424 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



June IS, 1905 



created extending even to strangers. One perhaps unusual 

 illustration is furnished by a prominent bee-keeper whom you 

 doubtless know by reputation, Mr. Henry Alley, of Jlassa- 

 chuseils. 



When at his home last summer he stated that the season 

 before he sold a qm^en to a lady keeping bees in New York 

 State. At the end of the season she wrote him that she was 

 very well pleased with the queen; it had proved to be the best 

 one she had. This started a correspondence between them so 

 agreeable to both parties of threescore and more years of age, 

 that a few days previous to my visit they were married, and 

 I found them enjoying their honeymoonl 



The Creator gave man dominion over all the creatures he 

 had made, that they might serve mankind, and the man wh 



is able to acrjuirfi that dominion, and use it in harmony with 

 the law of their being, is served and benefited thereby. 



We bee-keepers who understand much about the honey- 

 bee, so wonderfully made and endowed with ability to draw 

 for us such supreme sweetness from the tiny store-houses in 

 which the delicious nectar is found, are able to understand 

 more of the Divine thought and wisdom because it is beauti- 

 fully shown in the life and mechanism of the honey-bees and 

 their queen. 



Our occupation, then, while being a means of sustenance, 

 unlike some others which dwarf the mind and degrade mau, 

 tends to elevate manhood and womanhood to a higher plane 

 of thought and life. J. Kimball. 



) St. Louis Co., Minn. 



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®ur Bee Kcepincj Sisters 



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Conducted by Emma M. Wilson, Marengo, III. 



A New Book : " How to Keep Bees " 



Such is the title of a new book by Anna 

 Botsford Comstook, B. S. In the preface she 

 says: 



" When we began bee-lieepiDg we found the 

 wide range of information and varying meth- 

 ods given in the manuals confusing 



For the sake of simplicity this volume is re- 

 stricted to knowledge gained in practical ex- 

 perience in a small apiary." 



That gives one the expectation of instruc- 

 tion, based mainly on practical experience, of 

 just such character as one needs to begin the 

 business, especially as the sub-title of the 

 book reads, "A Handbook for the Use of 

 Beginners," and the first word of the preface 

 is, "This book has been prepared especially 

 to meet the needs of the beginner in bee- 

 keeping." 



A somewhat careful reading of the first 40 

 pages, and a hasty glance through the rest of 

 the book, hardly fulfills this expectation, 

 rather giving one the impression that the 

 knowledge of the author has been gained 

 mainly through the writings of others, some 

 of those writings being perhaps not as reliable 

 as they might be. For example, on page 29 : 

 " In developing a queen the bees usually pro- 

 ceed as follows : They select the important 

 egg, which differs in no wise from any other 

 worker-egg, and destroying the partitions be- 

 tween its cell and two adjoining cells, give it 

 more room." Bees do not " usually " select 

 an egg from which to rear a queen, " the im- 

 portant egg" being found in a cell which 

 needs no enlarging— a queen-cell, and not a 

 worker-cell. Even in the exceptional case, 

 when in a queenless colony the bees do make 

 a selection, it is a larva, and not an egg, that 

 is selected. Neither would any one who has 

 actually watched the work of the bees say 

 that there was any "destroying the partitions 

 between its cell and two adjoining cells," for 

 no such thing happens. 



The work is written in charming style, its 

 228 pages being printed from beautifully clear 

 type on paper of excellent quality, and it con- 

 tains 31 full-page illustrations that are very 

 beautiful. The general reader will find it 

 nteresting; but as a guide for the beginner it 

 is not to be commended without reservation. 



CaptUFlng Swarms of Bees 



In a recent number of the American Bee 

 Journal I noted an inquiry in regard to the 

 best way to capture swarms of bees, and the 

 answer to same. I am tempted to give a little 

 history of a "method" that was used with 

 apparent success in this vicinity last season. 



My husband is a bee-keeper, and we live on 

 a hill. I say this that you may understand 

 the story which follows : 



A man came to the house of a near neigh- 

 bor and asked the boy, " Does that fellow up 

 on the hill keep bees"' Being told that he 

 does, he said, " Well, I want to put up a box 



in one of your trees. I am going to get a 

 swarm off of him, and I will give you half of 

 the honey they make." 



He put up the box with cross-pieces in it, 

 and smeared it inside with a mixture of honey 

 and sweet anise-oil, assuring the interested 

 youth that he had known bees to desert their 

 hives for a box with this oil in it. 



Well, he got the bees, and, as we had good 

 reason to believe, "off of" my husband. 

