482 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



July 30, 



A double super is placed on a suitable place, and one end 

 raised sufficiently to admit the bees, which are shaken o£f in 

 front, and the queen and cage inserted at No. 3. Cover the. 

 super, and let the bees become well settled, then remove the 

 parent hive, placing the newly-hived swarm on its stand, and 

 the parent brood-chamber on top, letting the super remain on 

 top if a super had previously been put on before swarming. 



On the fifth day, if you want to supersede the old queen, 

 and you want to breed from the same colony, cut out all 

 queen-cells but the largest and best cell ; take the cage and 

 queen out of the now pretty well filled super with honey, and 

 insert a section in its place. Put the brood body on the bot- 

 tom-board, and the double super on top, and the former super 

 on top, and continue to tier up as the case demands. If the 

 caged queen is to be returned, open the cage and let her run 

 in at the entrance with a puff of smoke, and as for that col- 

 ony, its swarming for that season is completed. 



Some one may ask the question. What of all this extra 

 fixing of hives, supers, and caging of queens ? Why not cage 

 the queen and return the swarm, as is the practice of many 

 apiarists? Or, better still, hive them in a new hive, and stick 

 to the old plan of moving the old hive day after day ? My an- 

 swer, then, is, that there are three principal factors in the 

 production of comb honey that are worthy the apiarist's 

 closest observation in these times of honey failures, namely, 

 more surplus, or money, with less expense and less labor. 

 My method reduces the expenses justone-half. To illustrate : 



My 25 colonies, each casting a swarm and hived in 25 sep- 

 arate hives, my number has doubled ; but if hived as in my 

 method, we have but 25 colonies, and all who have any 

 knowledge of bees, know that a natural swarm will build 

 more comb and store more honey when first hived than at any 

 other period in the same length of time; consequently, a 

 swarm hived as per my practice, one gets all that swarm's 

 comb and honey in surplus instead of brood-combs, besides 

 saving the cost of 25 hives, frames, comb foundation and win- 

 ter stores ; besides the extra labor it would require. There- 

 fore, it is not necessary to take up further valuable space to 

 illustrate the other good features of the method that will prove 

 to the producer that no other method practiced will compare 

 with it in the one feature of comb honey production in quan- 

 tity alone. 



Having experimented with the two-queen system and 

 other methods, I know that the above practice will prove a 

 bonanza. Try it. Eeinersville, Ohio, July l-i. 



^ 



Xenophou's "Houey-Poisoued " Army. 



BY F. L. THOMPSON. 



With Prof. Cook's opinion, on page 372, I am unable to 

 agree. He says: " I much questioned this account should 

 have the least influence in forming the opinion of any careful 

 investigator." Ashe uses the expression, " the old account 

 from Xenophon, I think," it seems he has not read the ac- 

 count himself. 



Xenophon plainly says that all who ate the honey lost 

 their senses, and did not regain them until the next day about 

 the same hour, recovering on the third and fourth days as if 

 from the effects of a drug. The soldiers did not come upon 

 bee-hives only, as "Novice" ^eems to suppose on page 373, 

 but encamped in many villages abounding in provisions, 

 where there were many hives. Doubtless in many, perhaps 

 most, cases the honey was not eaten alone, but with other 

 food. Yet all were afifected who ate at all. (If we accept the 

 theory of Novice, that the pollen was poisonous, it must have 

 been distributed with great regularity.) Besides the usual 

 effects of Indigestion, no one was able to stand upright; those 

 who had eaten a little seemed very drunk ; those who had 



eaten much appeared crazy, and a few seemed to be dying. 

 Such an account is imperfectly reported by saying that Xeno- 

 phou's soldiers ate poisonous honey and became very sick. I 

 never heard of delirium, much less invariable delirium, at- 

 tending mere indigestion, however severe. 



Independent evidence of Xenophon's correctness is given 

 by several travelers quoted in the appendix of Vollbrecht's 

 Anabasis, who say that the honey of that region (part of the 

 southern coast of the Black Sea) still possesses the same prop- 

 erties, described as " benumbing and intoxicating," while the 

 honey itself is known as " mad honey." The plant from 

 which it comes is said to be the Azalea jiontica. 



It will be noticed that Prof. Cook's theory, that natural 

 selection would prevent either the nectar or the pollen from 

 being poisonous, at least to insects, and Mr. Parson's theory 

 that what is poisonous to bees is poisonous to man, conflict with 

 Novice's theory that pollen may be poisonous to man. I would 

 like to ask, for information, whether it absolutely never hap- 

 pens in nature that what is one animal's meat is another's 

 poison. At least, to imply that those poisons known as "col- 

 loids" have the same effect on all animals seems to me, 

 though no scientist, assuming a great deal. What do our bee- 

 keeping doctors say ? Without knowing anything about it, 

 the first thought that struck me, on reading what Mr. Par- 

 son's says about " affecting the bee's tissues," was that this 

 could only apply to crystalloid poisons, which have the prop- 

 erty of passing through membranes. 



I thus display my ignorance in order that those who know 

 may set us all right. Arvada, Colo. 



Afterswarms — Preveation aud Treatment. 



BV CHAS. DADANT 4 SON. 



Mr. Editor : — One of your subscribers writes to ask us 

 what we do with aflerswarms, and our advice on the matter. 



We consider that an afterswarm is valuable only for its 

 queen, which is always a young one. Otherwise, in our 

 locality, they always come too late to be of any practical use, 

 the crop being nearly at an end when they issue, and the old 



adage — 



" A swarm in May is worth a load of hay, 

 A swnrm in June is worth ;i silver spoon. 

 But a swarm in July. i3 hardly worth a tiy," 



is very true here. 



A very great trouble with afterswarms is their unstabllity. 

 Sometimes they contain several queens, aud will alight in two 

 or three clusters, and after you have harvested one of these 

 and congratulated yourself upon having secured Wie queen 

 you are very much astonished to see the other clusters leave 

 for the woods. Sometimes they will not even settle when first 

 issuing. This .is very probably owing to the fact that the 

 young queen is not fertilized, and has gone off to mate, the 

 bees following her. These runaway swarms give more trouble 

 than they are worth. Very often, after you have stopped 

 them at great exertion, by throwing a spray of cold water on 

 them and have hived them, they unceremoniously leave the 

 hive in which they were put, and disappear. 



The only way that we know of to prevent the issue of 

 afterswarms, is to o^ien the hive after the departure of the 

 first swarm, say five or six days later, and remove all the 

 queen-cells but one. It is best, however, to examine the hive 

 immediately after the first swarm has left, as the young 

 queens may be hatching already. But it would be of little 

 use to depend upon the destroying of the queen-cells at that 

 time only, for the hive contains fresh eggs and young brood 

 which they may use to build new cells for five or six days 

 afterwards. 



Even with all the care that one may take to destroy the 

 superfluous queen-cells, the hive may send forth a second 

 swarm either because some cell has been overlooked, or be- 



