Aug. 31, 1905 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



619 



cluster every cell had a bee crawled into it; 

 and the rest were packed between the combs. 

 As the combs are much thicker than the 

 .spaces much more than half the bees were in 

 cells to start with. As the water rose all bees 

 not in cells moved upward before it till they 

 got to where there were open cells and then 

 crawled in. Soon all were in cells except a 

 negligable few too stiff to move. The conBned 

 air of a cell usually does a pretty good jgb at 



keeping out fluid ( we find when we try to fill 

 combs with water or bee-feed) and with a bee 

 crawled into each cell the fort would be com- 

 pletely impregnable. That part is no wonder. 

 But how desperately chilly and sodden all 

 their little tails must have got ! Say, if it had 

 only atrophied their stings now, and left the 

 rest of the bee in working order, what a 

 champion colony of safety bees there would 

 have been ! Page -isa. 



fT 



'^ociox IHtllcr 5 @uc5tton=^ox 



=\ 



\= 



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

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

 Dr. Miller does iwt answer Questions by mail. 



Foul Brood Treatment 



1. I think I have a few cases of foul brood, 

 and am going to try the Baldridge plan of 

 treatment. Is it as good as any ; 



2. After the bees are all out of the diseased 

 hive what is the best thing to do with it? 



3. Do you think it could be chilled brood 

 instead of foul brood? They built up good 

 and strong and swarmed early, hut after that 

 they did not do much of anything, and upon 

 investigating I found the combs full of dead 

 brood. So I took the supers off these hives 

 and reduced the entrance, and they seemed to 

 do better. In fact, I had to put supers back 

 on some of them. Again, looking into the 

 hive I find that they are very loath to remove 

 the dead brood, but are doing so very slowly. 

 No bad odor comes from the hives when they 

 are opened. Iowa. 



Answers. — 1. Carefully managed it may be. 



2. Wm. McEvoy insists that the hive itself 

 may be used again without any disinfecting. 



3. It is impossible to say whether it is foul 

 brood or only chilled brood. In the first 

 stages of foul brood the odor may not be 

 prominent. Read up all the literature on the 

 subject, especially Dr. Howard's pamphlet, 

 and inform yourself thoroughly about bee- 

 diseases. You can then decide much better 

 from seeing the case than any one can from 

 hearing about it. 



Brood-Frames Full of Wax and 

 Pollen 



There are a number of brood-frames in 

 some of my colonies that are nearly full of 

 wax or pollen, and the queen deposits her 

 eggs among them wherever she can find an 

 empty cell. Will it do to replace them with 

 full sheets of foundation? If so, when is the 

 best time to do it? Iowa. 



Answer. — The cells may be filled with pol- 

 len (not wax), but generally there is none too 

 much pollen. Bees need pollen just as much 

 as honey. It is nothing out of the way if 

 the 2 outside frames are filled with pollen. 

 Sometimes when a colony is queenless for a 

 time there may be much more, but with a 

 good laying queen the matter generally is 

 righted of itself. If, however, there is some- 

 thing peculiar in your locality, you can re- 

 place a frame of pollen with one of founda- 

 tion, but you would better not do it much 

 before the honey-flow next year. 



A Breacli-Llghting Smoker 



I notice your answers to my questions (page 

 571,) and will say that .loe " gives in " that 

 those flaky particles are wax, but Joe wonH 

 ''give in" an iota on the other question. 

 You think there is something wrong with Joe 

 or his smoker or his fuel, or the fire would 

 not go out. I don't think this is true, for I 

 often have no further use for the smoker dur- 

 ing the day, after having used it once, and 

 not caring to let the fire burn out and thus 

 exhaust the fuel in the fire-box, I slip a cork 

 in the noz/ile so that the Are will go out. The 



I 



next day when I have use for the smoke- 

 again, I must unload it in order to get the fir" 

 started in the bottom. If I could slip the 

 breach off would it not be much handier than 

 to unload it? I don't want a breach-loader, 

 but I do want a breach that can be slipped 

 off for this very reason. I had a breach- 

 loader smoker, and threw it away. I want a 

 muzzle-loader with a breach-lighting arrange- 

 ment. Iowa. 



Answer. — Yes, I understand the case now, 

 and hereby apologize for the aspersions 

 thrown upon the smoker or the man that uses 

 it. What you desire is an arrangement 

 whereby you can light the partly consumed 

 fuel left in the smoker from a previous load- 

 ing without the trouble of emptying out the 

 fire-box. There ought to be no trouble, as be- 

 fore said, in getting a smoker of that kind 

 specially constructed. 



Running an Apiary for Wax 



I am a beginner in the bee-business, and 

 would like to know if it pays to run an apiary 

 for wax alone. I am located in a good sec- 

 tion for producing honey, 15 miles back from 

 the Coast, with a certainty of a good crop, 

 and am 2? miles from the city and the rail- 

 road. The price obtained for extracted honey 

 is only about 60 cents for a 5-gallon can de- 

 livered at Puerto Principe. Mr. Root says 

 that bees and honey pay in Cuba. I have an 

 idea that the profit must be very small. 



