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S. Cornell — A covering of enameled 

 cloth amounts to nothing, in the way 

 of retaining heat. Such covers must 

 be covered with some non-conductor 

 of heat. 



Geo. H. Ashby said it made no dif- 

 ference if the cellar were damp, if the 

 temperature were high enough. 



R. L. Taylor had several times tried 

 wintering bees out-of-doors, and they 

 had never wintered so well as in a cel- 

 lar. He had bees in two cellars. One 

 cellar is made under his house. There 

 is a furnace in it, and the cellar is dry. 

 The other is under the barn, and has a 

 cistern in it, and is damp. He could see 

 no difference in the wintering of the 

 bees in the two cellars. There is just 

 this much about it : In a damp cellar, 

 the temperature must be kept higher. 



Adjourned to meet at 7:30 p.m. 



EVENING SESSION. 



The meeting was called to order at 

 7:30, with President Mason in the chair. 

 This session was opened very pleas- 

 antly by the singing of the several 

 bee-keepers' songs. The last one sung 

 Avas the one that appears on page 772 

 of the American Bee Joijenal. This 

 was new, and "brought down the 

 house." It did us good to see the staid 

 and sober President Mason, so far for- 

 get himself as to slap his knees, tip 

 back his head and shake his sides with 

 laughter. 



Slioiild Bee-Keepins' l»e Com- 

 bined M-itli some otiiei- 

 Business ? 



R. L. Taylor— No. We find life none 

 too long to perfect one occupation. If 

 there is added to this regular money- 

 making occupation, some other money- 

 making occupation, there can never be 

 so gi-eat a success. I think I can make 

 more money by choosing some one 

 business, and putting my whole soul 

 and life into it. But my nature rebels 

 at such a course ; there are some other 

 things that I like to do as well as bee- 

 keeping ; so I have sacrificed my love 

 of money for the pleasure of having 

 more than one pursuit. In the 

 summer the bees require close atten- 

 tion, and any pursuit to combine with 

 bee-keeping, must be one that will re- 

 quire but little attention at that time. 

 Small-fruit growing, that has been so 

 often mentioned, is a very poor one. 

 In many places, grape-growing, or the 

 raising of pears or plums would work 

 well with bee-keeping. But the ques- 

 tion always comes back to me : "If 

 bee-keeping is so profitable, why not 

 keep more bees ? Or, if it is not pro- 

 fitable, why follow it at all ?" If a 

 man does his work in the winter as he 

 ought to, he can care for 300 colonies 

 of bees. 



Mr. F. H. Maepherson, of Beeton, 

 Ont, then read the following essay : 



^*^**»'^ — '^ 



Skippins: <tneens. 



The most that I can say on this subject 

 will probably not be new to the majority 

 of you, but as I shall detail the system 

 practiced in our own apiary, there may be 

 some points which may interest even the 

 older heads who have perhaps had a great 

 deal more experience than myself. 



I take it that the point in the queen- 

 breeder's work— where my subject shall 

 properly commence — is when he has his 

 queens mated and ready to forward in ful- 

 filment of the various orders received or 

 expected. 



The three principal items for considera- 

 tion are: 1. The cage. 2. The food. 3. 

 The mode of caging. I shall discuss these 

 in the order in which I have named them, 

 as it appears to be their natural sequence. 



The Cage, — It requires to be light, strong 

 and free from absorbent qualities. We have 

 made them from pine, cedar, balsam, 

 spruce and basswood, and like them in the 

 order named. Pine seems to conform to all 

 the requirements named, better than any 

 of the others ; cedar is light, but not so 

 strong; balsam is light, soft, not liable to 

 split, and a good non-absorbent, but with us 

 it is not easily obtainable; basswood is 

 strong and less liable to split, but it has 

 the disadvantage of absorbing moisture, 

 and will soon become sour, unless kept in a 

 dry atmosphere ; spruce is light, but it is 

 usually hard and flinty, and is very liable 

 to crack. 



The shape of the cage has not so much to 

 do with successful shipping, as has the ven- 

 tilation ; and I am of the opinion that a 

 good many queens are lost through over- 

 ventilation. It is surprising to notice how 

 little air will suffice. 



Another fruitful source of loss is from the 

 sudden change of temperature when in the 

 mails. This may, to a great extent, be 

 overcome by wrapping the cage in a single 

 thickness of ordinary manilla-paper. 



The immediate requu-ements of every 

 cage are— a sufficient space in which to 

 place the queen and the attendants, and 

 another space in which to put the food, so 

 connected with the first that the queen and 

 her retinue may get at it as they require, 

 and yet not become fastened in it, or 

 daubed by it. 



