Aug. 23. 1906 



American Itee Journal 



what he has to say of the " Heath 

 family." 



"Ericaceae (Heath family) is a large 

 orje, very various in many of the char- 

 acters." Throughout the whole fam- 

 ily the flowers are " regular, or nearly 

 so." The Azalea, the Rhododendron, 

 and the Rhodora, are members of the 

 Heath family ; so also is the Whortle- 

 berry. 



Heather itself is " an evergreen un- 

 der-shrub." It is very difficult to keep 

 our impressions — the ideas we form^ 

 separate from /acts, but it is especially 

 important that a teacher do so. I think 

 Prof. Cook will be glad of the correc- 

 tion. What we write in the American 

 Bee Journal is, as it were, " all in the 

 family." [Mrs ] A. L. Amos. 



Comstock, Nebr. 



Mr. /iastyk 



erfhou 



The "Old Reliable " as seen through New and Unreliab! 

 By E. E. Hasty, Sta. B. Rural, Toledo, Ohio. 



Empty Combs as Anti-Swarm Pro- 

 tectors. 



Exactly how much it's worth I don't 

 know. Providing it was sound and 

 true, always, it might be handy. 

 Stachelhausen thinks there is a limit 

 to the anti-swarm protection afforded 

 by empty comb. It is an axiom that 

 abundant clean, empty comb, nicely 

 adjacent the brood-nest, will usually 

 prevent the bees from thinking about 

 swarming. He thinks that with 2500 

 square inches of brood, or more, they 

 will swarm anyhow. This may strike 

 some readers as a sly joke. It would 

 take 11 frames fuller than usual to 

 amount to that much. If bees swarm 

 mainly of discontent because the 

 younger class are carrying lots of pre- 

 pared larval food which can not be 

 used anywhere, then the rule suggested 

 seems improbable. Hard to see how 

 sealed brood could have any direct 

 bearing in the matter ; and unsealed 

 brood, if there was enough of it, should 

 have a direct bearing the other way — 

 prevent swarming altogether by fur- 

 nishing a market for all the food. 

 Page 533. 



3-Story Hivbs and Queen's Laying. 



A matter mentioned by Mr. Ferris, 

 page 537, will bear some more thinking 

 over. Bees occupying 3 stories incline 

 to half abandon the lower one. Some- 

 times they put considerable pollen in 

 it and not much of anything else. 

 That's not the way the keeper wishes 

 things to proceed. Even if he is will- 

 ing the queen should go above he de- 

 cidedly wants the main headquarters 

 of the brood-nest to remain below. 

 With ordinary 2 story hives and ex- 

 cluder I think the queen usually tries 

 to get above. Occasionally she suc- 

 ceeds. In this case do we ever find, 

 at the close of the season, the lower 

 story normally well-filled with honey ? 

 Strikes me we never do— and in this 

 connection I fear that there has been 

 some waste somehow of what the col- 

 ony might have accomplished. We 

 can prevent the queen from moving 

 the brood apartment upstairs. I wish 

 we were further able to keep her from 



xvaniing to do it. Why should she? 

 Possibly a bit jealous that so many 

 bees should be busy with work she has 

 no direct connection with, and in rooms 

 where she can not go. But that hardly 

 covers the difficulty with 3-story hives 

 and no excluders. And, perhaps also, 

 it's mostly the bees rather than the 

 queen that move the nest — don't like 

 much space above it. 



Drones and Swarming — Caged 

 Queens. 



So Mr. Hatch thinks bees never 

 swarm unless there are some drones 

 present. Neither will they unless there 

 is some air present. Neither will they 

 unless there is some of Uncle Sam's 

 jurisdiction present. (Say King Ed- 

 wards, ye who live across the border.) 



But when Mr. Hatch tells about his 

 experience with caged queens we do 

 well to listen. To cage awhile and 

 then release is one grand gum-game 

 to head off swarming. He finds that 

 even in a great cage, on two caged 

 frames, she sulks while a prisoner, and 

 is superseded soon after she gets out. 

