June 29, 190S 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



453 



is the man who is in such a case. Cultivate the home market, 

 but — and lot the cities " go to grass." 



•'THINGS NOT SOLD FOR CASH!" 



I must ask Mr. Davenport and others not to fire any more 

 old chestnuts at me. I am not keeping bees now for the 

 things I would not sell for cash if I could. I got enough of 

 those things in the early days of my bee-keeping, but I will 

 not deny that there is still a charm in the hum of the bees in 

 the apple-tree bloom. I am keeping bees now mainly for 

 revenue. But just as I have gotten the business up where 

 there ought w be considerable revenue in it, the revenue has 

 fallen out of the business. The bee-supply makers and deal- 

 ers, the commission men and the railroads, get the revenue. 

 I work for nothing and board myself. What am I going to 

 do about it? X think I'll join The Honey-Producers' League. 



UNITING AND WINTERING WEAK COLONIES. 



In Coleman's "Rural World" a writer on bee-keeping 

 says : 



"Uniting two or more colonies in spring to make a good, 

 strong one looks very plausible, but it does not work out in 

 practice." 



No? My way of uniting weak colonies in spring works 

 out very well in practice. 



When the honey-flow begins, and I find I have some weak 

 colonies and some of moderate strength, I rob as many as 

 needful of their brood, and fill those of moderate strength 

 with combs of brood. vSometimes I take away all of the 

 brood of the weak colonv, and sometimes I leave the comb on 

 which the queen has done her latest laying. Supers are im- 

 mediately put on the strengthened colonies. Work goes on in 

 the hives of the robbed ones, and I have some colonies for the 

 fall harvest. 



To winter weak colonies in the way and at the time which 

 the writer above-mentioned probably had in mind is worse 

 than useless. One must necessarily deprive himself of the 

 work of one queen if 2 colonies are united, and of more than 

 one queen if more than 2 colonies are merged into one. Then 

 the bees thus added are so old they will not be likely to live 

 long enougfh to be of much use as honey-gatherers. By the 

 method I use we have the work of all the queens all the time. 

 . The frames of brood can be put in other hives at the beginning 

 of the honey-flow, and utilized for a time as dummies, and 

 then the bees from them will add to the working force of the 

 colony right in the midst of the honey-flow. 



Decatur Co., Iowa. 



Distinctive or Individual Odors of Bees 



BY AKTHUR C. MILLER 



DOES or does not a colony of bees possess a distinctive, 

 individual odor, one differing from that of another col- 

 ony ? So many happenings in the regular course of the 

 daily work with bees can be explained by an affirmative an- 

 swer that it is currently given, but is it correct ? 



When honey is being stored freely it is an easy matter to 

 unite bees of different colonies or introduce alien queens, but 

 the instant the flow stops difficulties are experienced. Under 

 such circumstances, when all bees and combs are in a sense 

 saturated with the odor of flowers of some sort, we should not 

 meet with any hindrances, if the theory is correct. It will 

 not do to affirm that the individual odor — or body odor, if you 

 prefer — is more potent than the honey odor, because we know 

 that when the flow was on, we met with no trouble, and if 

 such odor existed at all, it must be as potent during the flow 

 as the day after. 



If the odor of a bee announces to the guards of a colony 

 that she is an alien, why do they pounce upon her in one case 

 and not in another? If the alien odor is an excitant to the 

 guards, why do they permit a laden alien to enter? If the 

 odor of bees from an alien colony stirs the guards to attack, 

 why do they permit alien drones to enter freely, for surely 

 drones must possess the home odor (if it exists) as much as do 

 their sisters ? And it should be noted that the presence of an 

 abundance of alien drones does not help their sisters to a 

 friendly reception. Why are very young aliens accepted 

 anywhere at any time ? Has their youth prevented their 

 acquiring any home odor? 



If home odor guarantees a bee full freedom of her own 

 hive, why do the bees ball their own queen when they chance 

 to be overhauled at some inopportune time? In the excite- 

 ment does she drop that gauzy-tissued garment, odor ? If 

 odor is a vital, or even an important, factor in the introduc- 

 tion of alien queens, why is a queen introduced by caging 



sometimes killed despite the supijosodly acquired odor? Or 

 why is a queen run in free, under one of several conditions, 

 not killed? The first is supposed to have acquired the odor 

 of the receiving colony and the sciond has not. If the bees 

 recognize an alien queen by her 'idor why will they, with 

 their own queen free in their midsi, accept any number of 

 queens we choose to give ? Or why will they sometimes ball 

 their own queen when she returns "to them after a few min- 

 utes chance separation ? 



