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40th YEAR, 



CHICAGO, ILL, SEPTEMBER 20, 190C, 



No, 38. 



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Editorial Comments, i^ ^ 



Location for Bee=Keeping. — It is not an uncommon 

 thinff for a bee-keeper to feel somewhat discontented with 

 his location when he reads or hears of the advantages of 

 some other location. But perhaps if all the disadvantages 

 were as clearly set forth as the advantages, he would not be 

 willing to exchange places. The talk upon the subject, on 

 page 600 of this number, by "Uncle Lisha," may help to 

 make some bee-keepers more contented with their lot. 



Do Bee=Keepers' Conventions Pay? is a question dis- 

 cust by G. M. Doolittle in Gleanings in Bee-Culture. As 

 sometimes conducted in former times, with not the best 

 spirit pervading them, he thinks they do not pay. As con- 

 ducted generalh' at present, they are paying institutions in 

 three respects : 



First of all, according to Mr. Doolittle, is the recrea- 

 tion, the social part, when flinging all care to the winds the 

 bee-keeper goes in for a good time, meeting at one time and 

 at small expense a number of his fellows whom otherwise 

 he could not afford to visit. 



Second, to learn from others many things brought out 

 at a convention that would never appear in a book or bee- 

 journal otherwise. Especially valuable are the little pri- 

 vate talks between sessions. 



The third advantage is that of seeing some of the latest 

 improvements in bee-keeping implements. 



Pasteboard Method of Introducing Queens has already 

 been mentioned in these columns. Heretofore the Benton 

 shipping-cage has had a cork in one end and the receiver 

 pulled out the cork so as to allow the bees to eat out the 

 candy and release the queen. Mr. Wardell, the queen- 

 breeder of the A. I. Root Co., hit upon the plan of using 

 pasteboard to cover the hole, dispensing with the cork. The 

 candy comes out clear to the pasteboard, and a line of per- 

 forations allows the bees to reach the candy with their 

 tongues, and then they gnaw away the pasteboard, making 

 the queen's imprisonment lengthened by exactly the time it 

 takes the bees to gnaw away the pasteboard. Editor Root 

 says : 



This method of introducing is no experiment. We have 

 used it in our own apiary for a year back. Mr. Wardell, our 

 apiarist, came to the conclusion that bees were eating out 

 the candy too quickly, and sometimes releasing the queen 

 before they had had a chance to become acquainted with 

 her. He conceived the idea of nailing a piece of pasteboard 

 over the candy, as a restrainer, which, from his knowledge 

 of bees, he thought they would gnaw away. The scheme 

 workt perfectly. He thought so little of the invention that 

 he did not tell me anything about it, and I presume he had 

 been using the method for some 6 months before I happened 

 to blunder on to it — that is, I learned that he had made an 



improvement in the ordinary method of introducing by the 

 candy plan. He continued using it with the greatest suc- 

 cess ; but, as he used it, it was in connection with the Mil- 

 ler cage, which used just the same principle as the Benton. ] 



Early this summer we applied the plan to all the Ben- 

 ton cages we sent out, and the results secured have been 

 uniformly good. By the old plan, after the receiver of the 

 queen had removed the cork, the candy had been so much 

 eaten by the bees, in some cases, after a long journey, that 

 the bees would sometimes release the queen in from 10 to 15 

 hours, which is altogether too short a time ; but now these 

 same bees spend from 12 to 18 hours in eating away the 

 pasteboard before they get at the candy, and at the very 

 least calculation it takes very nearly 24 hours before they 

 can release their new queen-mother, and nine times out of 

 ten it will be much longer. 



I askt Mr. Wardell what percent of queens he could in- 

 troduce safely by this method. 



" Why," said he, " I do not lose any at all." 



"Would it be safe," I askt, " to say in print, that at 

 least 99 percent of the queens introduced by that method 

 would be received and accepted by the bees ?" 



" Why," he replied, " if I were using the Miller cage I 

 think I could guarantee a good deal better than 99 percent." 



We have heard of many methods of introducing queens, 

 but I do not think there has been anything yet devised that 

 is so simple for the beginner and the average person to ap- 

 ply as the candy-pasteboard method. If the Miller cage is 

 used (a flat oblong cage), and the colony has not been queen- 

 less for over four or five days, you can almost guarantee ab- 

 solute introduction. 



Hiving Swarms in Shallow Brood^Chambers is prac- 

 ticed by Harry Lathrop. In Gleanings in Bee-Culture he 

 says he uses these shallow hives temporarily, returning the 

 bees to the dovetailed 8-frame hives after the harvest is 

 over. The season with him is so short that a swarm hived 

 in a full-sized hive takes too long a time to get the hive 

 filled before working in supers. The shallow brood-cham- 

 ber he uses is of the same dimensions as the 8-frame hive, 

 except as to its depth, which is 7 inches, the depth of the 

 frame being '4-inch less. He also has a cheaper arrange- 

 ment which he likes. He says : 



"It is a shallow brood-chamber made of common fenc- 

 ing, and having common lath nailed in the top — no frames. 

 The lath are planed smooth, placed only a bee-space apart, 

 and a close bee-space ('+ -inch) below the top edge of the 

 brood-chamber. The supers of finisht honey come off from 

 these as clean as they were when they went on, even when 

 used without queen-excluders." 



Inexcusable Carelessness is often illustrated in the 

 mail that we receive. For instance, last week, a subscriber 

 who desired his copy of the Bee Journal sent to another 

 post-office wrote us as follows : 



"Please send my paper here. — Howe, Ind. Ter." 



There was no name signed, and the former post-office 

 was not given. We simply have to wait until he writes 

 again. 



A short time ago we received an order for a sample of. 

 honey, with the money enclosed, but no State was given. 

 The post-mark on the outside of the envelop was too indis- 

 tinct to read. Result — we had to wait until the correspond- 

 ent wrote again, asking why he didn't get the honey sample. 



Those who want to do any business with anybody else 

 should never forget always to sign their full name and ad- 

 dress to every communication they write. Or, get a rubber 

 stamp with it all on and use that. 



