154 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL, 



March 8, 1900. 



An Old Colony. — A. Tobias has a colony that has been 

 in the same hive continuously without intermeddling for 50 

 years. — L,eipzg. Bztg. 



nilk=Feeding in Spring is the best to stimulate brood- 

 rearing, where pollen is lacking, says Dr. Dzierzon in 

 Leipz. Bztg. Fresh milk is boiled and made very sweet, 

 especially at the beginning, and fed in old combs in the 

 open air. 



Winter Bee-Flights seem not desired in Germany. 

 Lebrecht Wolf says in Deutsche Illustrierte Bztg. that 

 formerly it was thought to be a good thing if the weather 

 allowed a flight in January ; but now it is generally con- 

 sidered a disadvantage to have a flight in December, Janu- 

 ary, or the first half of February, and every effort is made 

 to prevent it. 



The Need of Air for Bees increases with the tempera- 

 ture. A bee was sealed in a little glass tube, which was 

 placed in water, and by means of ice and hot water kept at 

 a fixt temperature. For lack of air the bee became stupe- 

 fied, and revived on being allowed fresh air. At 100° it was 

 suffocated in 11 minutes ; at 85° in 22 minutes ; and at 60° in 

 109 minutes. — Pfaelz. Bzcht. 



No Wax-noth in Colorado is the statement of R. C. 

 Aikin in the Bee-Keepers' Review. He says : " At our 

 conventions many have askt about the moth, and it is a 

 fact that I have never found moths here, nor any apiarist 

 that even knows the moth, unless having made its acquaint- 

 ance elsewhere. Combs can stand anywhere here for years, 

 and never a wax-moth." 



Frank Rauchfuss says : " The claim of Colorado honey 

 being infested with moths is amusing, as there are no wax- 

 moths in existence in this State." 



Introducing Queens — R. Beuhne says in the Australian 

 Bee-Bulletin : 



" For introducing queens from my own nuclei I simply 

 take _ the queen from the nucleus with the comb and bee's 

 she is on, and exchange for a comb with brood, bees and 

 queen (if there is one), from the hive she is to be introduced 

 to. For a queen received by mail I take one frame of bees 

 and brood from each of four or five colonies, about noon 

 (taking care to leave the queens behind), and put them into 

 a hive with contracted entrance on a new stand, and put 

 the new queen amongst them, at dusk. 



!Z3 A Good California Report.— F. E. Brown, secretary of 

 the Central California Bee-Keeping Association, gives the 

 Hanford Sentinel an interesting account of the bee-keepers' 

 experiences for the year in his section — the San Joaquin 

 Valley : 



PpASES OF THE Ye.^r.— The season of 1899 was a very 

 successful one fbr the bee-keeper of this (Kings) county, as 

 it was the best season for the production of honey that we 

 have had in the past 10 years. The honey-flow commenced 

 early in June and flowed steadily until late in September, 

 and was quite general over the county. However, there 

 were some localities that did not fare quite so well as others. 

 The most favored parts of the county the past season were 

 the eastern and southern, while the western did better than 

 the northern. However, this is not usually the case, as the 

 northwestern portion of the county has a good record for 

 quality, which, as a rule, is darker than that produced in 

 the part south of Hanford. 



c^ Along with the good work that the bees have been doing 

 the past season, the Central California Bee-Keepers' Asso- 

 ciation has also accomplisht a good work, and as a result 

 the man who has a good start in the bee-business can look 

 the world square in the face this winter, and is not afraid 

 that he will be called upon to pay a bill that he cannot meet. 



r^ Co-operative Marketing.— The Bee-Keepers' Asso- 

 ciation has this season marketed its own honey and bought 

 its cans and cases by the carload, thus keeping within its 



ranks a great saving, which has heretofore helpt to flush 

 the comforts of the buyers, as we can market our honey a 

 great deal cheaper than the buyer would want for his part. 

 We have demonstrated beyond doubt the fact that we can 

 save $10 on every ton which we have to market, which 

 means a net gain to the association for the past season of 

 $1600. Is it anj' wonder that there are so many buyers in 

 the field wanting our honey to speculate upon ? 



