Nov. 9, 1905 



IHE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



779 



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Jllr. ^asty 5 Clftcrtl^ougf^ts 



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

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



Jl 



What is a Carload of Honet? 



How's the beet way to get out of a bad 

 scrape! Ojr Editor having been in position 

 to l(now about carloads of actual honey on 

 arrival, is very much better authority than I 

 am as tn how much is a carload. I seem to 

 have made a certain estimate enormously too 

 large. Suspect I went wrong largely from 

 having looked at the new cars of the Lake 

 Shore, which runs close by my apiary. 

 Capacity is printed on the outside of each 

 car — some of them .50 tons. But probably all 

 the cars which I have seen marked .50 tons or 

 more, were really something else than ordi- 

 nary box-cars. When I was a boy cars were 

 nearly all of two sorts, "Capacity S tons," 

 and " Capacity 10 tons." Since then capacity 

 has been very greatly increased. It is imagin- 

 able that the Pacific railroads (over which 

 honey comes largely) may hang back on the 

 capacity of cars. If 10-ton cars are still in 

 fashion with them, they would be very un- 

 likely to let a shipper send 20 tons in a car 

 unless he paid double rates. And I think ship- 

 pers of honey would generally prefer two cars 

 to double quantity in one car, if charge per 

 ton was the same. I didn't get Ijeyond what 

 can be made to go into a car. A cubic foot is 

 a litils less than "j^ gallons, equal to 90 

 pounds of honey. It we pack the inside of a 

 car full of square tins of honey, not boxed, j 

 and the dimensions are 20x8^ixr feet (1547 

 feet), we have about (J9 tons, of which some 3 

 or 4 tons would be tin and 65 tons honey. We 

 will consider the 5,600,000 pounds corrected 

 to 2 100,000. 



Faith, and do I believe it now? Hardly 

 know. Still a won't-liedown suspicion that 

 stories are told to influence the market. But 

 the above surely shows how much the mathe- 

 matical critic needs to be criticisea himself 

 sometimes. Page ?2o. 



Cardboard Over Qieen-Cage Candt. 



But about the cardboard over candy, I'm 

 not going to come down quite so far from my 

 high perch. Dr. Miller is thinking of him- 

 self, and of the cardboard breeders select and 

 send for the purpose. There is need to con- 

 sider excited beginners— and the way they are 

 foreordained to bupgle things — and the card- 

 board they will hunt up and use. Some is 

 thin, some five times as thick. Some is soft, 



some hard. Some is plain of surface, some 

 with enameled surface. I suppose a sample 

 could be found which even Dr. Miller's bees 

 wouldn't get through in 5 years. Queens are 

 also introduced to weak colonies; and cold 

 nights unexpectedly swoop down. Queens 

 are also introduced to blacks; and if blacks 

 are really so much poorer at worm-hunting, 

 it would rather follow that they are poorer at 

 card-gnawing. Very many queens used to be 

 laid a-top the combs, and we should not ignore 

 the possibility of its being done that way still. 

 That a weak colony on a cold night may draw 

 away from such a cage altogether is a con- 

 tingency which I think should not be over- 

 looked. But I will cheerfully concede to Dr. 

 Miller's large experience, that in the heart of 

 a colony, and with cardboard of the right 

 kind, and the right kind of bees, there Is not 

 much danger. Page 725. 



Latest Swarms. 



That late swarm of Dr. Miller's— Sept. 23— 

 I was going to take as a record, and so having 

 a certain value; but on reading to the end I 

 doubt whether it was a normal swarm at all. 

 Perchance it had been unprosperously in a 

 tree or some place, and not sufBciently pro- 

 tected. Had merely picked up and all 

 swarmed out from unendurable quarters. If 

 so, going to the nearest apiary and alighting 

 on a post would be just the proper thing to 

 expect. If it had a virgin queen, however, 

 as the latest true swarms usually do, my the- 

 ory would stand disproved. I think my rec- 

 ord for lateness is Sept. 5, or about that time. 

 Page 715. 



Outdoor Feeding of Bees. 



Ernest Root has manifestly improved his 

 outdoor feeding. Putting it up high in the 

 air lets all the bees which fall have a chance 

 to take wing before striking anything. And 

 weakening the feed until they regani it as 

 nectar rather than as plunder is an advance, 

 too. I should hardly feel reconciled to any- 

 thing that causes masses of bees to form and 

 then drop; but if I understand correctly, 

 comparatively little massing occurred in the 

 last trials. Especially valuable is the expe- 

 rience that two iJU-pound cans so worked 

 actually kept an apiary of 300 queen-rearing 

 colonies free from any eager disposition to 

 rob. Page 093. 



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'^ociox ITTillcr 5 QiicstionBox 



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



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



B^ Dr. Miller does iiot answer Questions by mail. 



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Cellar-Wintering of Bees Introduc- 

 ing Uueens, Etc. 



As wintering seems to be the great problem 

 with us, I would like to have your advice on 

 the following quesiions: 



Two years ago ihe number of my colonies 

 decreased from 32 to 6. Last winter was con- 

 siderably belter— 1 lost but 10 colonies out 

 of 30. 



Last fall, after winter had fastened its grip 

 on Mother Earth, I carried 2 light nuclei into 

 the vegetable cellar, which is frost-proof. 

