470 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



July 26, 1900. 



be he's rig-ht ; but somehow it doesn't hit me yet. at least 

 does not hit me fj7("(-/'/z'f/j'. I use about the same chamber 

 for both, and /«/£■«(/ to put heavy combs enoug-h below in 

 the fall to make wintering- safe. But, then, my field excels 

 in late fall flows. It does look as if the handling of half- 

 stories, which Mr. A. tells of, was excellent for an out- 

 apiary where swarming must be fought to the utmost. Page 

 387. 



BEE-P.\R.\I,YSIS— " SWEBT-CLOVERING " WORN-OUT I,.\ND. 



Adrian Getaz is of interest on the subject of paralysis, 

 page 389. Camphor checking it, but also giving flavor to 

 the surplus, and as one has to keep intermitting his remedy. 

 Especially noteworthy is his opinion that old queens will 

 eventually get to lay infected eggs, to the utter ruin of the 

 colony. Of course, the natural remedy in that case would 

 be to keep the colonies supplied with young queens. If 

 guesses were allowable in such serious investigation I 

 should guess that some young queens would get their 

 ovaries aflected, and that some old ones would escape. 

 However, " All young queens " is not a bad motto, even 

 where paralysis does not prevail. 



His scheme of buying worn-out land for a trifle, getting 

 it set in sweet clover, and then selling it at a rise looks 

 fascinating. But there used to be a fable the moral of 

 which began — 



" All ye who would your trades forsake. 

 Take waruing' from ray sad mistake.'' 



No doubt the buying of the land would go merrilj'. 



WINTER EXTRACTING OF HONEY. 



H. D. Burrell sounds rather extreme on winter extract- 

 ing 90 degrees of temperature for 48 hours ; but may be it's 

 practical. Page 390. 



ACTION AND NON-ACTION OF STUNG ANIMALS. 



We seem likely to find in the end that animals of vari- 

 ous kinds, under very severe stinging, will sometimes run 

 violently, and sometimes refuse to stir at all. Page 395. 



CEMENT-COATING WIRE-NAII.S. 



Some will be quite glad to know that they can cement- 

 coat their own wire-nails by such a simple process as that 

 on page 398 — just a snuflf of finely powdered rosin sprinkled 

 on them when they are hot enough to begin to look blue. 



CONDUCTED BY 



DR. O. O. MILI^ER. A/areng-o, 111. 



(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.! 



Sweet Clover as Hog Pasture- Salting Bees. 



1. What do you know about sweet clover for hog pas- 

 ture ? I note what Mr. Boardman says about it in " A B C 

 of Bee-Culture." 



2. I have two watering devices for bees as prescribed in 

 "ABC of Bee-Culture." These are kept supplied with 

 fresh water, and each morning I sprinkle salt over the 

 boards. The bees are there thick. Is there any danger of 

 overdoing- the salting ? Iowa Joe. 



Answers. — 1. I have no personal knowledge as to the 

 value of sweet clover as hog-pasture, and will cheerfully 

 yield the floor to any one who has. I suspect, however, that 

 it may be a matter somewhat of training with hogs, as it is 

 with horses and cattle. There are places where I've seen 

 sweet clover growing along the roadside unmolested, while 

 stock had eaten down all the grass about it. Yesterday I 

 saw some places of that kind in a drive of S miles, but I saw 

 more places where cows had eaten the s'weet clover close to 

 the ground. One fact about sweet clover I do not remem- 

 ber to have seen mentioned often. It is that stock seem to 

 learn to eat the dry sweet clover hay more readily than the 



green plant. My horses eat the green plant very sparingly, 

 but will come at call out of green pasture and munch down 

 the dry hay greedily. Possibly if conditions were reverst, 

 and plenty of sweet clover were growing in their pasture 

 instead of almost none, they might show a different prefer- 

 ence. About a ton of pure, sweet, clover hay was put into 

 my barn this suinmer, and most of it is gone already. I 

 wi^h I could have the mow filled with it. 



2. It is not likely that you can get bees to take more 

 salt than is good for them. 



Questions on Swarming. 



I had a swarm of bees July S, and hived it all right, and 

 the next day (July 6) I had another from the same hive. Is 

 that a simple occurrence, or something extraordinary ? 

 Both swarms had a queen, and another was left in the cell 

 in the hive. Illinois. 



Answer. — In the great majority of cases, the first 

 after-swarm will not issue till more than a week after the 

 prime swarm. Then the after-swarms, if more than one, 

 will follow in quick succession. In your case the two 

 swarms were practically after-swarms, altho there may have 

 been no prime swarm. About June 27 was the time for the 

 prime swarm, and it may have issued and the queen was 

 lost, or something may have happened to the queen at the 

 time the prime swarm issued, and the swarm may have re- 

 turned. Or, there may have been no preparation for 

 swarming at all, and by some means the old queen was 

 killed. In that case there would be several queens reared, 

 and if everything were favorable for swarming you would 

 have just what happened in your case. 



Wants ttueen-Rearing Directions Explained. 



On page 408 is an editorial beginning with heavy type, 

 " Say what you mean." If Mr. Pridgen had done this 

 in all parts of his prize article on queen-rearing publisht in 

 the same number, so that a novice could get clearly his in- 

 tended meaning, it would not have been necessary to have 

 troubled you to make one particularly obscure passage 

 clear. I have read it, and re-read it, perhaps 25 times, 

 hoping it would clear up, but it is still Greek. The passage 

 I refer to is on page 403, viz : 



" If one is making a business of queen-rearing he should 

 keep a colony at work as cell-starters [Is this colony to be 

 queenless?] Fill a body [hive I suppose] with combs of 

 brood [any bees ? or a queen ?] and place it oi'er [Italics 

 mine] the colony selected [for cell-starting, I presume] with 

 an excluder between. [Where is the queen which is to be 

 excluded, above or below ?] Twelve days later [why 12 

 days ?] place this bodj' on a bottom-board [which body, the 

 top or bottom one ?] minus the most of the board, with wire 

 cloth tackt on as a ventilator. [That's certainl3' lucid 

 enough.] Stop the entrance so that no bees can escape." 

 [What becomes of the excluder, which was belo%v this body, 

 when it was on top of the other ? Neither are any direc- 

 tions given for the disposal of the other body !] 



I will thank you to rewrite the above paragraph, if it 

 will not be regarded as a breach of etiquette on the part of 

 the Bee Journal, which I presume is under obligations of 

 courtesy to the author for the privilege of publishing the 

 article referred to. 



In conclusion, I beg to say that it is the plain duty of 

 those who, being familiar with a subject, and undertaking 

 to enlighten the reading public by publishing treatises, 

 should gravely weigh every item of the subject-matter, 

 eliminate all obscurities, and make it so plain to the way- 

 faring man that he might go and do the thing taught. 



Apis Mellifica. 



Answer. — It is no breach of etiquette whatever to try 

 to make clear anything not fully understood in the columns 

 of this journal, and Mr. Pridgen would be one of the last to 

 find fault with anything of the kind. He has shown a very 

 commendable inclination to make known to others the 

 things he has learned no doubt after much hard thinking 

 and experimenting, and has made no light contribution 

 toward progress in queen-rearing. It should be remem- 

 bered, however, that it is much easier to find fault than to 

 give the remedy, and many a one who might find some 

 cloudiness about Mr. Pridgen's instructions might not be 

 able to write with greater clearness. It should also be re- 

 membered that Mr. Pridgen is an expert in the line of 

 queen-rearing, and the matters about which he writes are 



