plate method 

 that has been described in back numbers. Fill your crock 

 half full of granulated sugar, then fill up nearly full of water, 

 cover the crock with one or two thicknesses of woolen cloth or 

 six thicknesses of cheese cloth, lay a plate over it upside 

 down, then turn the whole business upside down, crock, plate 

 and all. Set it on top of the frames, and set an empty hive 

 over it so the outside bees can't get in. 



Bees Dying — Use of Foundation — How 9Iany 

 Supers to tipc Colony i 



1. One of my hives is exposed to the full rays of the sun. 

 The other day it was very bright, although the temperature 

 was 82 below freezing, yet a goodly number of bees left the 

 hive, whether to explore, or what, I don't know. Many of 

 them never returned. They were frozen, apparently. Now 

 what is troubling me is whether those bees would have died 

 any way, or whether I should shelter the hive to prevent them 

 dying so suddenly. 



2. Would you advise a beginner to use full sheets of foun- 

 dation in getting combs, or follow Doolittle's plan, as given 

 recently ? 



3. la working for comb honey, how many supers would 

 you advise per colony ? Cakniolus. 



Answers. — 1. While many of those bees may have been 

 of such age that they would soon have died inside the hive, 

 I'm afraid some of them in full vigor were enticed by the 

 bright sun to their death. So it might have been better if the 

 hive had been shaded. 



2. That's a hard question to answer. Opinions differ. 

 Gravenhorst, high German authority, says that the bees will 

 do about as well without foundation as with it for the first 

 five combs, but after that it is best to have foundation. Tak- 

 ing into account the great length of time that the combs are 

 to last, and the straight and true combs one can be sure of 

 with foundation, and all worker-cells, I prefer to use full 

 sheets of foundation. But I'll not quarrel with those who 

 think differently. If any difference is to be made on account 

 of one's being a beginner, I should certainly say that the be- 

 ginner has the stronger reason for using full sheets of foun- 

 dation. 



8. Circumstances control that entirely. Last season I put 

 one super on each hive. And that was one too many. Some- 

 times five or more are needed. When a super is about half 

 filled it's time to add a second. And when there's only about 

 half a super of empty space in the two supers that are on, 

 both taken together, then it's time for a third, and so on. In 

 general it's well to have ready in advance about twice as 

 many supers as you'll need for an average season, for the 

 coming season may happen to be one of the extra-good ones. 



Fire in the Bee.Cellar. 



I have 100 colonies of bees in a damp stone cellar. The 

 first part of the winter (before we had any snow) the tempera- 

 ture was 34^', then as the snow began to gather around the 

 building it rose to 38'J, and now it stands at 40^. I put a 

 small coal-stove in the cellar, and built one fire in it, which 

 raised the temperature to 50", but the next day it was back 

 to 403 again. The bees have plenty of splendid honey, and 

 are quiet, with no signs of dysentery, and very few dead bees 

 on the cellar-bottom. The temperature will probably go a 

 little higher as the snow gets deeper. Would it be best to 

 make a fire occasionally, or run one most of the time, even if 

 it keeps the temperature up to 50^? I never kept them in 

 this cellar before? E. T. 



Mapleton, Maine. 



Answer. — It isn't easy always to tell without trying, just 

 what is best. The thing that's wanted is to keep the bees so 

 they will be in the quietest condition possible without being 

 too cold. For even if bees are in very bad condition, you can 

 quiet them down considerably by running the temperature 

 down below zero. The air of the cellar should be pure and 

 sweet, with no smell of diarrhea. Now if you can manage to 

 keep a constant fire in the cellar so as to keep the same tem- 

 perature all the time, and have the bees very quiet, then you 

 better keep the fire going all the time. Cellars differ, and 



