8 



THE AMERICAN BEE-KEEPER. 



January 



colony in normal condition is deprived of 

 its queen it will, in its haste to replace 

 her. choose a larva that is too old to pro- 

 duce a first-class queen. Queens from 

 the cells that are sealed from one to two 

 days after the first ones will be the best 

 ones — queens that are in every way equal 

 to those ]>roduced by natural swarming. 

 The cells last .sealed are apt to be on lar- 

 vae that are too old; .so that neither the 

 first nor the last are as good as the '•come- 

 betweens." 



We all know that Dr. Miller and Mr. 

 JoUey are both pretty good authority, but 

 my experience is the same as Mr. Jolley's 

 in cases where a colony is .suddenly de- 

 prived of its queen, and left '.o raise an- 

 other; or where the the queen has been 

 removed for the purpo.se of producimr 

 (jueen-cells. .Some of these first sealed 

 have a look of inferiority: and, with me, 

 have produced inferior queens. 

 CLASS OVER SKCTIONS. 

 Farther on in his article, in speaking of 

 .the desirability of having comb honey 

 sections nice, clean, and white, he .says: 

 1 have been trying a plan this season 

 which, .so far, has given good .sati.sfaction. 

 I put a piece of glass the size of the 

 section crate overtlie sections. The glass 

 lying flat on the smooth , upper surface 

 of the .sections leaves no room for \no- 

 ])olis. It is not necessary to lift it until 

 the su])er is c mpleted. Vou can look 

 down through the glass and through the 

 interstices of the .sections, and see their 

 progress without disturbing the bees with 

 smoke, breath, or air. I ])ut a cloth o cr 

 the glass in some hives, and leave .some 

 without anything. The bees work equal- 

 ly as well in one as the other. 



Probably there are manv localities 

 where a gki.ss honey-l)oard like that would 

 be real nice to have, but I 11 guarantee 

 that if Mr. Jolley were to produce honey 

 in my locality he would need to buy his 

 glass by the carload, or scrape the pro- 

 jiolis from the bees" legs before they en- 

 tered till' hive, for they would so fasten 

 the glass to the sections that the easiest 

 way to remove it woulrl be with a ham- 

 mer; but it would be a treat to be able to 

 see the l)ees at work between the sections- 



Subscribe for the .■\merican Bee-Kee]ier, 

 50 cents a j'car. 



The New York Bee-Disea.se, or the di.s- 

 ease now prevailing among the bees of 

 that state, is thus clearly described by 

 the bee inspector. N. D. West, in Glean- 

 ings in Bee Culture: 



•'We have, I think, more than one kind 

 of disease on the ui'ound, and yet there 

 seems to be a tracing from what I have 

 called pickled brood, all the way along 

 from bad to worse, and in different stages, 

 until at last it so closely resembles foul 

 brood that it is difficult to draw the line 

 between this and the genuine foul brood, 

 although some of the dead brood will be 

 found at times to be flattened down into 

 the cell, and will be about the color of 

 white glue, and will, when a tooth pick is 

 placed in it, draw out from its cell from 

 yi to }:^ of an inch. But you have to hold 

 your tooth pick with an object in view 

 and try to get it to .string out or it wil: 

 not follow the tooth i)ick at all. Some of 

 this becomes coffee- colored, and is rotten 

 in the cell, and will string out .some, but 

 it will not break and .sj)ring back like 

 rubber; neither do the combs, when held 

 close to the nose, give off that offen.sive 

 and sickening odor that I get from what 

 I call the old-time foul brood. The hive, 

 when o))ened, or a comb held close to 

 one's nose will give a kind of sour smell,, 

 or odor; but one of these coffee colored, 

 rotten brijod, when remo\ed from the 

 cell and held close to the nose, ^\ill have 

 a sort of rotten smell only. But take a 

 hive full of brood, three fourths of it 

 good brood and one-fourth of it bad 

 brood, as described above, and place it on 

 top of a pretty good swarm to hatch ; ])lace 

 a queen-excluding /.incl)etween the hives, 

 and keep the (jueen below, and in due 

 time the brood a1)ove the excluder will 

 all be hatched out, and all of the bad 

 brood will be cleaned out of the combs, 

 and no more trace of the bad brood is 

 .seen in these hives that season. This has 

 been my own experience in my own api- 

 aries this season, and these colonies iu 

 the lower hives were slightly affected, as 

 well as the brood placed on lop of the 

 colonies." 



