1907. 



THE AMERICAN BEE-KEEPER 



67 



THE BEE-KEEPING WORLD 



Stall Contributors: F. Greiner. Adrian Getaz 

 Contributions to this department are solicited from all quarters ol the earth 



GERMANY. 



The marking of a queen with paint, 

 as is practiced by some bee-keepers 

 in Germany, has developed the fact 

 that sometimes a prime swarm issues 

 with a virgin, while the first after 

 swarm may be led out by the old 

 queen. 



queens for his own use by the natural 

 process." 



On the other hand, the writer has 

 observed that some of these very 

 writers make a practice of using post 

 constructed queen cells year in and 

 year out, and say their bees do not 

 deteriorate. 



The same paper also says, that a 

 virgin queen will always be accepted 

 as soon as an old mother is removed, 

 providing the bees are first brushed or 

 shaken into an empty hive. When 

 bees are filled with honey and placed 

 in the state of embarrassment, as they 

 will be when deprived of all their 

 combs, they are in a mood to accept 

 anything in the shape of a queen, or 

 they may be united with other bees. 



The odor of lilac, nettle, worinwooJ 

 and onion is objectionable to the bees, 

 says the Schw-Bztg. These vege- 

 tables may therefore be used to good 

 advantage to repel bees. For instance, 

 when bees insist on clustering in cer- 

 tain places where we do not wish 

 them to, or in case of robbing, etc. 



It appears to the writer, that some 

 German bee-keepers habitually deny 

 that anything good can come from 

 America. After some ironical remarks 

 Gunther says in die Biene: "At the 

 great German and Austrian B. K. 

 meeting in Leoben I asked an ex- 

 hibitor of American queen rearing 

 supplies, there present, as to the mer- 

 its of queens produced by them and 

 learned that such queen^ only last one 

 year and that he himself raised the 



EXTRACTING THICK HONEY, 



Heather-honey is of such a heavy 

 body and has such other properties 

 that it has been considered impracti- 

 cable to extract it from the combs 

 without breaking them. Of late a 

 method has been devised which over- 

 comes the difficulty. By means of 

 a kind of steel brush, which is kept 

 in hot water when not in use, the 

 midrib is pierced, the honey is warm- 

 ed and perhaps broken (not the comb) 

 by pushing the hot metal pins into 

 it after uncapping. The combs are 

 then at once set into the extractor. 

 Enough combs are uncapped first to 

 fill the extractor, and two of the 

 '"spike-brushes" are needed to facili- 

 tate the work. One is always in the 

 boiling water while the other is be- 

 ing used, and they are frequently ex- 

 changed. (The writer has had to do 

 with honey of a similar nature. It 

 would not come out of the cells and 

 seemed to be gummy. It was not 

 of the best color, or somewhat be- 

 tween clover and buckwheat). — Sch- 

 lesw. Hoist. Bztg. 



KEEPING A RECORD. 



A note book is a very important 

 affair in a modern apiary, says W. in 

 Lehrmeister in Gart. und Kleinthf. 

 He who does not regularly use one, 

 better begin at once. Each hive should 



