April 26, 19C6 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



367 



held this year— the third time we " tried " for the conven- 

 tion at San Antonio. 



And to the bee-keepers of the South : The National 

 will now come, and we must do our part. Your help and 

 assistance will be looked forward to for making- this meet- 

 ing- a good one. And remember, please, that all bee keep- 

 ers of the South should take a hearty interest in this, for the 

 Texans do not mean to exclude those from other States. 



(Dur* Sister 

 Beekeepers 



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Conducted by Emma M. Wilson, Marengo, 111. 



Danger of Bees Starving— Short of Stores 



One would think that enough had been said in all con- 

 science about the danger of starving, but the danger is such 

 an insidious one, and the results so disastrous that a spe- 

 cial word of warning to the sisters who have lately joined 

 our ranks may not be out of place. It takes»years of expe- 

 rience for one to have a full realization of the rapidity with 

 which stores melt away at this time of year in localities 

 where breeding is at its height and little is being gathered. 

 The bees are flying every day, and the novice feels perfectly 

 at ease as to their gathering enough for daily needs, when 

 really they are living on short rations, and a few days of 

 unfavorable weather may mean starvation of the whole 

 colony. 



Even one of year's experience may not realize the harm 

 that is quietly going on. No bees may starve, no brood 

 may be destroyed, there may be stores in the hive, and yet 

 the bees realize that the larder is not very full, and there 

 will not be as much brood reared as if an abundance were 

 in sight. 



Neither is vigilance to be relaxed when the harvest is 

 on. In white clover regions the fields may be white with 

 bloom, and the ground in front of the hives also white with 

 the skins of the larvae from which the starving bees have 

 sucked out the juices. Such starvation in June does not 

 often occur ; but it does occur at times ; and although none 

 of the mature bees may die, it is a terrible set-back to have 

 laying cease and all the unsealed brood destroyed. One 

 would be horrified to go out some fine morning and see a 

 pile of 10.000 dead bees lying in front of a hive ; yet the 

 loss would be no greater, although more plainly visible, 

 than in the case mentioned. 



A Sister's Report— Clipping Queens 



Dear Miss Wilson: — I have worked with bees a number of 

 years and enjoy it. Our house is 30x40, a cellar under one-half of it, 

 the other half used to winter the bees, and I find it a good place to 

 winter them. It has always been a hard place to get them in and out, 

 until last season my son-in-law. who is a railroad man, put in a track 

 2x4, and 42 feet long, reaching under the floor of the woodhou6e to 

 the outside. The truck has flanges to the little wheels, and holds one 

 or two hives, and is very easy to draw back and forth with a rope. It 

 took four persons about one hour to put 39 colonies in this winter re- 

 ceptacle; they have wintered nicely, too. 



Last season was much better than the three preceding ones. From 

 one colony with a clipped queen I took part of the brood and gave a 

 queen-cell, and from the parent colony I took 76 sections of honey. 

 They swarmed, but went back each time. 



I intend to clip all queens this spring, as I had 6ome climbing to 

 do last summer.. 



i >! course, 1 would not know how to get along without the " old 

 Reliable," and enjoy the sisters' corner; and as it is impossible to 

 visit the Bay State Apiary, I should very much like to hear about the 

 " whole process " of queen-rearing by the New England sister. 



At the breakfast table we were talking about Doctors of Divinity, 

 Doctors of Law, and Doctors of Medicine, and wondered to which 

 class Dr. C. C. Miller belonged. Some of us don't know as much as 

 others do. Mrs. D. W. Brown. 



Cherry Hlil, Pa. 



You are very wise to clip all queens, and any sister who 

 has not a special fondness for climbing will do well to fol- 

 low your example. It is not a very hard thing to catch a 

 queen, and with a pair of scissors cut off the two wings on 

 one side. But be sure never to clip a queen before she has 

 begun laying. If you clip a virgin queen she can never 

 produce anything but drones. 



Some object to clipping a queen because she may some 

 time come out with a swarm when no one is watching, and 

 be lost ; but if she were not clipped she would go off with 

 the swarm, in which case she would be just as badly lost. It 

 is better to lose the queen alone than to lose both queen and 

 swarm. Generally, however, a clipped queen goes back 

 into the hive when the swarm returns ; and that's the 

 beauty of the whole thing, that when a swarm finds it has 

 no queen with it there is not the slighest danger of its ab- 

 sconding. It is sure to return to its own hive, except in 

 some cases it may enter some other hive from which a 

 swarm has issued within the previous hour. 



Dr. Miller was graduated from the University of Michi- 

 gan with the degree of M. D. He practised medicine only 

 a year or so, his own health not being good enough properly 

 to care for the health of others. If he had not become a 

 bee keeper he would likely have been dead years ago. 



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(£anabtan 

 4-Seebom-f 



Conducted by Morlet Pettit, Villa Nova, Ont. 



Reports On Wintering Wanted 



It is the aim of the present management to make 

 " Canadian Beedom " as valuable as possible to the Cana- 

 dian readers of the American Bee Journal. To this end we 

 would like to publish reports on wintering from our readers 

 in all parls of the country. It will be necessary to answer 

 only a few questions on a postal card, address it to Morley 

 Pettit, Villa Nova, Ont., and mail it. We will do the rest. 

 It will only take a few minutes. If you can not answer all 

 the questions answer the ones you can. Do it now. 

 Questions to Be Answered. 



1. How many colonies of bees had you in the spring of 

 1905 ? Fall of 1905 ? Spring of 19C6 ? 



2 If any died in winter what was the cause ? 



3. What is the condition of those remaining, as to aver 

 age number of combs occupied by bees on a cool morning 

 and average number of combs of brood and eggs in eac 

 would fill? . , 



4. What are the prospects for clover in your section t 



For fruit-bloom ? 



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Items of Interest 



•' A little farm well tilled and and a little barn well filled," with a 

 happy home, is the most valuable earthly possession.— Farm, Field 

 and Fireside. 



The Maritime Farmer for March 20 has an article on 

 " Early Spring Work in the Apiary," copied from the 

 American Bee Journal. 



The Slmcoe Reformer copies Edwin Trinder's sketch 

 from the American Bee Journal. 



Followers in Brood-Chambers 



Now see me go at Dr. Miller. He says in Gleanings, 

 page 343 : 



R F. Holtermann, page 290, says that with comb foundation and 

 accurate spacing " there is no need of a follower or the space for a 

 follower " and this as I understand it with self-spacing frames. I 

 wonder, I wonder what there is about his locality or management that 

 makes it so. I would not do without followers for money. 



Now, Mr. Holtermann uses exactly the same frame that 

 I do. I think I can call it the Langstroth frame of S. T. 

 Pettit pattern. We do not have wax built between the top- 

 bars, because the frames are accurately spaced, and because 

 the top-bars are only % inch deep— a depth which with the 

 timber we get here we find deep enough to keep straight 

 without sagging. 



Unless the hive is too large by a half inch, and needs 

 filling out, the only use I see for a follower is to facilitate 

 removing combs by allowing the self-spaced combs to be 

 spread apart. A Pettit comb can be lifted up in any part 