 Also, he took good care to come in the night 

 and replace the full box with an empty one, 

 which also caught its swarm. I have heard, 

 from reliable source, that this man had over 

 100 colonies last fall, which he destroyed to 

 get the honey, which he sold, as of course he 

 could afford to do, at a reduced price, thus 

 further injuring honest bee-keepers. 



I should like to have an opinion as to his 

 theory that anise-oil will draw bees. 



Also, have honest bee-keepers no redress in 

 such a case? 



I should add that the bee-keeping industry 

 in our State has not yet reached the stage 

 where apiarists do not consider the swarms of 

 value. We had an extra-good season last 

 year for both increase and honey. Our 17 

 colonies yielded an average of SO sections of 

 honey each, and increased to 36 colonies, only 

 5 of which proved too weak to winter success- 

 fully on the summer stands. Nebraska. 



Saline Co., Nebr., May 11. 



It is a popular belief that bees are attracted 

 by odors, and especially the odor of anise. 



There is very likely some ground for this be- 

 lief, although bees are certainly attracted by 

 sight as well as smell ; for a bee may some- 

 times be seen making a hasty visit to a fiower 

 which has just been rifled of its sweets, a 

 still stronger proof lying in the fact that if an 

 artificial flower closely resembling the flowers 

 upon which bees are working be placed 

 among the real flowers, the bees will also call 

 upon the artificial flower. Admitting that 

 the odor of anise attracts bees, it does not 

 follow that it would make any difference as 

 to deciding upon a place for the lodgment of 

 a swarm, for the search of food is one thing 

 and the search of a home quite another thing. 



The placing of a comfortable hive or box in 

 a convenient location is, however, no small 

 temptation, it being not so very rare an 

 occurrence for a fugitive swarm to locate in 

 an empty hive, even when that hive has not 

 been placed with any view of its offering 

 attractions to prospective house-hunters. 



There is no law against putting empty 

 hives or boxes where swarms may find them ; 

 but our Nebraska sister may without great 

 difficulty make her bees proof against the 

 blandishments of all and sundry empty hives 

 and boxes. One way is to keep close watch 

 for swarms and hive them when they issue. 

 For a swarm will not issue and immediately 

 go to its new abode. It will settle and re- 

 main clustered for some time on some tree or 

 other object, apparently with the distinct pur- 

 pose of allowing the owner time to house it 

 before it sails away to parts unknown. 



A better way is to have all laying queens 

 clipped. Then when a swarm issues it will 

 return, and the owner will have a second, or 

 even a third opportunity to see the swarm 

 when it issues. An afterswarm will he pre- 

 vented by the well-known plan of putting the 

 prime swarm on the old stand with the old 

 hive close beside it, and moving the old hive 

 to a new location a weeic later. 



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V: 



21u\ ^asty s Clftertl^ouijI^ts 



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The " Old Reliable " seen through New and Unreliable Glasses. 

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



Jf 



PLACING SECTIONS IN THE SUPER. 



I'm all torn up in mind again. Dr. Miller. 

 On page 339 you say sections look better 

 when so given to the bees that the lock corner 

 is the bottom corner. Wish you had been a 

 little more explicit as to the xi]hy of that. In 

 setting starters in sections I take a little pains 

 to have the locked corner at the top. Sec- 

 tions filled in that position are much less 

 liable to be pulled apart in handling— a con- 

 sideration which weighs quite a bit with me. 

 Both in pile and in case I want a section to 

 stand the other side up from what it did 

 while being built. I wish this because along 

 the top-bar the honey is pretty sure to be 

 plumped out fuller than along the bottom- 

 bar ; and finger bruises would start little leaks 

 else. Also there are sections that will jar 

 loose from the wood unless bottom side up. 

 And when the honey-vield is poor (a common 

 state of things with me) some sections are 

 not attached to the bottom at all, and lots of 



them only attached an inch or so at one side 

 of bottom. These last would keep me in an 

 exasperated frame of mind while handling 

 honey did I follow Dr. Miller's way. My 

 Hasty jerk tears 'em loose — starts a big leak 

 instead of a finger-bruise leak. The bees 

 (just to pester me, and set a trap for me) 

 won't propolize a lock in a way to improve 

 the holding of it much. The only safety is to 

 have well-attached comb both sides of the 

 lock ; and if the lock is placed at the top I 

 can be tolerably sure of this. 



CUPPING QUEENS AND HUMAN SCENT. 



R. L. McColley is all right to clip his 

 queens so as to keep them from getting the 

 scent of his fingers. That sometimes is quite 

 an important little item. But he still exposes 

 them to the scent of his thumb. Can't he 

 improve his machinery and obviate that also? 

 Or has he discovered that the human thumb 

 is non-odorous? There, now! I've always 



