Sept. 20. 1906 



American Itee Journal 



ings, and pour turpentine over until well 

 covered. 



Let the preparation stand over night, by 

 which time the beeswax will be 6oft. 



Stir it into a smooth paste, and add tur- 

 pentine until it is the consistency of thin 

 cream ; it is then ready for use. 



Before applying the wax, wipe the floor 

 perfectly clean with a dry cloth, and if there 

 are any spots on it, take them off with tur- 

 pentine or benzine. 



Never, under any circumstances, use water 

 on a floor that is to be polished. Apply the 

 wax with a flannel cloth, being careful to put 

 on but little at a time, in order to avoid a sur- 

 feit of stickiness. 



Rub the polish well into the wood with a 

 rough piece of flannel, or a piece of Brussels 

 carpet until it shines like furniture. 



Unless the floor suffers rough usage, it will 

 remain bright for six months. 



Dust it by putting a piece of flannel over 

 the broom aDd sweeping. 



Keep a piece of flannel at hand to rub any 

 little spot where the polish may have become 

 dimmed. 



If, after long use and many waxings, the 

 floor should seem sticky and dirty, clean it 

 with turpentine. 



Some people prefer simply to oil a floor. 

 While this does not yield as high a polish as 

 wax, it is satisfactory for a time. 



An oiled floor should be gone over every 

 week or two; even then the dust sticks to it, 

 and it 60on becomes dull. If anything other 

 than wax is desired, it is better to oil and then 

 varnish the floor. 



Another means of polishing is to apply a 

 coating of size, followed by one of walnut or 

 oak stain, and subsequently by a third coat- 

 ing of varnish. 



In any case, let the polish harden for 24 

 hours before the floor is used. 



Definitions— Feeding Bees 



1. What is the difference between " nuclei " 

 and " frame of brood?" 



2. What is a "quilt" in bee-lore? 



3. Is a whole sheet of foundation too much 

 for one frame? 



4 How can one determine when bees have 

 sufficient food for winter, to carry them 

 through successfully to foraging time in 

 spring? 



6. What is the best method for feeding 

 bees? My bees starved to death last spring 

 because of my ignorance of how to feed them. 



1 now have 2 colonies, and want to winter 

 them successfully. Mrs. J. D. Black. 



Albion, Ind., Aug. 20. 



1. A frame of brood is a comb filled, 

 or partly filled, with brood without any 

 bees. A nucleus is the beginning of a 

 colony of bees, or it might be called a 

 small colony. It may have only 1 

 frame of brood, but generally 2 or 3, 

 with bees enough to cover the brood. 

 Of course, it would be a nucleus with 

 only the bees without the brood, but a 

 very poor one. So you see there is a 

 very big difference between a frame of 

 brood and a nucleus. Nuclei is the 

 plural of the word nucleus ; 1 nucleus, 



2 nuclei. But the word nuclei is never 

 used as an adjective. We do not say 2 

 nuclei hives, but 2 nucleus hives. 



2. The word " quilt " is used rather 

 loosely to apply to anything in the 

 cloth line used to lay over the top-bars. 

 It may be a single thickness of cloth, 

 when it would more properly be called 

 a sheet ; it may be 2 or more thick- 

 nesses, or it may be 2 thicknesses with 

 paper between. 



3. No. A full sheet of foundation is 

 the surest way to prevent rearing a 

 whole lot of useless drones. 



4. Try to have at least 30 pounds of 

 honey in each hive. You can find this 



out by actually weighing the hive. 

 Different kinds of hives with their 

 covers and bottom-boards vary so much 

 in weight that I can not give you ex- 

 act figures ; but you can get at it in 

 this way : Weigh a hive with empty 

 combs, or, in other words, weigh one 

 hive without bees, brood or honey, then 

 add to that 40 pounds to be the proper 

 weight for each colony ; the extra 10 

 pounds to make up for bees and pollen. 



5. Early in September. 



6. Use the Miller feeder. If you have 



none, then use the crock-and-plate plan. 

 Fill a crock with sugar and water, 

 equal parts ; cut one thickness of 

 heavy woolen cloth (or 3 or 4 thick- 

 nesses of cheese-cloth) in a circle to 

 cover the crock ; lay over this a plate 

 upside down, then with one hand hold 

 on the plate and quickly turn the whole 

 thing upside down. Set this on the 

 top-bars with an empty hive-body over 

 it, cover up, and the bees will do the 

 rest. If fed later a thicker syrup will 

 be needed. 



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Send Questions either to the office of the American Bee Journal, or to 



Dr. C. C. Miller, Marengo, 111. 



pg* Dr. Miller does not answer Questions by mail. 



