Jan. S, 1905. 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



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IViv. f)a5ty'5 

 Clftcrtl^ougf^ts 



' Old Reliable " seen through New and Unreliable Glasses. 

 By E. E. Hasty, Sta. B Rural, Toledo, Ohio. 



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The 



LATE HONEY NOT ALWAYS DARK. 



Sooner or later somebody will " shoot off his mouth " 

 and say that late honey is always more or less dark. Frank 

 Hinderer's experience, page 778, can be stowed away as 

 ammunition to shoot back at him. Honey as white as 

 honey ever gets, being stored when frost cuts it off. We'll 

 not be able to say that this is very common, I reckon. 



EXTRACTING FROM COMBS CONTAINING BROOD. 



I wish to thank Mr. S. B. Smith for his kindly support 

 in the matter of extracting from combs containing brood. 

 You see, sometimes a fellow feels lonesome and skittish 

 when he atttacks an old and stubborn evil which has a mul- 

 titude of defenders. Much the better way to make our 

 champion /eel that there is somebody at his back, rather 

 than remark at his funeral that you always rather admired 

 the way he sailed into giants and things. Page 779. 



"ENGLISH AS SHE IS WRIT" — " PAWS " HERE. 



Here's advice that that editorial scrimmage about good 

 and bad English, and the paws, be allowed to pause before 

 it extends to very many counters. Has been claimed that 

 there exists a being reputed to have claws — and he be- 

 wilders, and oft captures, him who pauses among his clauses 

 with a well-worn but always serviceable proverb : " The 

 man who isn't a fool part of the time is a fool all the time ". 

 Well, I don't claim to be ministering in his name exactly 

 (critic might say so perhaps), but I incline to parallel his 

 favorite saw. "The man who doesn't write bad English part 

 of the time writes bad English all the time — makes it so 

 stupid and inane in its faultessness that nobody would read 

 it if he could get rid of it. Or, if you prefer to get the thing 

 clear down to hard pan, most of that which is assailed as 

 bad English is not bad — only different from the usage of the 

 linguistic Pharisees. The object of language is to make 

 people understand. Do that one thing and pretty much all 

 conducing thereto is English, neither more nor less. Eng- 

 lish is that whereby live people convey live ideas to other 

 live people. Concentrated tincture of grammar-book and 

 dictionary passed from mummy to mummy through a dry- 

 weed stalk— that's not English. Page 819. 



FOUL BROOD AND BLACK BROOD. 



And here is something which we do not positively know 

 as yet, but which is valuable as one of the working theories 

 to account (it may be) for puzzling differences in bee-dis- 

 eases. "Some other microbe, which, in conjunction with 

 Bacillus alvei, changes the general character of the disease 

 so that it gives rise to ' black brood '." Page 728. 



SAWING OFF SWARMS ON TREES. 



I, for one, regret that so elaborate a set of views illustrat- 

 ing swarming as that of E. R. Root, should show the clus- 

 ter sawed off. The net result of its exhibition will be to 

 confirm a prevalent blunder — evil — nuisance — which is too 

 well established already. Our folks have sawing off "on 

 the brain ". Of 1000 swarms which will be cut off bough 

 and all next season, we may be tolerably well assured that 

 500 could have been taken easier by shaking into a basket — 

 to say nothing of the other advantages of so doing. Sev- 

 eral hundred of these cuttings off will represent quite an 

 amount of damage done fc neighbors' property, with con- 

 sents very regretfully given — or, worse yet, cut the bough 

 first and ask permission afterward. Full 400 will be more 

 or less shaken off and scattered in the process of cutting 

 off. And 300 will be spilled, in whole or in part, on the 

 road to where they are wanted. Besides this, bees in a 

 basket are much more easily ladled out at just the proper 

 rate as they are wanted. Some 700 of the 1000 swarms will 

 rush around in wrong directions while being hived, simply 

 because too many have been dumped down all in a heap. 