The Food.— This is probably the most 

 important item connected with the 

 whole business of shipping queens — the 

 "weal or woe" of more queens depends 

 upon thi.s than upon all other things com- 

 bined. There are, perhaps, as many differ- 

 ent kinds of foods made and recommended 

 as there ai-e different methods of curing 

 bee-stings, but. as in the latter case, what 

 proves of service to one is of no account 

 with another. 



We have tried many different mixtures 

 with varying results. The "Good" candy 

 seems to be generally recognized as having 

 merit, and our success with it hasbeen fair. 

 We have also obtained uniformly good re- 

 sults from the use of a food made after the 

 following formula : 



Take absolutely-pure granulated sugar 

 and pulverize it. Put it in a gi-anite dish 

 and pour over it enough pure houey (first 

 having heated the honey to a little" below 

 the boiling-point), to thoroughly saturate 

 it, and stir the mass until the sugar and 

 honey are well mixed. Then place the ves- 

 sel in hot water, in which it should be al- 

 lowed to stand (keeping the water about 

 the boiling-point) until the sugar and honey 

 bccouie thoroughl3' incorporated. When 

 cool it will be found quite waxy. It will 

 not melt and run easily, and the bees take 

 it very kindly. 



During the past season we have sent out 

 many hundreds of virgin queens, and the 

 work of preparing the food as given above, 

 was more than we cared to undertake for 

 such a large number. We also desired a 



ess costly food. We received in the spring 

 from Mr. W. P. Henderson, of Tennessee, a 

 half-dozen young queens which reached us 

 in a fine, healthy condition, and which ap- 

 peared to be fed on pure honey, and we felt 

 that Ml-. H. was practicing the plan we 

 wanted. 



We ascertained from him that he used 

 short-staple raw cotton, just from the gin, 

 after being separated from the seed, which 

 he saturated with the ripest and thickest 

 honey that he could get, and which he 

 then placed tightly in the trough of the 

 cage, to keep it from leaking and bedaub- 

 ing the bees. 



One pound of the raw cotton holds suffi- 

 cient honey for a thousand cages, at a cost 

 of ten cents for the cotton. During the 

 season we shipped nearly all our queens on 

 food prepared in this way, and we found 

 that in the majority of instances they 

 reached their destination in splendid con- 

 dition. 



I wish to particularly emphasize the idea 

 that nothing but the purest of sugar should 

 be used— adulterations of this article have 

 cost us the lives of a good many queens. 



Mode of Cagixg.— Complaints are some- 

 times heard, of queens which do not lay on 

 introduction after arrival at their destina- 

 tion, even though they may have been 

 good layers before being shipped. The 

 treatment of queens before shipment, and 

 the mode of handling when caging, has a 

 good deal to do with this trouble. If a 

 queen be taken out of the hive when she is 

 actively engaged in egg-laying, there is 

 considerable danger of injury, through 

 close confinement and through the jarring 

 and shaking which she will receive in the 

 transportation by mail, and we have known 

 such queens to cease laying almost entirely 

 after a long journey. The remedy for this 

 is, to allow them to rest a day or two be- 

 fore shipment. 



We have seen students, in catching 

 queens, take hold of them by the abdomen 

 or the head. This is detrimental in many 

 cases to the egg-laying qualities of the 

 queen, especially it any pressure is exerted. 

 She should always be caught by the wings, 

 and held only as short a time as possible. 



They should be handled very carefully 

 and gently, so that they may not become 

 excited, and on being taken from the hive, 

 they should at once be transferred to a 

 dark spot as near the temperature of the 

 inside of the hive as possible. If allowed 

 to remain in the hot sun, they receive what 

 we might call a sort of sunstroke, and their 

 egg-laying qualities seem to be impaired. 



We generally ship queens by a mail, 

 which leaves late in the day, antl, if possi- 

 ble, we always like to have the (lueens 

 caged, and placed in a dark room for two 

 or three houis before they are seut off. 

 They aire thus less excited, and stand the 

 journey better. F. H. Maci'heusox. 



E. R. Root showed and described the 

 Benton shipping-cage. One trouble, 

 he said, with the Peet cage, is that the 

 space is too large, and one side is of 

 tin. This allows the bees to slip about 

 too much. They had been using the 

 Benton cage, with the best of success, 

 the past season. After much expe- 

 rience, they had found 20 liecs were 

 about the right number to put in the 

 cage. Thej' had arranged the Bentou 

 cage so that it might also be used as 

 an introducing-cage. He had watched 

 the matter closeh", but had seen no 

 proof that queens are injured by .shi])- 

 ping immediately after caging. 



Adjourned to meet at 8:30 a.m. 