Keeping Honey Away from Ants- 

 Prozen Honey 



1. In reply to the question when to take off 

 supers, you say, on page 691, " Take off each 

 super when it is full." Now, will you please 

 tell me how to take care of the honey after 

 taking it off, until I sell or eat it? If I take 

 the super off and put it, no matter where, the 

 ants get at it. 



2. Will honey keep all right if it freezes? 



Montana. 



Answers. — 1. Keep the honey in a warm, 

 dry, airy place. If warm and dry it doesn't 

 matter so much about being airy. A place 

 where salt will keep dry, and where it never 

 freezes, is a pretty good place. One way to 

 keep it from ants is to have it closed in some- 

 thing so tight -fitting that ants can not get to 

 it. That's a hard thing to do, especially with 

 a large quantity. An easier way is to put it 

 on some kind of platform supported on 4 feet, 

 each foot resting in some old dish or can kept 

 supplied with some kind of oil or water. Per- 

 haps you can kill off tne ants. If you can 

 trace tbem to their nest, you can give them a 

 dose of bisulphide of carbon, or gasoline. 

 You can wring a sponge out of sweetened 

 water and put it where the ants will collect 

 on it, then dip ants and all in boiling water, 

 repeating the performance until you've used 

 up the ants. This last you must of course do 

 before the ants begin on the honey, for they 

 may prefer the honey to a sweetened sponge. 



2. Better put it down cellar if you have no 

 other place where it will not freeze. It will 

 not be much spoiled by freezing, but it will 

 candy, and the bees are likely to waste some 

 of it when candied. 



Chaff Hive-Cover-Pure Italians Less 



Liable to Disease— Miller Prames 



—Loss of Bees from Sprayed 



Bloom 



1. You speak in your book about liking the 

 double hive-cover with a dead-air space. I'll 

 tell you what I like better. It's the same 

 cover with a % space instead of %, the space 

 to be filled with chaff. They are a great 

 thing when one wiuters bees outdoors, and I 

 think they help to keep the supers warm dur- 

 ing cool nights. 



2. You say your bees are hybrids— I sup- 

 pose with Italian blood predominating. Now 



my main reason for keeping pure Italians 

 only is something the books and journals 

 don't often mention; that is. that I can han- 

 dle at least a half more colonies. Don't have 

 to spend so much time smoking the bees, and 

 finding queens is rapid work. If you had 

 pure stock you wouldn't need to worry about 

 playing hide-and-seek. 



Another main reason with me for keeping 

 Italians is their resistance to disease. There 

 are two diseases widespread in this State, and 

 one of them does not trouble the Italians un- 

 less it is introduced by giving them infected 

 combs; and even then it is not very serious. 

 But it works havoc with the blacks and hy- 

 brids. I lost a hundred colonies before I 

 learned the trick. I don't know what to call 

 the disease. Most people call it foul brood, 

 but I am pretty sure it is something else. 



3. I use the Miller frames, and want to buy 

 a thousand this fall. Do you think it would 

 pay to have them made special 1% wide, 

 when I can buy them already made 1 1-16? 

 That is, in other words, do you think burr- 

 combs are noticeably less with % inch than 

 with 5-16 between the top-bars? 



4. Have you ever had any serious loss of 

 bees from poison being used to spray apple- 

 trees? Illinois. 



Answers.— 1. Very likely % is better than 

 %, and I'm sure it is better to have the space 

 filled with chaff. 



2. I'm wondering just a little whether you 

 are dead certain that there is no black blood 

 in your bees. Are all the bees within 2 miles 

 pure Italians? Your reason for keeping pure 

 Italians — greater rapidity of handling — 

 wouldn't count in this locality. We use no 

 more smoke than is necessary— no more for 

 grades than for pure stock — and we handle 

 one ju6t as fast as the other, even if we do 

 get more stings. As to finding queens, I 

 don't know that grades are harder to find 

 than pure Italian, except that some queens, 

 which are very dark, are not so quickly seen 

 as brighter ones. Sounds a little as if you 

 were making a comparison between Italians 

 and blacks rather than between Italians and 

 grades — quite a different thing. Yet don't 

 understand that I would insist on keeping 

 grades. It may be better to keep pure Ital- 

 ians — if you can. 



3. 1 really don't know. I don't suppose 

 that 1-16 makes so very much difference; bu 

 I have never tried it. There are more comb 

 built between my top-bars than I like. Morle 

 Pettit says— and Morley Pettit is a man fo 

 whose word I have respect — that it is becaus- 