 The cutting off process, when it is a complete success, is a 

 spectacular success (that's what ails us,) makes the outsiders 



stare ; but I take it we are not in the business for the pur- 

 pose of making people stare. Of the minor reforms which 

 we need this is one of the more desirable ones— that getting 

 a cluster into a basket or other receptacle the first thing 

 shall be recognized on all hands as the regular yra.y, a.ud 

 all cuttings off exceptional. Page 787. 



MR. DITTMER AS NO. 3. 



Foundation maker No. 3, with a year's output of 25,000 

 pounds — pretty well done for Mr. Dittmer. Some ot us 

 maybe would have guessed him down to No. 12 or No. 20. 

 Page 788. 



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X)octor Znillcr's 

 Question '- Box 



Send Questions either to the ofSce of the American Bee Journal, 

 or to Dr. C. C. Miller, Marengo, 111. 



Keeping Bees in the Woods— Swarming. 



J 



I have 60 colonies of bees that have been very much 

 given to swarming, and as they stung the baby badly last 

 summer I must move them out. I think of putting them in 

 an open place in the woods, near the main road, but hidden 

 from it by low pines and cedars on all sides. They are all 

 in 10-frame Jones hives, frames 13 inches deep and 11 inches 

 wide inside, with one story put on for extracted honey, hav- 

 ing 12 or 13 frames the same size as the above, and a zinc 

 bottom-board nailed to it. How will they do in the woods, 

 and how shall I manage without any one to hive swarms ? 

 They are packed in large four-hive clamps, and remain in 

 the sawdust packing all summer (and winter). 



Ten yards from the woods, at the home yard, the squir- 

 rels destroyed several supers full of pollen combs last win- 

 ter, and gnawed right through top-bars I'/ix/s- Then the 

 Indians often camp in the corner of these woods about 10 

 rods away, and might learn to steal the honey, or even the 

 bees, and also white hunters that are constantly passing so 

 near. 



I have twice tried to keep down natural swarming in 

 the yard by forced swarming, but they only swarmed the 

 more. Last year I made one out of two strong ones, a la 

 Langstroth method. Move A to a new stand C, and most 

 of the brood from B in its place. 



I have not clipped very extensively any year, but have 

 thought of doing so if I put them in the woods. I usually 

 put on the supers in- apple-bloom, having two or three 

 frames of brood in them to coax the bees up. Next spring 

 I think I will put the queen up also, having her clipped, and 

 at least half the brood. 



In " Forty Years Among the Bees " (page 188) you say 

 that it is no little work to look through the colonies every 

 10 days. I got a pointer from a neighbor farmer bee-keeper 

 in regard to this. He remarked that if the hive were tilted 

 back and a little smoke blown in, the cells could usually be 

 seen at a glance by a practiced eye, and this fact was con- 

 firmed at our Toronto bee-keepers' convention by Mr. 

 Hoshal. You would probably find a higher stand more con- 

 venient, say those same 6inch boards on edge and on four 

 flat stones, and the Van Deusen clamps to prevent supers 

 slipping off when tilted back too suddenly. Ontario. 



Answer. — A place so surrounded as you describe by 

 timber ought to be a capital place for wintering bees, and 

 the better shelter ought to make up for the possibly shorter 

 hours of work on some days. You are right that there must 

 be careful protection against squirrels, and especially 

 against their getting a stai/. I suspect that a squirrel will 

 hardly begin »gnawing where it can smell nothing, although 

 I don't know. If there is danger of their gnawing their 

 way in at the entrance, coarse wire-cloth, three meshes to 

 the inch, would be a good thing. 



It was a mistake to try to keep down swarming by early 

 forced swarming. The later the better, only so that it is 

 done before the bees swarm naturally. 



The Langstroth plan of making swarms by transposing 

 will postpone swarming ratlier than prevent it. 



If you think of putting the queen in an upper story over 

 an excluder, better try it on a small scale, for I'm pretty 

 sure you'll not like it. But clipping should be tried on a 