 His grand conclusion is that swarming 

 is effect and indication of vigor, and 

 that pretty much everything repressive 

 of it depresses vigor and so does harm. 

 This is a big doctrine if not big truth ; 

 and better we don't play wayside hearer 

 to it. Page 537. 



Many Factors in the Swarming 

 Impulse. 



'Spects Mr. Aspinwall also enun- 

 ciates a big truth when he says : "A 

 great many factors enter into and con- 

 stitute the swarming impulse." His 

 experiments — on 40 colonies for 10 

 years— can not be called petty nor de- 

 sultory. The most singular thing is 

 that he should find it necessary to use 

 Vinch spacers between sections. This 

 is just half the width he uses between 

 brood-combs. Even with the spacers 

 he puts on 72 sections at once. We 

 must allow some margin for an in- 

 ventor's enthusiasm, but Mr. Aspin- 

 wall's assertion that his hive does suc- 

 ceed in keeping bees free from the 

 swarming impulse in a swarmy season 

 should count for something. Whether 



it will succeed in other places needs 

 demonstrating — and also whether other 

 men will succeed in "walking the 

 rope " as well as the expert. Page 538. 



Ideal Plan for Locating Out- 

 Apiaries. 



Mr. Townsend's ideal of an out-api- 

 ary business seems to be 3 yards as 

 near home as may be, and 3 yards more 

 far enough away to get into totally 

 different pasturage — say clover for 

 main crop in one region, and raspberry 

 for main crop in the other. Looks 

 wise. In a year when one region has 

 a short crop a different region has a 

 fair chance of harvesting a good crop. 

 If you can get at a region where buck- 

 wheat is largely cultivated, and yields 

 well, then almost anything else will 

 do to alternate with that. Sad to re- 

 late, buckwheat is a rather poor stick 

 to lean on in most places. Page 540. 



Contrariness and Obstinacy of 

 Bbes. 



Not sure I can solve the problem 

 given by Lewis on page 542. I rather 

 gness there was nothing the matter 

 either with the bees or the manipula- 

 tion. They just took a notion to be 

 contrary and stuck to it to the end. 

 Obstinacy is one of the bee's strong 

 points. Their'killingof the queen and 

 bees in the nucleus certainly seems a 

 very extreme case. 



Langstroth Frame vs. British 

 Standard. 



No doubt the British standard frame 

 is a good frame ; but I think the Lang- 

 stroth (3,?s inches longer, and % deeper) 

 is somewhat better for America in 

 which it flourishes. Page 553. 



Send Questions either to the office of the Am- 

 erican Bee Journal, or Dr. C. C.Miller, 

 Marengo, 111. (Dr. Miller does nut 

 answer Questions by mail.) 



strange Noise from a Colony of Bees 



I heard a very strange thing to-day in our 

 apiary here. We noticed in working among 

 the hives that there was a noise which came 

 from one of our hives which sounded very 

 much like the low, soft noise a hen makes 

 over a brood of chickens in the evening. It 

 was quite strong and came out at intervals in 

 the morning. It did not 6eem possible that 

 the bees or a queen could create this, and we 

 opened the hive, but were unable to And the 

 source. It may be that this is a common 

 occurrence, but it is something new on us. 

 We thought possibly that the noise came 

 from the locality of the hive, and was not 

 from the interior, but we could find nothing 

 exterior that would or could cause it. I will 

 thank you if you would give me your ideas 

 on this, just to gratify my curiosity. 



Wisconsin. 



Answer. — I can't tell what made the noise. 

 The loudest noise made by a single bee is 

 that made by a queen; and you are probably 

 sulliciently acquainted with the piping and 

 quahking of a queen not to mistake it for 

 some other sound. Of course, bees unitedly 

 make sounds louder than that made by a 



