194 



THE AMEBIC AN APICULTURIST. 



How combs become " travel-stained." 



At the Chicago convention, Professor 

 Cook expUxinedliow a bee uses its siiarp 

 claws to gain a foothold upon surfaces 

 where such climbers are available, while 

 upon smooth, hard surfaces it gains a foot- 

 ing by throwing out a glutinous fluid. Mr. 

 A. I. Jioot suggested that it is this fluid 

 that discolors the white combs, giving 

 them that reddish-brown appearance, 

 called "travel-stain." At the late con- 

 vention of Ohio beekeepers, it was fur- 

 ther suggested that wood separators pos- 

 sess one superiority over those of tin, in 

 that the bees can more readily gain afoot- 

 hold upon them, hence would use them as 

 a highway instead of climbing the combs. 

 We have never used wood separators, 

 have had no opportunity for making any 

 comparisons in this direction; but in re- 

 gard to the bees maintaining their footing 

 upon combs by means of this mucilagi- 

 nous fluid we have our doubts. Comb is 

 not smooth and hard. Mr. Cheshire says 

 it is "extremely rough, and, under a quar- 

 ter, as irregular in surface as the mud 

 wall of barbarism." Further than this, 

 comb, in the hive, is warm and soft, and 

 it strikes us that, of all things, this rough, 

 soft, warm wall would be exactly the 

 thing in which the sharp, delicate claws 

 of a bee could be used to the best advan- 

 tage. But we will drop theory and come 

 down to hard facts. In our method of 

 "feeding back" extracted honey to secure 

 tlie completion of unflnislied sections, tiie 

 combs nearest comi)letion are placed next 

 to the brood-nest, and we were not long 

 in discovering that those colonies must 

 be chosen having new combs, otherwise 

 the nearly completed sections were soon 

 soiled. Over new, white combs, built 

 within two or three months, the finished 

 sections could remain several weeks with 

 no signs of travel-stain, while one week's 

 proximity to old, black brood-combs 

 would leave discolorations. The simple 

 act of bees walking over combs does not 

 discolor them, but the passing directly 

 from a brood-nest of old, black combs to 

 white conil)s does stain the latter if it is 

 long continued, antl the moral is to raise 

 comb honey upon the tiering-up plan, and 

 then the finished combs are never near 

 enough the brood-nest to become soiled. 

 — Iteview. 



Food, for wintering Bees. 



Dr. L. C. Whiting. 



Prepared to recommend them. 



Milan, N. II. 

 Mil. Allicy: I have used your drone- 

 and-queen traps this season and feel pre- 

 pared to recommend them. 



A. D. Ellinwood. 



I always expect my bees to winter well 

 if the honey is good anil well ripened. I 

 have sometimes thought tiiat, if the honey 

 was very thin, they wintered better out 

 of doors than in a cellar. One season 

 here, when the honey was poor, one of 

 my neighbors put all his bees (nearly 100 

 colonies) in an above-ground cellar. It 

 was warm and all the honey soured and 

 every swarm was lost. I had about the 

 same number of colonies out of doors and 

 lost half of them from the same cause. 

 All of my strong colonies were lost, while 

 most of the small ones survived. At the 

 time I came to the conclusion that the 

 small swarms did not get up heat enough 

 to sour the honey. Since then I have 

 been in the habit of extracting all unsealed 

 honey and mixing with it enough sugar to 

 give the desired consistency. 



Good food, air enough to keep the bees 

 dry, and to have them out of reach of cold 

 winds, are what I aim at w!:en wintering 

 bees out of doors. If, in addition to this, 

 they can be well packed with chaft" or 

 planer shavings, all the better. Good 

 food, I count nine points in ten. — lievieio. 



East Saginaio, Mich. 



Mr. Benton and the Carniolans. 



I first had Carniolans in 1881; They 

 were all true to colour. I saw several 

 also that belonged to a friend, and never 

 saw a "banded" bee amongst them. None 

 of these came from Mr. Benton. The 

 past three years he has given them more 

 "banded." Moreover, the first cross be- 

 attention, and we have been getting them 

 tween a black and a Carnit)lan were al- 

 ways quiet. This is so now occasionally; 

 but. on the contrary, sometimes they are 

 as tierce as any of the crosses with the 

 yellow bees. The Italians were not ru- 

 ined in temper till Cyprians were taken 

 to Italy to improve the color of the gent- 

 lest bee then known. Mr. Brnton Inis 

 told us that yellow bands sometimes ap- 

 pear amongst the native bees in Cainiola. 

 I hope he is not to blame for it, for I do 

 find that some of the " mongrels " so 

 marked are not as amiable as the earlier 

 and truer marked Carniolans used to be, 

 and it would be an infinite pity tliat such 

 a good race of bees should be ruined by 

 improvement (?). — British Bee Journal. 



