June 21, 1900. 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



391 



CONDUCTED BY 



DR. C. C. MILLER. Marengo, ni. 



[The Questions may be mailed to the Bee Journal office, or to Dr. Miller 



direct, when he will answer them here. Please do not ask the 



Doctor to send answers by mail.— Editor. 1 



Perhaps Pickled Brood. 



Enclosed find sample of brood taken from the bees this 

 morning', only one colony is affected. 



1. What is the trouble with the brood ? 



2. What is the cause and cure ? 



3. If no cure, what shall I do with the combs and hive ? 



Iowa. 



Answers. — 1. I suspect it is a case of pickled brood. 



2 and 3. Old and bad pollen is supposed to be the chief 

 factor in producing' the disease, and as your bees by this 

 time have plenty of fresh pollen, the disease may disappear. 

 The leaflet on pickled brood will tell you about all that is 

 known about the disease, but these bee-diseases are some- 

 times very serious matters, and I am not an expert in them, 

 so it would be well for you to send a sample to Dr. Howard. 



Moving and Italianizing Bees. 



I have five old-style box-hives of black bees, and want 

 to move them 20 miles, change them to Langstroth hives, 

 and Italianize them. How must I do all this work, and 

 when must I go about it ? Mississippi. 



Answer. — It would take more space than the printers 

 would allow me here to answer fully your questions, which 

 you will find mostly answered in your text-book on bee- 

 keeping. Other things being equal, the sooner all isdone 

 the better, altho you may do better to let the bees swarm 

 before transferring, putting the swarms in new hives, and 

 transferring 21 days after swarming. The chief thing in 

 moving is to see that the bees have abundant ventilation, 

 by means of wire-cloth at the entrance and on top, having 

 the frames run across the wagon. If you don't mind night 

 work, the bees will suffer less to be moved at night. 



Queen-Cell Questions. 



1. On page 103 (1899), F. L. Thompson says when you 

 are cutting ai/ the queen-cells you can shake the bees off 

 the combs. What I want to know is, in what way does it 

 injure the young queen in the cell to shake the bees off the 

 combs ? Would shaking the combs do in place of cutting 

 cells ? 



2. Under what conditions is a queen-cell protector nec- 

 essary ? Wisconsin. 



Answers. — 1. The young queens in the cells are very 

 tender at certain ages, and a rough shake might produce 

 death, or, what in some cases might be worse, such an in- 

 jury that defective wings or legs might restilt. If this latter 

 should happen, you can see that shaking would not do in- 

 stead of cutting out cells. 



2. It is necessary when you want to give a cell to bees 



that are not queenless, or that are not yet conscious of their 



queenlessness. Also, when more than one cell are in a hive, 



and you do not want the first queen that emerges to destroy 



the others. 



* • »■ 



Transferring Bees and Rearing Queens. 



Ten miles from here I have now four colonies in Lang- 

 stroth frames, two in one place and two more a mile away. 

 May 27 I went to see them with extra hives, etc. At J. W. 

 Foster's my colony swarmed May 11. They put it in a box. 

 About May 24 they came out again, but went back. How 

 many other times they swarmed nobody knows. There were 

 about a dozen empty queen-cells in the hive. I could not 



find a queen or an egg, only brood ready to hatch, and about 

 a tablespoonful of honey. Now this is what I did : 



I transferred all the bees out of the box by driving, and 

 shaking the balance on the open top of a new hive. I then 

 placed a super on both hives and divided the comb, putting 

 it in the supers of the two hives. I expect the bees to take 

 an egg from that comb and put it in a queen-cell and thus 

 supply themselves with a queen. At W. Ferguson's I divi- 

 ded my colony May 17 ; both colonies were storing honey. 

 They had only brood-chambers. One had no queen or eggs, 

 or sign, as I could see, so I exchanged a couple of frames 

 so they could be sure to have eggs with which to rear a 

 queen. 



This is the way I save my swarms from absconding : 

 When I imagine they are about ready to swarm, I transfer 

 them by placing a new hive on top of an old box with the 

 queen with half or more of the bees. I don't see any use in 

 using an extra box and handling them twice. 



Washington. 



Answer.— I'm not sure I fully understand your per- 

 formance, except that the bees had empty queen-cells and 

 also had eggs, and you expect the bees to take an egg from 

 a worker-cell and put it in a queen-cell. They'll fool you— 

 sure. I never knew a case where queenless bees did such a 

 thing, and never heard of one. But they will proceed to 

 rear a queen from a larva in a worker-cell by feeding it 

 properly and enlarging the outer part of the cell. The 

 brood being in the super, the young queen will be reared in 

 the super. 



You are entirely right to drum bees directly into the 

 new hive without first driving them into an extra box. The 

 latter plan is only necessary where the new hive has a fast 

 bottom, or where the hives are so much unlike in size that 

 one can not be made to fit on the other. 



What to Do to Stop Robbing Bees. 



What are some of the methods employed by experienced 

 bee-keepers to stop robbing ? The " A B C of Bee-Culture " 

 says, " Contract the entrances," but that does not seem to 

 stop it. 



Will Mr. Mclntyre's trap (described on page 254 of the 

 "ABC of Bee-Culture,") work where several colonies are 

 being robbed, and a person has no honey-house, or any such 

 place, to which to take the robbed colonies ? What is the 

 slow process of robbing which he refers to but does not ex- 

 plain ? California. 



Answer.- In probably the majority of cases robbing 

 starts with a colony that is queenless and of little value. 

 Robbing such a colony may be hindered for a time, only to 

 be commenced again as soon as your back is turned, and in 

 the end you will not save the weakling. You may as well 

 break it up. If there are enough bees and brood to be worth 

 saving, give to some other colony, and take away most of 

 the honey, but do not take away all, and do not take away 

 the hive. Leave the hive for the bees to work away at, 

 and when they have finisht the last drop of honey in it they 

 will keep on for a little time, and then quietly leave. If 

 you take away the hive, they will pitch into another hive 

 near by, and perhaps master that. 



If the colony has a queen and is worth saving, you may 

 beat the robbers in this way : Pile straw or hay at the en- 

 trance and continue it up to the top of the hive and around 

 the sides ; in fact, bury the hive in straw, and keep the 

 straw sprinkled with water until the robbers give up. 



Mr. Mclntyre's trap is not generally used in connection 

 with a honey-house, but if anything of that kind is needed 

 an ordinary cellar will do. ' 



I do not recall what he means by slow robbing. 



Yield of Buckwheat Honey. 



How many acres of buckwheat will it take to pasture 

 100 colonies of bees ? Wisconsin. 



Answer.— Any guess upon the matter will probably be 

 very " rough " indeed, and I will leave it for some one else 

 to make. M. Ouinby estimated that an acre of buckwheat 

 would yield 25 pounds of honey a day. If we estimate that 

 it would take from 5 to 10 colonies to gather this, it would 

 take from 10 to 20 acres to pasture 100 colonies. But there's 

 a great difference in the yield of buckwheat. In some places 

 it is quite reliable ; in others it fails oftener than it yields 

 nectar. 



