Aug. 2», 1905 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



603 



"The Honey-Money Stories" 



We have just issued a 64-page-and-cover 

 booklet, 5-'.,xS'.j inches in size, printed on 

 enameled paper, entitled, ■• The Honey-Money 

 Stories." The cover has a picture of a sec- 

 tion of comb honey, 3'.. inches square, the 

 comb being in gold-bronze, which gives it a 

 very attractive appearance. Then on the 

 gold-bronze comb are printed these words; 

 " From Honey to Health, and from Health to 

 Money." 



It is edited by Earl M. Pratt, and contains 

 a variety of short, bright stories interspersed 

 with facts and interesting items about honey 

 anil its use. The manufactured comb honey 

 misrepresentation is contradicted in two 

 items, each occupying a full page, but in dif- 

 ferent parts of the booklet. It has in all 31 

 halftone illustrations, nearly all of them being 

 of apiaries or apiarian scenes. It also con- 

 tains 8 bee-songs, namely, " The Hum of the 



Bees in the Apple-Tree Bloom," " Buckwheat 

 Cakes and Honey," and an entirely new one, 

 called, "The Bee-Keepers' Lullaby." This 

 last song has not been published before. The 

 songs alone ought to be worth more than 

 the price of the whole thing. 



it is a booklet that should be placed in the 

 hands of everybody not familiar with the 

 food value of honey, for its main object is to 

 interest people in honey as a daily table arti- 

 cle. It is thought that it will be just the 

 thing to sell on railroad passenger trains, on 

 news stands, etc. The stories and items are 

 all so short and helpful, and the pictures so 

 beautiful, that it will likely be kept by any 

 one who is so fortunate as to get a copy of it. 

 Its postpaid price is only 2.5 cents, but the 

 health-value of its contents would run up into 

 dollars. We mail .'i copies for $1 00, or club 

 it with the American Bee Journal — both for 

 $1.10. It would be very nice for a gift to a 

 friend. 



(T 



Doctor IHillcr 5 Question Box 



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

 or to Db. C. C. Miller, Marengo, III. 

 Dr. Miller does iu>t answer Questions by mail. 



J 



Uniting Colonies — Space Under the 

 Frames 



1. What is the best way to unite 2 colonies 

 of bees at this time of the season \ 



3. Is it detrimental to best results to have a 

 2.inch space in the brood-chamber under the 

 frames.? New York. 



Ansv ERS.— 1. I don't know. What might 

 be best 'o one case might not be best in 

 another. Here's one way that is good : Kill 

 the queen in one of the hives, and 2 or 3 days 

 later set this hive over the other with 2 or 3 

 thicknesses of newspaper between, making a 

 hole in the newspaper large enough for one or 

 two bees to pass at a time. A few days or a 

 week later you will find that the bees have 

 eaten away much of the paper, and you can 

 then put into the lower story the frames of 

 brood that were in the upper story. 



3. Only good can come of it any time ex- 

 cept during the gathering season, and then 

 the space must be reduced to 'i inch or so. If 

 the full 2 inches are left when bees are gath- 

 ering, they will build comb below the bottom- 

 bars. 



having written about bees. Please don' 

 cherish thoughts of that kind. I don't be- 

 lieve others are so different from myself, and 

 I have always enjoyed seeing what you have 

 written. 



Taking Off Honey— Bee-Keeping as a 

 Business 



Plan of Superseding Queens 



What is the matter with the plan of killing 

 undesirable queens, and changing their brood 

 for the brood of the best queens* It looks as 

 if this might be practiced to quite an extent 

 in many apiaries. I am doing some of it 

 now. Iowa. 



Answer.— The plan will work all right, and 

 you are wiser than the average to take that 

 much trouble to improve your slock. The 

 only " matter " I can see wiih the plan is the 

 trouble it takes, but the gain ought to pay 

 well for the trouble taken. Could not the 

 work be lightened by having sealed cells ready 

 in advance, giving a sealed cell in an intro- 

 ducing cage at the time of killing the queen? 

 Better still, a virgin queen? I must confess 

 that I have taken still greater trouble in super- 

 seding several queens, caging in the hive a 

 laying young queefc taken from p. nucleus 

 with the candy of the cage covered so the 

 bees could not get at it, and two days later 

 killing the old queen and leaving the candy 

 so the bees could eat it and release the queen 

 in the cage. This is the plan of introducing 

 advocited by Emerson T. Abbott. 



A private word shows a tendency to regret 



1. How early is it safe to take off comb 

 honey that contains no bee-bread, and pack it 

 away in shipping-cases? 



2. I have 91 colonies with from 200U to 3000 

 pounds of comb honey. This has been a 

 good year, and if I bad been prepared for the 

 work I would have had a much larger yield. 

 But I teach school months in the year, 30 

 miles from my bees, so you will understand 

 that my vacation is a busy one. I am thinking 

 very strongly of going into the bee-business 

 and dropping school work. 



