104 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



niake it a commodity of general demand and 

 ready sale. Can bee-keepers do this ? If so, 

 there is no limit to the business of honey-pro- 

 ducin.:. If not, the business is already over- 

 done. 



Tlie best way to Introduce queens. 



Mr. Nellis— reconiraended removing the 

 queen and all queen cells at 7 days, dislodging 

 the bees from Jirood comb, for the latter pur- 

 pose. Ho rolls tlie queen in honey and drops 

 her into tlie liive. By this metliod he does 

 not lose more than one queen in 200, and in 

 case of loss, it can be traced to some careless- 

 ness. Does not favor caging queens. When it is 

 done, slie will be likely to starve, unles.'s she 

 has access to food independent of tlie bees. 



Mr. Doolittle— Tliere is great loss in a hive 

 being 7 days witliout a laying queen. I make 

 a square wire-cloth cage, open on one side. 

 The open side he ravels out. and after putting 

 in the queen, he presses it into the lioney at 

 the side of a comb. With a small knife makes 

 a hole througli tlie comb, which admits only 1 

 bee at a time. The queen soon ncquires the 

 scent of the bees, and generally :> hours is all 

 the time required to introduce a queen. 



Mr. Nellis — Seven days' time secures more 

 empty space for the queen to lay in, and calls 

 out her full capacity. Without this space she 

 is only partially employed, flence there is 

 not so much loss by this method. 



Mr. Betsinger— It is a great loss and brings 

 the brood too late to be of much value to the 

 apiarist. I favor the immediate introduction 

 of the queen by Mr. Doolittle's method. 



Mr. Gates— I favor the smearing of the 

 queen with honey from the hive, and her im- 

 mediate introduction. By the time the bees 

 have cleaned her she has acquired the proper 

 scent and is recognized by the bees. 



Others favored this method. Mr. Clarke had 

 had failures by it only in August. 



Mr. House— August is a bad season for in- 

 troducing queens. 



Hoxv do bees reduce their honey to the nice 

 article after it is capped over f 



Mr. Doolittle— .\11 know that honey is usual- 

 ly in this thin condition when first deposited. 

 The bee that brinjjs it in does not deposit it. 

 It. is given to the young bees. At night all the 

 bees take this honey into their honey sacks 

 and eject it out, and draw it in through the 

 probocis, until the honey is reduced to the 

 proper consistency. This process causes the 

 well known roaring in the hive, which is 

 heard at night in the honey season. 



Mr. Betsinger— The amount of honey gather- 

 ed in tlie flush of the season is too great for 

 the bee to dispose of in this way. 



Mr. Doolittle— All that is not disposed of 

 daily in this manner is left deposited in cells 

 until time is found for its reduction. After 2 

 or 3 rainy days the cells are all capped over. 



Mr. Nellis— All manipulations and changing 

 from cell to cell is for the purpose of evapora- 

 tion. The temperature of the hive favors it. 



Mr. Betsinger— The young bee's business is 

 to make wax, and this passage of honey back 

 and forth through the proboscis is for this 

 purpose. 



Have blacks qualities superior to Italians"/ 



C. D. Jones— I always found Italians the 

 best honey gatherers. 



Mr. Warner — I had the same experience. 



Mr. Nellis— Black bees work better in buck- 

 wheat and build thicker comb. These are the 

 only two points of superiority I observed. I 

 think black bees cap thicker and farther from 

 the honey, thus giving it a white appearance. 



Mr. Perry— I know of no point in which the 

 Italian is superior to the black. 



Mr. Bacon— My experiedce shows the black 

 bee to be hardier, and to run out the Italians. 



Mr. Doolittle— The running out of the Italian 

 is simply because the blacks in the country so 

 much predominate in numbers. 



Mr. Jones— I see no superiority in the black, 

 even in getting buckwheat honey. 



Mr. Betsinger— The black bee is superior, it 

 does not swarm so much as the Italian. 



Mr. House— I like a grade of about % Italian 

 and % black. 



Does a swarm ever issue without a queen? 



Mr. Phillips— Had no experience of this kind. 



Mr. House— I never knew a swarm to issue 

 without a queen. 



Mr. Betsinger— Had bees swarm without a 

 queen. Tried to prevent swarming by des- 

 troying the queens, but they swarmed just 

 the same. 



Mr. Bacon— Had similar experience; keeps 

 black bees. 



Mr. Nellis— ^By breeding from stocks least 

 disposed to swarm, the tendency to swarm 

 can be greatly reduced. 



Mr. Betsinger— I once thought so, but the 

 last season had dispelled that idea. 



Mr. Doolittle— Last season I had no swarm- 

 ing without a queen, unless there was already 

 in the air a swarm having a queen. 



Mr. Betsinger— I had a swarm go ofTwithout 

 a queen but returned, I think, for that reason. 



Adjourned to 1 :30 p. m. 



A paper by Dr. J. P. H. Brown, of Georgia, 

 on "The Purity of the Italian Bee," read and 

 ordeied printed with the minutes. 



Is comb foundation advantageous ? 



Mr. EUwood— Had not much experience. As 

 far as he had, he failed, but his foundation 

 was not perfect. Think that bees do not inake 

 comb of wax but of a material that is changed 

 into wax when they build comb. They can 

 use wax in limited quantity, but not to advan- 

 tage for the entire building of combs. 



Mr. Nellis— 1 have tried it. Weak stocks do 

 not build on it in time of scarcity. Strong 

 stocks begin to lengthen out the cells. They 

 first thin the bottom of the cells of the foun- 

 dation. Queens avoid if. size of the cells may 

 have had something to do with this. It was 

 readily used for storing honey. Tne cells were 

 a medium between drone and worker cells. 

 The weather was cold wiien I tried the first 

 experiment. In warm weather 1 met with 

 the best success. 



Mr. Betsinger was unsuccessful with it. 



Mr. Bacon called for the reading of a com- 

 munication from J. P. Moore, which appeared 

 in the American Bee Journal. Mr. Moore 

 said that foundation was a failure, and that it 

 would be better, if we had a supply, to melt it 

 up and sell the wax. Artificial foundation is 

 not worth over 10c. per ft, if natural costs 50c. 



Mr. Gates— I cannot get my bees to accept it. 



Mr. Bacon— Melted comb is not comb but 

 wax, and more indigestible when melted and 

 manufactured into artificial foundation. 



Dr. Marks concurred in this opinion. 



Mr. Moore endorsed both. He considered 

 comb more digestible than wax. 



Mr. Wright— Bees slight artificial starters 

 while tiiey build on natural. In some cases 

 they tear the artificial down. 



The President— The fact that some artiflcal 

 foundation is composed largely of paraffins 

 might account for its rejection by the bees; 

 tbey might accept it if made of pure wax. 



Mr. Nellis— I would not use it for box-honey. 

 It is '>'good for extracted honey, and is advan- 

 tageoias in discoui aging brood rearing. If 

 used for box honey, it must be made of pure 

 wax, equal to natural comb, or it will injure 

 the sale of box honej'. 



Mr. Doolittle— I have tried to make artificial 

 foundation a success. It sasged badly. Nat- 

 ural comb would be accepted and filled and 

 finished while the artificial remained un- 

 touched. This was made of paraffine. I tried 

 wax artificial foundation. The bees accepted 

 it but did not fill out the comb perfectly. A 

 few boxes were filled. It cut badly with a 

 knife, and ate worse. Once in the mouth, the 

 foundation had to be gotten rid of, it could not 

 be swallowed. 



Mr. Bundy advocated its use in the brood 

 chamber to avoid drone comb. To get all 

 worker comb built is sometimes difficult. 



