34 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



Jan. 11, 1906 



various combinations or crosses occurring from the mixing 

 of the different races, there was one particular queen that 

 was an improvement over all predecessors, and that your 

 neighbor happened to get that particular queen. No rule, 

 however, can be based on such a supposition, for you might 

 go on for a lifetime and not have such a thing happen again . 



2. Certainly, it would not be safe to suppose that a 

 queen will be improved by a journey through the mails. 

 She may not be injured at all by such a journey, and the in- 

 jury may be serious. Even in a case where a queen is 

 greatly injured by being mailed, she may be a very profit- 

 able investment. Suppose you have a strain of very poor 

 bees, and you order a queen of a strain of bees that will 

 store double as much as your bees. She is so badly injured 

 in the mails that she is slow about beginning to lay, lays 

 very sparingly, and gives up the ghost before you have had 

 her a month. All the honey stored by her progeny, if sold 

 at a high price, will not amount to as much as you paid for 

 the queen. If you figure merely on the honey stored by the 

 colony into which she was intioduced, the purchase of the 

 queen was a losing operation. But that isn't the only thing 

 to be considered. Even if she lays only a very few eggs, if 

 you are lively about it, and from those few eggs rear enough 

 queens to requeen all your colonies, that stock may be just 

 as good as if the queen had never been injured in the mails 

 at all, and as a consequence you have just doubled your 

 future crops. In other words, the injury of a queen in the 

 mails does not necessarily injure the stock reared from her. 



Preventing Honey from Candying- Do Bees Prefer New 

 to Old Sections? 



1. I have some extracted honey from colonies that were 

 killed about Oct. IS. It candied right after extracting. 

 What could I have done with it to prevent it from candying 

 so soon ? 



2. Some of it was put up in pint jars. It candied and 



became sour. It was kept in the kitchen cupboard. What 

 was the cause of the souring ? 



3. When putting on supers when the honey-flow com- 

 mences, will the bees enter new sections sooner than some 

 that were kept over from last year and daubed with propolis? 



Wisconsin. 



Answers. — 1. It is not always an easy thing. For 

 some reason there is a difference in honey itself as to candy- 

 ing. And yet the treatment may have something to do 

 with it. Frequent stirring of honey hastens granulation, 

 so everything in that line should be avoided if you want the 

 honey to remain liquid. If you have 10 pieces of comb 

 honey, and extract the honey from half of them, you will 

 probably find that this extracted honey will candy sooner 

 than that left in the comb, the agitation of extracting tend- 

 ing to hasten the change. Possibly you might also help 

 by keeping the honey at a temperature of 100 degrees or 

 more, allowing free evaporation at the same time, so as to 

 ripen it. 



2. The thinness of the honey was enough, no doubt, to 

 account for souring. You can make vinegar of honey any 

 time by making it thin enough, exposing it to the air, and 

 keeping it at the right temperature. But if the tempera- 

 ture be high enough, instead of souring it will evaporate 

 and ripen. 



3. That depends altogether upon the condition of the 

 sections. Not of the wood, but of the comb or foundation 

 in the sections. The wood may be clean, or it may be well 

 covered with bee-glue ; that doesn't matter either way. If 

 the comb foundation be entirely clean, you will probably 

 find that the bees will accept it as readily as that whichjias 

 never been on. If the comb has been drawn out, partly 

 filled, and then emptied, you will find that nice, clean 

 combs of this kind will be accepted more readily than fresh 

 foundation. But if any bee-glue has been put on the foun- 

 dation or comb, the bees will not like it so well. I have 

 known foundation in sections that had been left on in the 

 fall to be so thoroughly varnished with bee-glue that the 

 bees utterly refused to accept it. 



Reports anb 

 (Sxpcrtcnccs 



Robber-Bees and Late Swarm 



The following experience with robber-bees 

 is different from anything I have seen before, 

 though it may not be out of the ordinary with 

 others: 



During the first week of November I came 

 across a colony of bees very weak, and I sub- 

 pected they were queenless. I only 6topped 

 long enough then to slip in a frame of sealed 

 brood fairly well filled, which was handy. A 

 few days later — perhaps the next week, some 

 time— I went to loos at it, and found, as I 

 suspected, that it was queenless and with very 

 few bees except what had emerged from the 

 frame I had given a few days before. I pre- 

 pared a place to put in another frame of 

 brood, and started to get it, but before I found 

 one to suit me my attention was called off for 

 a short time, and when I again looked at the 

 hive I found it being robbed most furiously. 

 I found I had not fitted the cover down tight, 

 and the bees were pouring through a little 

 crack I had left. I closed down the cover 

 tight, and closed up the entrance so no bees 

 could get in or out, and narrowed down the 

 entrance of the near-by hives to a space for 

 one or two bees at a time, and the furore wa6 

 soon over outside, but the hive was full of 

 roaring bees. 1 then slipped the cover off, 

 and as I did so I slipped on a skeleton frame 

 covered with screen cloth, that would give 

 air without allowing the bees to escape. On 

 top of this I put an empty hive with a single 

 frame of honey in it. 



On the last day of October I came into the 

 yard and found a little swarm of less than a 

 pint of bees settled on the side of a hive, and 

 on poking them apart a little with my finger, 

 I found a virgin queen in their midst, and (by 

 the way, this is one better than is referred to 

 by Mr. Hasty, on page 779) I hived them for 

 the time being in a little baby-nucleus box 



with 2 frames one-sixth the normal size, not 

 thinking just what I would do with them. I 

 took this little box, and lifting off the cover 

 to which the little frames were attached, and 

 put in with the little box (detached from each 

 other) in the empty hive with the single frame 

 of honey, and over the screen, covering the 

 hive full of bees below. I left them thus un- 

 til just before it was too dark to see on the 

 third day, when I found the little swarm 

 almost all on the frame of honey, queen and 

 all, a few bee6 crawling around on the screen. 

 I lifted everything off the bees below and 

 slipped the frame of honey, bees and all, 

 down into the space I intended for the frame 

 of brood, and shook the rest of the bees into 

 the hive, opened the entrance and swept out 

 a small double handful of smothered bees. 



The next day. or next but one, I looked in 

 the hive and found a good, fair colony of 

 bees, and a nice young queen, where a few 

 day6 before there was only a little handful of 

 bees and no queen, all seeming contented and 

 at home. This was about Nov. 16 or 17. 

 Again on the 24th I looked in and found the 

 queen laying nicely. 



We are having more or less warm weather 

 almost every day, and having plenty of honey 

 they promise well. About 3 inches of rain 

 the 5th, 6th, 7th, and part of the Sth of this 

 month, has pushed mahogany blossoms out 

 until the bees are working on them 



Lusardi, Calif., Nov. 27. A. J. Burns. 



A Beginner's Report 



I began keeping bees last spring, having 

 purchased a colony the fall previous, but not 

 getting them home till in February, I was not 

 a bee-keeper in practice till that time. I in- 

 creased with the advice and help of a neighbor 

 bee-keeper to 2 colonies during the summer 

 just past, by dividing; but in dividing we 

 only divided the bees, and did not change the 

 queen to the newly-made colony, and we did 

 not wait till they had queen-cells started in 

 preparation of swarming, so only gave them 

 a frame of brood from which to rear a new 

 queen, and of course got nothing from that 

 colony, as by the time they had a new queen 

 and enough bees to work any it was too late 

 to gather anything. But I got perhaps 25 



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