203 



2. We can easily substitute new brood 

 combs for the old ones. If the brood-combs 

 are old, black, and the cells small, which is 

 the case always after about seven or eight 

 years' use, we replace them by our founda- 

 tion, and less than five months suffice to 

 give ns new brood-combs, with good-sized 

 cells, where our insects will breed rapidly 

 and produce bees of a respectable size. I 

 do not know but that 1 am wrong, but I do 

 not like these microscopic bees which some 

 fanciful apiarists show with pleasure, and 

 which are only creatures that have been 

 stopped in their development by the nar- 

 rowness of the brood-cells. 1 have always 

 believed, and I believe still, that a bee as 

 large as a Soissons kidney-bean carries more 

 honey in its sac than two of these dwarfish 

 insects not larger than a grain of rice. 



3. Combs built upon comb foundation are 

 more easily used in the extractor than natu- 

 ral combs. Though the bases of the cells 

 are thinned down by the workers, their 

 thickness remain greater than that of the 

 septum in natural comb, and therefore the 

 capability of resistence is greater. Besides, 

 the combs built on the foundation are more 

 elastic (something which can be easily veri- 

 fied) than the new combs of our hives. It 

 is rarely the case that the most rapid revo- 

 lution produces any break in them. The 

 most important advantage of this peculiar- 

 ity is this : that our combs, emptied with- 

 out damage by the Hruschka machine, ren- 

 der us incalculable aid, in the spring and 

 during the summer, in the rapid increase of 

 the strength of our stocks, and from this an 

 earliness in swarming proceeds as the first 

 result, which is followed, as I said in my 

 first letter by an increased honey-product. 



I might also, on the authority of many 

 authors, show you that artificial combs aid 

 in the preservation of the health of the 

 bees, by saving them from a portion of the 

 organic strain necessary in the secretion of 

 wax, a strain, which, if it does not directly 

 produce disease, consumes, at least, and 

 shortens life. Physiology does not reject 

 this hypothesis ; but as I have no exact 

 facts to furnish I prefer not to touch this 

 point. Moreover what I have been able to 

 prove to you, in my letters, in a decisive 

 manner, ought to content you fully and to 

 remove from you all hesitation in regard to 

 comb foundation. 



You are still doubting; I see it by the 

 shaking of your head. Bravo ! my friend. 

 I like this disposition : it is the sign of a 

 man who thinks and who does not accept at 

 first sight, as ducks do, everything one 

 throws out. " Those are the advantages," 

 you say tome, "nothing but the advantages; 

 but the defects— you say little of them." 

 Patience ; I will reach them if you but 

 wait. Henceforth believe that they are in- 

 significant, and send, without fear a small 

 order to Mr. Schultz : du diable! if you 

 will regret it. Dr. Eeisser. 



Prof. Aug. Menzel known through his 

 works : " Die Haus und Honigbiene" 

 " Bienenwirthschaft und Bienenrecht des 

 Mittelalters," and " Die Biene und ihre 

 Beziehungen zur Culturgeschichte," died 

 last December, at Zurich, Switzerland. 



For the American Bee Journal,. 



Glucose as Pood for Bees. 



C. J. H. GRAVENHORST. 



The article by Dr. A. W. Foreman in the 

 March number of the Bee Journal is an 

 excellent one, and I have read it with great 

 pleasure, but I must confess that we Ger- 

 man bee-keepers have not been so success- 

 ful iu feeding our bees glucose as he was. 

 Ten or fifteen years ago there was much ado 

 in some of our bee papers about glucose as a 

 good and cheap food for bees. Therefore I 

 longed to try it. I ordered 10 or 20 pounds 

 of glucose from one of those bee-keepers 

 who had recommended it in our bee peri- 

 odicals. The result of feeding it to my 

 bees was a very bad one. The colonies fed 

 in October died of dysentery, and those 

 I fed in the spring dwindled away. I very 

 soon abandoned feeding glucose. One year 

 after this one of my neighbors, a beginner 

 in bee-keeping, had 20 good colonies of bees. 

 As the spring was not favorable for our 

 bees, and he was obliged to feed his bees, 

 he asked my advice. I told him not to spare 

 food and to feed only cure honey. As long 

 as he did this his bees did very well. About 

 ten or twelve days after I had last called on 

 him, he came running up to me and told me 

 all his bees were dying. "Only come and 

 see," cried he, " it is dreadful ! My bees 

 come out of their hives and drop r to the 

 ground, where they perish." 



And so it was. I saw the garden spread 

 over with dead and dying bees. On exam- 

 ining the hives and removing the frames, 

 only a handful of bees were found on a 

 frame with unsealed and capped brood in 

 every hive. 



"What have you done with your bees ? " 

 asked I." "Only ten days ago they were 

 strong and prosperous as my own." 



He at last told me, that some days ago a 

 friend (bee-keeper) had called on him and 

 recommended glucose as a good and cheap 

 food for bees, and stated that be was feeding 

 it with the best results. Since that day, 

 said my friend, I have fed glucose. I told 

 him my experience with glucose the year 

 before, and in a moment he turned over the 

 barrel with the rest of that poisonous food, 

 and covered it with earth. Out of twenty 

 colonies he saved only five, by uniting the 

 bees on good brood-combs. Although he 

 now fed pure honey and kept the colonies 

 warm, even these colonies did not prosper. 



Other German bee-keepers have had no 

 better success by feeding glucose, and there- 

 fore they have abandoned feeding bees with 

 it. Chas. Dadant is right when he says, on 

 page 120 of the Bee Journal, where he 

 noticed the report of the 23d Congress of 

 German and Austrian Bee-Keepers, held at 

 Greifswakle in Pomerania, last September : 

 " Every method used to feed bees in spring 

 was advocated— honey, sugar, compounds of 

 sugar and honey with eggs, milk, wine and 

 flour, etc., but in vain nave I searched for 

 grape sugar or glucose. It was not even 

 mentioned." 



It may be, that some species of glucose 

 are not poisonous for bees, and for this 

 reason it may be fed to them to winter on, 