 This cellar has no windows, and the entrance 

 from the main cellar was screened with a 

 heavy piece of carpet. As we had only one 

 real thaw, the walls were dry most of the 

 time. The nuclei were given a flight on -Jan. 

 1, and no dead b^es were found on the floor. 



and very few on the hive-bottom. Both came 

 through in floe shape, and were replaced in 

 the apiary on March '26, when soft maples be- 

 gan to open, and built up well in proportion 

 to the bees they had. 



Of the 10 colouies that died outside, all 

 were much stronger in bees and had more 

 honey; most of these were in chaff hives. 



The bees in the cellar were in Danzonbaker 

 hives, deep side of lottom-board up, and bur- 

 lap sacking over the top. The temperature 

 of the cellar ranged from 40 to 44 degrees, but 

 was at 42 degrees the most of the time. The 

 bees were very quiet all winter, only a low 

 hum being heard. 



1. Do you think it would be advisable for 

 me to put a number— say half of my colonies 

 —into this cellar tbis winter? 



2. There is no means of ventilation except 

 through the curtained doorway. The tem- 



perature of the main cellar is generally 2 or 3 

 degrees cooler than the vegetable cellar. If 1 

 lifted the curtain occasionally, would this 

 provide the necessary ventilation? 



3 In the spring one comb that was not 

 covered by the bees had a little mildew or 

 mold on it. Do you think the cellar was too 

 damp? 



4, Could an excess of moisture in the at- 

 mosphere be prevented by using lime, as 

 spoken of by Editor Hutchinson in " Ad- 

 vanced Bee Culture?" 



5 Do the walls of your cellar ever sweat 

 during winter? 



Ij Is the humidity thus formed detrimental 

 to the bees? 



7. Are midwinter flights beneficial to bees 

 when they are quiet in the cellar? 



I have beeu having quite a little experience 

 in late introduction of queens, and here is 

 something that has happened twice in a very 

 short time; I would like to know whether it 

 is abnormal. As the cases are nearly parallel, 

 I will cite but one of them; 



About Oct. 1, I caught and killed the old 

 queen and placed the new queen between the 

 brood-frames. One week later I looked to 

 see if the queen was laying. 1 found several 

 sealed queen-cells, and feeling somewhat out 

 of patience with them (as I then thought 

 they had killed my choice queen), and as I 

 did not care to continue that hybrid stock, I 

 tore down the cells. When nearly through 

 the hive I found a small cluster of bees on a 

 bottom-bar. I smoked them gently, and was 

 very agreeably surprised to find the queen. I 

 rescued her at once and returned her to the 

 cage with 4 or 5 young bees, provisioned it, 

 and again put it between two brood-frames. 



5. Was this the right thing to do? As the 

 queen ought to have been out 3 or 4 days 

 prior to this, and with the presence of several 

 sealed cells, and as not an egg had been 

 layed, I could not thiokof anything else to do. 



About 5 days later I again opened the hive 

 and saw the queen on the top of a brood- 

 frame, between the hive-body and super, sur- 

 rounded with bees; as they did not seem to 

 be acting hostile I closed the hive at once. I 

 did not use any smoke at the entrance, so the 

 queen could not have been frightened. The 

 queen is now laying beautifully. 



9. I noticed in one of your answers that you 

 said that to have a queen mated purely when 

 the yard contains hybrids, the virgin queens 

 or nuclei with select drones should be re- 

 moved about 4 or 5 miles distant from any 

 other bees. While this old doctrine is all 

 right, I believe the limit is too far removed, 

 unless we can do as E L. Pratt does— go to 

 the mating yard by trolley. 



Last summer about 90 percent of the drones 

 in my apiary were blacks or hybrids, and as I 

 especially wanted to have some purely mated 

 queens. I took some nuclei to the back end of 

 the farm about one-half a mile from my api- 

 ary. Here I also took about two dozen hand- 

 picked golden Italian drones. Tne expeii- 

 ment worked beautifully, as every one of the 

 queens was purely mated. Unfortunately, I 

 was not able to continue this experiment long 

 enough to cjme to a definite conclusion as to 

 the necessary distance. Baby nuclei also 

 worked successfully at this distance. Per- 

 haps a few old bees came home, but not 

 enough to deplete the nuclei. 



I have had many disappointments in the 

 bee-business. Foul brood nearly wiped me 

 out of existence once. But the bie-fever is 

 still unbroken. We have had a nice flow of 

 aster honey this fall, so bees are in good shape 

 to winter. 



10. Sjme of our pear-trees are in bloom 

 now, and the bees have been working on 

 them. Is not this abnormal, too^ 



Pesssylvania. 

 Answers —1. Yes. 



2. If the nurabar of colonies is small in pro- 

 portion to the size of the room, there will 

 probably be no nee I of any attention to ven- 

 tilation. With a larger number of colonies, 

 there might be need to keep the curtain 

 raised at night, or it might be parily raised 

 all the time, provided the main cellar were 

 sufficiently darkened. 



3. Hardly worth while to pay any attention 

 to mold if it occurs only on one comb Damp- 

 ness, darkness, and warmth make a combina- 

 tion favorable to the growth of mold, but 

 there is a kind of very fine mold that some- 