We can save at least 5 to 10 percent by handling our 

 own cans and cases. Then, by being associated together, 

 we are better prepared to grade our honey, which gives it a 

 better appearance. Heretofore we have bought our cases 

 anywhere and everywhere, no two cases being the same or 

 of the same weight, and there was always difficulty in ad- 

 justing the tare. 



The Crop. — Kings County, for the season of 1899, pro- 

 duced and handled thru the association, 13 cars of extracted 

 honey, or 162 tons, which netted the producers something 

 over $19,000. The association shipt in and used 5 carloads 

 of cans and cases, the honey being mostly sold f.o.b. Han- 

 ford and Guernsey, and shipt to Chicago, Boston, New York, 

 Kansas City, Philadelphia and San Francisco. 



The coming season promises to be another good one for 

 the honey-man, and there is a good swarming season ex- 

 pected. 



Oil in Beeswax. — A Straj' Straw in Gleanings in Bee- 

 Culture is as follows : " The Leipziger Bienenzeitung re- 

 ports that some foundation made of pure wax 10 years old 

 was very brittle. A few drops of linseed oil were mixt with 

 the melted wax, and then the foundation was all right. [I 

 am not surprised that foundation 10 years old should be 

 brittle — at least if it were of the old process, which it un- 

 doubtedly was ; but if the foundation under consideration 

 was melted up again, and then workt up again into founda- 

 tion, it would be soft and pliable whether linseed oil were 

 melted up with the wax or not. I am of the opinion that 

 linseed oil had nothing to do with it. Anything of an oily 

 nature should be left out of the wax, otherwise the bee- 

 keeper will have a mess on his hands some day when the 

 weather is pretty warm. — Ed.] 



Dr. Mason Invading Critic Taylor's Preserve. — If Dr. 



Mason doesn't^ keep a sharp lookout, he will stray over the 

 fence into Critic Taylor's foraging ground. In the last 

 number of the Bee-Keepers' Review, he quotes the assertion 

 that bees do not and cannot move and redeposit eggs, only 

 to give his own assertion in positive contradiction, saying, 

 " Several years ago one colony of our bees did move and re- 

 deposit several eggs, and they hatcht, and from one of the 

 redeposited eggs they reared a good queen." In another 

 place he takes a whack at Doolittle because Doolittle pokes 

 fun at his use of " locality." For this latter one can not 

 blame him, for however much we may joke about the laying 

 everything to locality, there is no disputing the fact that 

 the one who reads bee-literature without ever taking local- 

 ity into account, is likely to get into a quagmire. 



The Busy Bee well deserves its name. A. Astor fed a 

 markt bee which workt from 6 a.m. till 5 p.m., making 110 

 trips a day, and kept it up for 12 days. But it aged terribly 

 in that time. — Revue Int. On the other hand Prof. Hodge's 

 bees workt only 3'i hours a day. [Now, if we had a 

 national experiment station, or experiment station of any 

 kind, in this country, making bee-keeping a specialty, here 

 would be a nice field for investigation ; and there would be 

 something practical to be learned from it, too. For in- 

 stance, what strain of bees make the greatest number of 

 trips in a daj' ? and does the amount of honey depend upon 

 the number of trips ? Perhaps some bees have larger 

 honey-sacs as well as longer tongues. — Ed.] — Stray Straw 

 in Gleanings in Bee-Culture. 



A Refutation of the niller=Experiment as to larv^ 



chosen for queens occupies the whole of Critic- Taylor's 

 space in the January number of the Bee-Keepers' Review. 

 Perhaps " refutation " is hardly the word. "Review" is 

 what Mr. Taylor calls it, unless the heading be written by 

 the editor. At any rate, Mr. Taylor follows up different 

 points to show that instead of Dr. Miller having proven 

 what he supposed wa^ proven, the exact opposite was 

 proven, and closes by saying : " The Doctor's experiment 

 is very valuable ; but principally because it establishes the 

 fact that this method of queen-rearing is neither desirable 

 nor safe." 



