682 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



answered by 

 Marengo, III. 



In this department will be answered those 

 questions needing- immediate attention, and 

 such as are not of sufficient special interest to 

 require replies from the "20 or more apiarists 

 who help to make "Queries and Replies" so 

 interesting on another page. In the main, it 

 will contain questions and answers upon mat- 

 ters that particularly interest beginners.— Ed. 



Newly Hatched Bees, Cerolein, Etc. 



1. Is there any danger of newly-hatched 

 bees dying for want of food, when the 

 frames on which they are hatched contain 

 no honey, and have no honey-combs imme- 

 diately adjacent ? 



2. What is cerolein, and what is known 

 of it as a remedy for foul brood ? 



3. Can you " locate " the cause of the in- 

 creased yield when the queen is removed 

 and put in a nucleus (the nucleus itself be- 

 ing made up out of the colony), the colony 

 kept queenless for a few weeks, and the 

 nucleus united to it at the end of that time? 

 The atnonvt of neither bees nor brood is 

 essentially altered. I'm not exactly ask- 

 ing for information, but for something just 

 as desirable, viz : a brief and clear state- 

 ment, which I cannot make to satisfy my- 

 self. 



4. Don't you think wide frames of sec- 

 tions below are better for farmers and 

 small honey-producers than upper stories ? 



5. What number of square inches of comb 

 does the expression "one Langstroth 

 frame " mean ? The mside dimensions vary 

 according to the depth of top-bar used. 



6. Is the plan of transferring the old 

 queen to an upper story, putting an exclud- 

 er between, dividing the brood between the 

 upper and lower stories and allowing a 

 young queen to be hatched below, and 

 mated, to be recommended as a method of 

 requeening without cessation of egg-lay- 

 ing ? If practiced each year after swarm- 

 ing time, would the queens thus reared be 

 as good as young queens from the South to 

 prevent swarming the season after ? 



A question was asked in this department 

 some time age, by Mr. Beckwith, as to how 

 much honey it took to make one pound of 

 bees. Cheshire makes a rough guess in 

 these terms: "Let us imagine that the 

 brooding, feeding, and sealing of a single 

 bee, from the egg upwards, costs as much 

 to the colony as storing four cells with 

 honey— an estimate which careful attention 



to this problem has shown me to be moder- 

 ate, even for ordinary yields. Then the 

 production of one pound of bees, i. e., near- 

 ly two pounds of larvae, will reduce the 

 honey stored by 16 pounds ; if the comb has 

 to be built, by probably 8 pounds." F. T. 



Answers. — 1. I should be inclined to say 

 there could be no danger so long as honey 

 was to be found in any part of the hive, for 

 the instinct of the bee is to keep some un- 

 sealed honey in the brood-nest so long as 

 there is honey in the hive. And yet I re- 

 member reading of a case in which the 

 young bees died while plenty of honey was 

 in outside combs. If I remember rightly, 

 there was a continued cold spell, so that all 

 the honey in the brood-nest was used up, 

 and it was too cold for the bees to move 

 out of the brood-nest for more. 



2. Cerolein is a substance obtained from 

 beeswax by treatment with boiling alcohol, 

 but I don't remember to have heard of it as 

 a foul-brood remedy. 



3. I doubt if I can do any better at it 

 than you. In the first place, is it a settled 

 thing that there is an increased yield ? I 

 know it is claimed, and by good men, too, 

 but somehow I couldn't entirely satisfy 

 myself about it, and I tried it on a large 

 scale. If you are satisfied as to the matter 

 of fact, and want a theory, I would formu- 

 late something like this: In three days 

 after the removal of the queen all the eggs 

 will be hatched, and after that three days 

 there will be fewer larvae to feed than if 

 the queen had continued in the hive. In 

 about five days more there will be no feed- 

 ing at all to be done, and so less stores used 

 up. Moreover, there being less housework 

 to do, it is possible that some of the bees 

 will become field gatherers a little earlier 

 than if there were plenty of " babies " to 

 feed. 



I have serious doubts, however, as to any 

 gain, in the long run, by removing the 

 queen. 



4. No, farmers' bees are not without 

 their ambitions, and have just the same 

 reasons for storing above as the bees of the 

 specialist. 



5. Yes, the amount of comb surface 

 varies according to the thickness, not only 

 of the top-bars, but also of the end and 

 bottom bars. One of the latest Dovetail- 

 hive frames is before me, and the inside 

 measurement is 130 square inches ; but no 

 one knows what the comb surface will be 

 exactly, till he knows what amount of 



