THE AMERICAN BEE-KEEPER. 



117 



Seasonable Sayings. 



BY DR. 0. C. MILLER. 



I don't know whether I'll gain or 

 loose by having the American Bee- 

 Keeper restricted in large measure 

 to the wants of beginners, but I think 

 on the whole I'll gain, for there are 

 alway plenty of things to learn about 

 iu the elements in bee-keeping, no 

 matter how many years one has been 

 in the business. 



SAYING WAX. 



I want to emphasize what Mrs. Harri- 

 son says on page 66, and to add that 

 a good deal more wax is likely to be 

 saved if some place is constantly 

 ready to receive it and take care of it. 

 Since I have a sun wax extractor, it 

 seems so much easier to save small 

 quantities of wax. All you have to 

 do is to lift up the lid, throw in the 

 bits of waste comb, and after one day's 

 hot sun on it, the beautiful clean wax 

 is found in the dish beneath. The 

 main thingthat troubled meat first was 

 to clean off the debris left on the per- 

 forated tin. It was almost impossible 

 to scrape it off, or cut it off, till I 

 learned that it must not be done early 

 in the morning or late in the evening, 

 but some time in the day when the 

 sun had made it hot and then it was 

 very easy matter to scrape it off with 

 the sharp edge of a shingle. When 

 you get your wax extractor in good 

 running order, just try some morning 

 putting in some eggs without break- 

 ing the shells, and see how nicely they 

 will be cooked for dinner. 



OPEN All! FEEDING. 



Like Mrs. Harrison, I formerly led 

 a great many pounds of sugar syrup 

 in the open air. It is very conven- 

 ient to be able to fill up the dishes as 



fast as they empty them, with no fear 

 of robbing, and besides the bees like 

 to fly out when they are feeding, so it 

 is more like getting stores from the 

 field. But if there are other bees in 

 flight you must feed them as well as 

 your own. I know that bee-keepers 

 are a very liberal lot, and some of 

 them have said to me that they did 

 not begrudge the feed taken by the 

 neighbors' bees. Well, I am not so 

 liberal. When 1 feed six or eight 

 barrels of sugar, I don't want my 

 neighbors' bees to get half of it, any 

 more than I would want to give to 

 those same neighbors two or three 

 barrels of sugar. And no matter how 

 small the quantity, I don't see why 1 

 should feed my neighbors' bees any 

 more than their pigs. 



Another tiouble is that the feed is 

 not rightly distributed among my own 

 bees, even if there were no outside 

 bees. The strong colonies, perhaps 

 already well supplied with stores, get 

 the lion's share of the feed, while the 

 weak and almost starving ones get 

 comparatively little. This decided me 

 to give up open air feeding, for the 

 proportion taken by the bees of others 

 was so small in my case, that it was 

 not worth considering, provided there 

 were sufficient advantages otherwise. 



Ky feeding in the hives, you can 

 give each colony just what you think 

 it needs, and if you feed on top, so 

 that no bee can get at the feed with- 

 out going through the colony, and are 

 careful not to do any daubing or 

 otherwise excite robbers, you are not 

 likely to have any trouble. 



Mrs. Harrison says, "It is pool 

 economy to feed bees when they can 

 gather sfficient for their daily wants." 



