May 24, 1900. 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



329 



probably the true reason. When a queen is reared in the 

 hive there is a break in the laying that throws the colony 

 out of its normal condition as to eggs and brood, resulting 

 in no swarming. But he says this break, to be effective, 

 must come not earlier than 10 to IS days before the main 

 honey harvest begins. And with this break of 10 to 20 

 days duration, even an old queen will not swarm. 



Do Not Keep Virgin Queens Away from tlie Bees. 



G. M. Doolittle thinks that where the right temperature is 

 maintained it may do to keep queen-cells away from bees, 

 but he is quite sure it is bad to keep virgin queens at any 

 time without the immediate touch of worker-bees. He says 

 in Gleanings in Bee-Culture : 



" About IS years ago I had a mania for introducing old 

 virgin queens to nuclei, so that I might be able to send off 

 queens to the trade much faster than by the cell plan, giv- 

 ing one of these old virgins to a nucleus at the same time 

 that I took a laying queen awaj'. Then I also sent virgin 

 queens to other parties to have them mated and returned to 

 me, and out of scores tried for the different purposes I never 

 had one single queen thus treated live two years, while very 

 many of my other queens, which were in immediate touch 

 with the bees at all times, live to be four and five years old. 

 At that time I had ' growls ' from my customers regarding 

 the short lives of some of the queens purchast of me ; but 

 since I adopted the motto of ' No queens but what the bees 

 cared for all the time,' I have had no complaints of inferior 

 queens in any respect." 



Improving tlie Stoclc of Bees is a matter that seems to 

 have more attention given to it lately than ever before. 

 J. B. Hall thinks it worth while to take such pains in select- 

 ing and breeding as to make his queens cost a good deal. 

 His plan is given in the Canadian Bee Journal as follows : 



" I have a record slate on every hive ; I have the age of 

 the queen, when she was dipt, and when I saw her last. I 

 use the letters A, B, C — C is killed at once ; B is killed when 

 I can do so profitably ; A we don't breed from ; A 1, we do 

 sometimes ; A I X we breed from ; A I X X we mark to rear 

 queens from the next year. I could not rear them to sell 

 that way unless I got 2 or 3 dollars each for them." 



Do Bee= Keepers Want Adulteration to Stop?— Com- 

 menting upon the 12 carloads of adulterated honey turned 

 out in 60 days, that was reported in Gleanings in Bee-Cul- 

 ture, the American Bee-Keeper says : 



"The injustice to honest producers resulting from such 

 wholesale adulteration must be apparent to all, as it must 

 also be that our plain duty is to stop it. It is not as if we 

 had no representative organization to deal with such prob- 

 lems ; in that case the matter would indeed be serious. We 

 may congratulate ourselves on having an efficient associa- 

 tion at this time ; and its board and executive staff being 

 composed of men eminently qualified to guard our interests 

 with vigilance and tact, should be a source of satisfaction 

 and confidence. The case rests with the producers them- 

 selves. Shall we exterminate the offenders and reap the 

 full rewards of our labor, or shall we indifferently permit 

 the very foundation of our industry to be stealthily with- 

 drawn by those engaged in the illegitimate practice of 

 adulteration ?" 



Bingliam's Expansive Hive. — T. F. Bingham, of 

 smoker fame, describes in Gleanings in Bee-Culture the 

 hive he has been using for many years, as follows : 



" This is composed of 7 tight-end frames clampt or lasht 

 together with a wire link or loop which is tightened bj' a 

 stick which spreads the link, thereby shortening it so as to 

 hold firmly the movable sides against the frames, render- 

 ing the whole practically a box which rests on a loose bot- 

 tom-board having on either of its two edges a square strip 

 y>i inch by 24. These strips leave an entrance the length of 

 the sides of the hive. Above this hive is a clamp_(or super) 

 holding 18 one-pound sections. 



" That is all there is of the hive. If not large enough, 

 any number of just such hives and clamps of sections may 

 be set under or over it to suit conditions." 



C. B. Bankston, of Rockdale, Tex., judging from sev- 

 eral reports we have received, is accepting money for queens 

 which he does not send. When written to afterwards it 

 seems he makes no reply. So far as we have noticed he is 

 not advertising in any of the bee-papers this year, but has 

 advertised in other years. We give this word of caution so 

 that our readers may be careful not to send him any orders 

 unless they know that he is in business and doing all right. 



♦ # « * * 



THE BOY WITH THE SPADE. 



No weight of ages bows him down. 

 That barefoot boy with fingers brown. 

 There's nothing empty in his face. 

 No burdens of the human race 

 Are on his back, nor is he dead 

 To joy or sorrow, hope or dread. 

 For he can grieve, and he can hope. 

 Can shrink with all his soul from soap. 



No brother to the ox is he, 

 He's second cousin to the bee. 

 He loosens and lets down his jaw — 

 And brings it up — his gum to " chaw." 

 There's naught but sweat upon his brow, 

 'Tis slanted somewhat forward now. 

 His eyes are bright with eager light. 

 He's working with an appetite. 



Ah, no ! That boy is not afraid 



To wield with all his strength his spade ! 



Nor has he any spite at fate — 



He's digging angleworms for bait ! 



— Chicago Tribune. 



* * * * * 



Don't Crowd Your Advkktising Space. — There 

 should be plenty of white space in an advertisement, and 

 that white space should be well distributed and clean look- 

 ing. Don't let your advertisement look choked for breath- 

 ing-room. Ventilation in an advertisement suggests health- 

 fulness and prosperity, a liberal-mindeduess that it will be 

 a pleasure to meet in a business way. An advertisement 

 which looks as tho its owner was afraid some little quarter 

 of an inch of space would be paid for without being utilized 

 puts the prospective customer in an unconscious attitude of 

 dealing with a close-fisted merchant. — Profitable Advertis- 

 ing. 



A Furnace in a Bee-Cellar is all right, according to J. 

 B. Hall in the Canadian Bee Journal, if there is a brick wall 

 between the furnace and the room containing the bees. 



"A Solar Wax=Extractor With Bottom Heat is no 



new thing in California. E. H. Schaeffle has devised and 

 uses an extractor that uses solar heat on the bottom thru 

 reflection." — J. H. Martin, in Gleanings in Bee-Culture. 



To Introduce a Valuable Queen, W. B. Ranson gives 

 the following in Gleanings in Bee-Culture : 



"Take a large Benton cage and provision it, and put 

 the queen in it all alone. Take out the queen from the col- 

 ony to be requeened, and at the same time pick off from the 

 combs 12 or IS young bees just hatcht ; put them in a cage : 

 wait a moment for these babies to crawl over the queen and 

 scent her with their damp feet and wings. Now pick off 

 another lot, a little older, and put them in, and in another 

 minute pick off a dozen still older, say those old enough to 