1. Will it pay to run an apiary for wax 

 alone? 



2. What hives, frames, etc., are best for the 

 purpose? 



3. Will there be any advantage in using 

 com b foundation * Cuba. 



Answers.— 1. In most places it would be 

 foolishness to run for wax in preference to 

 honey, but where honey is worth so little as 

 it is with you it will no doubt be well to run 

 for wax, and some arc doing that very thing. 



2. It probably makes little difference, only 

 you must arrange for feeding back honey in 

 large quantity. 



3. It will be well to use foundation to get 

 frames filled with worker-comb in the brood- 

 chamber, but certainly it will not pay to use 

 foundation upon which to build combs that 

 you are going to take for wax. 



Bees Abscond With a Newly Intro- 

 duced Queen 



A short time ago 1 introduced a fine queen 

 to a colony that hiul been queenless for 2 

 days, and when I put her into the hive they 

 did not act as if th.y would kill her. When 

 they released her 1 took the cage away. The 

 next Sunday I opened the hive and saw 3 or 4 

 bees around one bee. and I knew it was the 

 queen, so tried to touch her, but she ran down 

 between the combs 1 shut the hive and went 

 to the house with the strong belief that I 

 would have some lart;e Italian bees. But to- 

 day (Saturday) I looked in the hive, and 

 there was not a bee to be seen. All had 

 swarmed, leaving me 1 empty combs and no 

 brood. If I had known the queen would 



play a trick like this on me, I think I would 

 have kept I he money which I paid for her. If 

 she comes to Chicago ship her and 4 frames 

 of bees back, and I will clip her wings so she 

 can't fly away again. 



What made them swarm? They were under 

 an apple-tree and faced east. If the one 

 from whom I bought the queen would replace 

 the bees free of charge, I would do business 

 always with him only. Illinois. 



Answer. — Without fuller particulars it is 

 not easy to say why the bees absconded. But 

 your saying that the bees left 4 empty combs 

 and no brood makes it seem that there was 

 little to hold the bees in the hive. In any 

 case, there is no likelihood that the queen 

 was at all at fault, and it would be very un- 

 reasonable to ask that she should be replaced. 

 Instead of the queen "playing a trick" on 

 your bees, it was your bees that played a 

 trick on the queen, or you that played a trick 

 on both. Under ordinary circumstances a 

 queen is not likely to issue with a swarm un- 

 til she is a year old; but I have had a queen 

 issue with a swarm when she was not a month 

 old, because I gave her to bees that were in a 

 swarming mood. I have also taken a queen 

 that had just issued with a swarm, and given 

 her to bees with no inclination to swarm, and 

 there was no swarming. So you see the 

 queen is not the one to blame. 



Introducing Queens 



I put a flne breeding queen into a small 

 queenless colony having only drone-brood, 

 placing her on a frame of hatching brood. 

 Can I safely give another frame with adher- 

 ing bees soon, or shall I shake the bees in 

 front of the hive to get the young bees for 

 help? Wisconsin. 



Answer. — Don't give any but queenless 

 bees unless there are already in the hive 3 

 times as many bees as the number you add. 

 Or, cage the queen, then give as many bees as 

 you like. 



Carnlolan Bees 



Are all Carniolan bees dark? and are they 

 gentle? I had gotten the impression that 

 they are hustlers, and are not gentle. 



Illinois. 



Answer. — They are dark with whitish 

 bands. Some say they are exceedingly gentle; 

 others say they are cross. Either there is a 

 difference in Carniolan bees or some are called 

 Carnioians that are a cross between Carnio- 

 lans and blacks. It is difficult to distinguish 

 between the pure blood and the cross. 



Queen Entering the Wrong Hive- 

 Rearing Queens 



1. Some time ago I had a colony of bees 

 that superseded its queen, and one day I 

 found a virgin on one side of the frame, and 

 the old queen on the other side. I caged the 

 old queen and removed her. There were only 

 2 queen-cells in the hive, both had hatched, 

 and I thought the queens would manage that 

 part themselves. This colony was on the east 

 end in the row, and I was very much surprised 

 one day to be called home because the bees 

 were swarming. When one of those 2 virgins 

 mated she had gone into the hive just west of 

 her own, had been accepted, and had stayed 

 in the hive about 10 days (and had been lay- 

 ing) before they swarmed out with the old 

 queen. 



2. Early this summer I thought I would try 

 to rear some Italian queens, so I made some 

 queen-nursery cages of whitewood boards ~C- 

 inch thick and 2x2 inches square, with a 1- 

 inch hole in the center, and on one side I 

 bored a ^-inch and a }^-inch hole, one for the 

 queen-cells and the smaller for queen-candy. 

 When the queen-cells were sealed I cut out 

 the large ones and put them in the nursery, 

 placing the nursery in a holding frame in the 

 center of a very strong 1-story colony. Only 

 about 4 out of a dozen queen-cells hatched, 

 and the queens wer« weak and had no wings, 

 otherwise they were large. Had they been 