It may be asked why the bees of different colonies do not 

 intermingle more frequently if odor is a slight factor. 

 Chiefly, I believe, on account of their wonderful sense of loca- 

 tion. They will "home" if it is possible to do so. When 

 conditions interfere with this, they readily gain access to some 

 other colony. I recently saw an excellent illustration of this. 

 A colony of " golden " bees stood near the windward end of a 

 row of colonies of dark bees, and the bees of the former had 

 distributed themselves all through the leeward colonies, the 

 colony next to the goldens containing a lot of them, the next 

 not quite so many, and so on down the row. The prevailing 

 southwest winds did the distributing, and the other colonies 

 freely received the aliens. Perhaps golden bees have no odor, 

 or mayhap the dark bees had colds. 



Many of these things occur too frequently to be logically 

 called exceptions, and others can be so regularly and uni- 

 formly produced by the apiarist as to make the odor theory 

 uDtenable. It is one of those beliefs accepted almost without 

 question because our grand-daddies said so. It may be right, 

 but, if so, how will we explain the multitude of exceptions ? I 

 believe the explanation is to be found in the attitude of the 

 individual bee, the so-called " alien." I have satisfied myself 

 that the queen's attitude governs her reception, and it is 

 logical to assume that the same law applies to the workers. 

 If a worker possesses senses so keen as to guide her from the 

 fields to her home and direct her in so many, to us, intricate 

 and obscure labors, it is quite reasonable to assume that these 

 same acute senses quickly acquaint her with the presence of 

 strange or unfamiliar surroundings, whereupon she is in- 

 stantly on her guard. Her actions then govern her reception. 



Providence Co., R. I. 



# 



Seasonable Manipulation of Colonies 



BY G. .M. DOOLITTLK 



IT was with great interest that I read the questions by 

 "Pennsylvania," and Dr. Miller's answers thereto, found 

 on piges 210 and 211, for they couched on something that 

 has very much to do with the successful ending of the honey 

 season for the apiarist. 



In Dr. Miller's answer to question S, he tells us regarding 

 the number of times the hive containing the colony which 

 gave him 300 sections of honey— the largest yield he has ever 

 obtained from one colony — was opened, and what he did at 

 each time he opened said hive. My method of working for 

 comb honey has been condemned very many times, as being 

 one requiring much " fussing " and manipulation, but if I 

 ever opened any hive having a colony in it which was worked 

 for section honey as many times during one season as the good 

 Doctor says be did that hive, I do not recollect the same. 

 Certainly, Dr. Miller does not train with the Hutchinson, 

 Townsend, Alexander, etc., class, who believe in working 

 bees with only two or three visits to an apiary each year, 

 claiming that an extra number of colonies with little atten- 

 tion is better than a less number with manipulation. And, of 

 course, I am on the Doctor's side. And why should I not be ? 

 None of these "many colonies with little manipulation" 

 recommenders ever reported a yield of 300 sections of honey 

 from a colony in a single season, nor anything like it, as far 

 as I can remember ; nor is their average yield of section 

 honey aLywhere near up to those who " look after the best 

 interests of the bees and themselves." 



But I note in Dr. Miller's answer to question 3, that he 

 thinks I may enlighten the readers of the American Bee .Jour- 

 nal regarding how I manipulated the colony which gave me 

 309 pounds of section honey in one season, the same being 30 

 pounds greater (in pounds) than that secured by the Doctor. 



Like him, I opened the hive in April to see if the queen 

 was clipped, and to know that there was honey enough to last 

 them till the flowers bloomed. Then, about May 10, the hive 

 was opened and the brood reversed. That was done by put- 

 ting the frames at the outside of the brood-nest in the center, 

 and those in the center on the outside, so that in a few days 

 all frames having brood in them would be very nearly liter- 

 ally full of brood. As I used 9 frames to the hive, this caused 

 6 of them to become full of brood bv May 17, when a frame of 



