(Entered at the Post-Office at Cbicago as Second-Class Mail-Matter.) 

 Published Weekly at $1.00 a Year, by George W. York & Co., 834 Dearborn Street. 



GEORGE W. YORK, Editor 



CHICAGO, ILL,, NOVEMBER 8, 1906 



Vol. XLVI-No. 45 



editorial ^o€es 

 and Comments 



>^~; 



The National at San Antonio 



When the majority of its subscribers are 

 reading this number of the American Bee 

 Journal, the National Bae-Keepers' Associa- 

 tion will be in session in San Antonio. It will 

 be its first meeting in that part of our coun- 

 try. It is hoped that the great bee-keeping 

 South will be well represented. 



At the time of writing this, the special car 

 of bee-keepers to start from Chicago is as- 

 sured. There will be in it about the same 

 number of persons as crossed the continent 

 to attend the Los Angeles convention of the 

 National in August, 1903. No doubt it will 

 be a similarly happy and congenial company. 



Money Definitions and Standard 



The definitions and standard of honey ap- 

 proved by the United States Department of 

 Agriculture, are as follows: 



1. Honey is the nectar and saccharine ex- 

 udations of plants gathered, modified, and 

 stored in the comb by honey-bees ( Apis nielli- 

 flea and .1. dorsata) ; islsevorotatory, contains 

 not more than twenty-five percent of water, 

 not more than twenty-five hundredths per- 

 cent of ash, and not more than eight percent 

 of sucrose. 



2. Comb honey is honey contained in the 

 cells of comb. 



3. Extracted honey is honey which has 

 been separated from the uncrushed comb by 

 centrifugal force or gravity. 



4. Strained honey is honey removed from 

 the crushed comb by straining or other means. 



The following supplementary statement 

 is also published, on account of honey-dew 

 sometimes being gathered by the bees: 



The standard does not in any way exclude 

 small Quantities of honey-dew from honey. 

 We realize that bees often gather small quan- 

 tities of honey-dew that can not be detected 



i?V 



in the finished product by chemical means 

 and doe6 not damagel its quality. It is only 

 when relatively large amounts are gathered 

 that the quality of the honey is impaired, and 

 it fails to meet the requirements of the stand- 

 ard. It is generally agreed that such a large 

 amount of honey-dew is injurious to the 

 quality of the product, which can not then be 

 properly regarded as honey. 



Irish Bee Journal on the Superseding 

 of Queens 



On page 55, of the Irish Bee Journal, ap- 

 pears an editorial headed " Hypercriticism," 

 in which Editor Digges refers to the first edi- 

 torial on page 685 of this Journal, and says: 



Our much esteemed contemporary appears 

 to have taken a view of Mr. Maguire's article 

 which, certainly, did not present itself to us. 

 We think it unlikely that our readers gen- 

 erally gathered from the article that, as our 

 contemporary states, "the novice is prac- 

 tically told that all successful bee-keepers de- 

 stroy each queen when it becomes a year old." 



Whatever view may have presented itself to 

 Editor Digges, we must confess to being 

 greatly puzzled, upon carefully studying 

 again the extracts quoted on page 685, to get 

 any other view from them than the one 

 already expressed, namely, that the right 

 thing is to replace every queen when a year 

 old. Read again that sentence, "' But, al- 

 though, the matter is strongly urged in bee- 

 guides and bee-journals, few amateurs seem 

 to have grasped the full significance of 

 having every season, a young queen of the 

 previous year's rearing, to head each colony." 

 If each colony is to have every season a young 

 queen of the previous year's rearing, how can 

 that possibly be accomplished unless every 

 queen is destroyed when it becomes a year 

 old? 



The editor suggests, however, that excep- 



tions to rules are generally understood, say- 

 ing: 



When Mr. Maguire wrote, " Experienced 

 bee-keepers know the importance of requeen- 

 ing their colonies every year," it is not to be 

 supposed that he intended to imply that every 

 colony should be requeened every year, re- 

 gardless of the usefulness of the reigning 

 c|iinen. If one were to say, "Experienced 

 bee-keeper6 know the advantage of clipping 

 their queens every spring," we should expect 

 even the novice to understand that only 

 queens that required clipping were referred to. 



It must be confessed that it is not so very 

 clear how that helps out with the puzzle. 

 Of course, one would not clip a queen whose 

 wings have already been removed, but, all the 

 same, the bee-keeper who practises clipping 

 allows no queen to enter the season of the 

 harvest with whole wings. Neither would 

 the bee-keeper be likely to supersede a 

 queen where the bees had already anticipated 

 him. 



Let us, however, frankly accept that excep- 

 tions should be allowed, and that the state- 

 ment of Mr. Maguire does not preclude a 

 longer lease of life than one year for queens 

 of unusual merit; that still leaves the general 

 rule. Evidently, however, the Irish Bee Jour- 

 nal understands something else than yearly 

 superseding to be taught. In response to the 

 request for authorities, it gives specific quo- 

 tations from six. 



Langstroth is quoted as saying: "The 

 fecundity of the queen-bee ordinarily dimin- 

 ishes after she has entered her third year. 



Simmins, in his " A Modern Bee-Farm," 

 says: " I assert as a fact that to enable one 

 to keep his stock generally in the highest 

 state of efficiency, he must retain no queens 

 that have seen their second summer. Take a 

 queen reared even so late as August; she will 

 be in full profit the following season; keep 

 her till another season and her colony will be 

 hardly second-rate." 



Cheshire says there is reason for supersed- 

 ing a queen at the end of her second year of 

 work. 



Sladen says queens are often worn out in 3 

 years. 



"The Irish Bee-Guide," a book written by 

 Editor Digges himself, which has had high 

 words of praise, says: "After her second 

 year a queen ceases to be profitable." 



Doolittle says: "If we are using a system 