The American Bee Journal is a fine paper 

 and full of valuable information. Iowa. 



Answers.— 1. To get the best price for 

 comb honey it is well to take it oF as soon as 

 it is sealed, because it is whiter then, and the 

 market demands the whitest combs. If left 

 on longer it will bt- better to the taste in all 

 probability, but the comb will not be so white. 



2. Don't think of depending upon bees 

 alone till you have enough money ahead to 

 tide you over one or more years of failure. 



A Beginner's Experiences 



1. I am a beginner, having started last year 

 with 4 colonies, ami last spring I bought 3 

 more colonies, witli the expectation of get- 

 ting t> new swarms. Three swarms issued 

 from them, but -'uf them died shortly after 

 they were hived. The weather was cloudy 

 and rainy. Do you think they should have 

 been fed! I did jiv them syrup a couple of 

 times. 



2. I found some cl-'s in one of the swarms 

 that died, and am Finding them to you, and 

 would like to havi you tell me what kind of 

 eggs they are. Art- ihey moth eggs? 



3. We had very nice weather last spring, 

 and honey began to i-ome in early. One col- 

 ony had very nearl 'ue super full of honey, 

 but it was not r;.i;- all capped over, so to 

 make room for in* .orkers I put an empty 

 super on top of ili ne. About a week later 



I looked at it again, but it was not yet com- 

 pletely capped, so I left it for another week, 

 and when f again opened the hive I found 

 that every bit of the honey had been taken 

 from the combs. What became of that 

 honey? The last week has been a little 

 cloudy, but there has been occasionally clear 

 weather, so that the bees could fly out, and 

 they seemed to be doing good work. 



I suppose I should have put the empty 

 super under the full super, but I did that last 

 year and the bees carried all the honey down 

 into the empty super, and of course lost a 

 good deal of time. This year I put the empty 

 super on top, and lost all the honey. 



4. I had one colony that swarmed 3 times. 

 The bees would settle, and before I could hive 

 them they would go back into the old hive. 

 They did this 3 times. What was the matter 

 with them ? That was a month ago, and they 

 have not swarmed since. 



5. I never clipped a queen yet. In fact, I 

 have never been able to find the queen in any 

 of my colonies, though I have looked many 

 times. The bees all look alike to me. 



Oregon. 

 Answers.— 1. Yes, it weather is cloudy and 

 rainy immediately after a swarm is hived, it 

 should be fed. When they have used up the 

 honey they carried with them in their sacs, 

 the bees have no stores in the hive to fall back 

 upon, and if not fed must starve. 



2. As nearly as I cm make out, after the 

 specimen has been crushed in the mail, what 

 you send is the egg of the cockroach, dark 

 brown or black, and larger many times than 

 the egg of the moth, which is white, and 

 round as a marble. 



3. Although it seems pretty rapid work for 

 the bees to carry all the honey out of the 

 super in 2 weeks' time, there seems no other 

 way to account for it. The honey-flow must 

 have stopped, and the bees carried the honey 

 down into the brood-chamber. If the honey- 

 flow stopped longenough, the bees would carry 

 the honey down, no matter whether the empty 

 super was under or over the full one. 



4. Some would say they went with the 

 queen on her wedding-trip, but Mr Doolittle 

 says bees don't do that. It is possible that 

 the queen was not able to fly with the swarm, 

 and ihe swarm woald then go back into the 

 hive. The queen crawled back into the hive 

 the first and second time, but the third time 

 she was lost, and then the swarm did not go 

 again. The usual thing would be for the bees 

 to swarm again when the first virgin queen 

 issued from her cell; but the stoppage of the 

 honey-flow at that time prevented the swarm- 

 ing. 



5. If you persevere you will undoubtedly 

 succeed in finding a queen, and having found 

 one it will be easier to find others. Look for 

 a bee larger than the workers, with wings 

 that look too short for her size. 



Why No Honey Coming In? 



In this locality we have had no honey so 

 far, and almost no swarming. There has 

 been plenty of white clover and some other 

 bloom, but absolutely no honey, while last 

 year all supers were full by July 1."), and there 

 was free swarming. There is no disease. The 

 bees simply stay in the supers and don't work, 

 and but few bees are to be seen on the flowers. 

 What is the trouble? Kansas. 



Answer. — I don't know. I only know that 

 sometimes there is abundance of white clover 

 in bloom and bees can get nothing from it, 

 and at other times when no bloom is to be 

 seen the bees fairly roll in the nectar. Some 

 have said it was owing to electrical conditions. 



Bees Tearing Down Queen-Cells 



I had one ulony queenlessand gave them a 

 frame of hrootl. The third day after, they 

 had 4 qiieL-ii-cells started. The next time I 

 looked they were capped. When they had 

 been tapped about a week I looked into the 

 hive again, intending to cut them out, but 

 found mat ilio bees had torn them down be- 

 fore it was iuiii- for them to hatch out. I also 

 found thai 2 ariiticial swarms with queen-cells 



