p^lWERICAAr 



Bee Journal 



'Entered at the Post-Offlce at Chicago as Second-Class Mail-Matter) 

 Published n^eekly at 81. OO a Year by Ceorge W. Tork A Co., 334 Uearborn St. 



QBORQB W. YORK, Editor 



CHICAGO, ILL., AUGUST 31, 1905 



VoL XLV— No. 35 



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(Sbitortal Hotes ^ (Eommcnts 



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Reserve Combs of Sealed Honey 



Are you planning to have a j^oodly number 

 o( combs o( sealed honey ready to give to 

 needy colonies next spring? Perhaps it would 

 be better not to speak of giving them to needy 

 colonies, but rather to colonies that can take 

 them. A colony may have enough honey to 

 supply its wants up to the time the white- 

 honey harvest begins, and the beginner may 

 think, " Well, that is all that is needed.'" 



There may be a good profit, however, in 

 giving combs of sealed honey, even if those 

 combs are not needed to prevent starvation. 

 The dark fall honey is not worth as much on 

 the market as the earlier light honey, and, 

 indeed, in some cases it is hardly marketable. 

 But before any of the white honey is stored 

 in supers, the bees will fill the vacancy in the 

 brood-chamber. Now, suppose you have 

 sealed combs of dark honey to fill that 

 vacancy. Every pound of dark honey you 

 thus put in the brood-chamber means a pound 

 more of light honey in the super, practically 

 making that dark honey of the same value as 

 the light. See the point? If you do, make 

 preparations accordingly. 



An Imported Cyprian Queen 



Dr. C. C. Miller sends us the following re- 

 port on a Cyprian queen with which he has 

 been experimenting: 



Last year I obtained from the Government 

 Apioultural Investigator, Prof. Frank Benton, 

 an imported Cyprian queen. By the close of 

 the season she was well established in a full 

 colony, ready for business the past spring. 

 She did good work at laying ; so far as I could 

 see, as good work as if she had not done so 

 much traveling. Her workers are as beauti- 

 ful as Italians — I'm not sure one would tell 

 them from Italians. I was expecting them to 

 be very cross, but they showed so little vin- 

 dictiveness that I felt somewhat aggrieved at 

 having been imposed upon by having been 

 given a Cyprian queen without the proper 

 quota of temper. 



In storing, the colony fell behind the aver- 

 age in the apiary. I'm not sure whether that 

 should be counted against these Cyprian 

 bees. It is well known that a queen that has 

 been through the mails may do very poor 

 work, while her royal offspring will show ex- 

 cellent results. The ill effects of travel, how- 

 ever, while making the queen do poorer work 

 at laying, ought hardly to affect the character 



of the worker offspring, and the colony In 

 this case being of average strength ought, one 

 would think, to have done average work. 

 They were not allowed to continue storing the 

 entire season, and it is barely possible that 

 they might have done better later on. 



One fault was so grievous that it con- 

 demned them utterly for comb-honey produc- 

 tion : They filled the honey so close to the 

 cappings that they made watery-looking 

 sections. 



June 30 they were found to have started 

 queen-cells, and in that they showed very 

 plainly that thej- were distinctly different 

 from the other bees in the apiary, for such a 

 smattering of queen-cells and queen-cell cups 

 I never saw before. It seemed a good thing 

 to turn this peculianty to account; so they 

 were set to work at the business of starting 

 queen-cells, and the result is shown on the 

 first-cover page of this Journal for Aug. 3 — 

 119 cells at a sitting. 



Thus made queenless for cell-rearing, they 

 redeemed themselves as to the matter of tem- 

 per, and I had no further occasion to accuse 

 Prof. Benton of having defrauded me out of 

 my proper rights. They were vicious enough 

 to give full satisfaction to any one desiring 

 viciousness. They were also more prompt 

 to start laying workers than any other bees I 

 had ever known. 



Just so far as could be judged from this 

 one queen and her progeny, one would say 

 that Cyprians, when not queenless, are hardly 

 so vicious as generally painted, and that they 

 should be used for the production of extracted 

 honey only. And if one who is not an ex- 

 pert in the matter of queen-rearing may be 

 allowed to express an opinion, I should say 

 that if I were iu that business I should be 

 willing to pay a high price for one or more 

 pure Cyprian queens, just for the sake of 

 having queen-cells produced, feeling sure 

 that with Cyprian bees and the right kind of 

 material to give them for working upon, I 

 could get as good cells as could possibly be 

 reared, and with less labor than by Doolittle 

 cups or any other method. C. C. Miller. 



McHenry Co., IU. 



somewhat readily decided by watching to see 

 how much attention is given to the plant by 

 the bees. If the bees are seen to be in num- 

 bers upon any plant at a time when they are 

 storing, it is safe to say that such a plant is a 

 good honey-plant, for the bees are too good 

 economists to waste their time upon some- 

 thing that yields no returns. 



At a time of scarcity, bees may be seen 

 working upon plants which are of little 

 account, because that is better than nothing. 

 That does not prove the value of the plant; 

 the question is. Do they visit the plant in 

 numbers when they are getting plenty of 

 nectar? Neither is it a proof that a plant is 

 without value because no bees are seen upon 

 it in a time of plenty. It only proves that for 

 the time some other plant gives more satis- 

 factory returns. With these principles in 

 mind, any bee-keeper ought to be able to 

 decide without much trouble whether any 

 plant is a good honey-plant /or Iiini. 



It may be further said that such an answer, 

 determined by the bee-keeper himself, is more 

 reliable than an answer sent out from the 

 office of any publication, because what is a 

 good honey-plant in one place may not be 

 such in another. Goldenrod, for example. In 

 some localities it is esteemed as a honey-plant ; 

 in others it is worthless. 



Identification of Plants 



Now and again some one finds a plant with 

 which he is not familiar, wonders whether it 

 may not be a honey-plant, and sends it to 

 this office for identification. Usually it is 

 hardly a matter of sufficient general interest 

 to occupy space with a reply. The reader is 

 not interested to know that a plant of which 

 he has never before heard, and which he may 

 never see, is not a honey-plant. If it were a 

 good honey-plant, the matter ought to be 



Poisonous Honey 



The following interesting clipping, copied < 

 from the London Lancet, has been sent in by 

 Leo. F. Hanegan : 



Poisoning by honey has been known since 

 the days of Xenophon, when it seems to have 

 been fairly common, and has been observed 

 in various parts of the world — Germany, 

 Switzerland, North and South America, India . 

 and New Zealand. In the New Zealand Medi- 

 cal Journal for April, Dr. E. D. Aubin has 

 published an important paper on cases of 

 poisoning due to wild honey, which were 

 observed most frequently in Maoris. As the 

 poison evidently is derived from plants visited 

 by the bees, its nature varies In different 

 countries, and so do the symptoms. In New 

 Zealand only wild honey appears to cause 

 poisoning. The symptoms usually followed 

 ingestion of the honey in less than an hour. 



Three modes of onset were observed, which 

 Dr. Aubiu lerms, respectively, gastric, ner- 

 vous and cerebral. 



In the gastric form giddiness and nausea 

 are followed by severe and persistent vomit- 

 ing, whiLli may last on and off for two days. 

 There is usually some abdominal pain, but 

 this is noi, as a rule, a prominent symptom. 

 The mouth feels dry and glazed. Apparently 

 no irritant action is exerted on the bowels, for 

 diarrhea n us never observed. 



