THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



61 



mankind. Then let us strive to obtain a 

 liiLjli stand in our favorite pursuit l)y stor- 

 iuli our minds witli that knowicdiic tiiat 

 Avill euahh' us to overcoiiu' all ilitliculties 

 that we may have to encounter and to sur- 

 mount every obstacle in the pathway of 

 sueeess. 



For the Aincricnn Hce Journal. 



How to Save a Queenless Stock. 



On a brip;ht warm day in February, I ex- 

 aiiiined a nund)er of my hives, to see if they 

 had surtieient stores and if the queen was 

 laying. In some liives, 1 found more, and 

 soiue. less, of sealed brood, all except one 

 had e.i;!,'s and larviP. One liive on examina- 

 tion jiroved to be queenless. There was 

 plenty of bees and stores enough to last lur- 

 til the lioney harvest. I gave them a card 

 of cond) from one of my strongest stocks 

 with sealed brood, larvje" and eggs in it. I 

 closed the hive np and did not open it again 

 until April 11th, as the weather was cool 

 and not suitable to open tlie hive. I found 

 that tliey had made three queen cells ; the 

 cells were open but no queen cells could be 

 found in the hive. I gave them another 

 card of brood, and on May 2nd, a beautiful 

 day I saw the queen as she returned from 

 lier bridal tour with unmistakable evidence 

 of her impregnation ; and I gave them an- 

 other card of brood in a few days. She be- 

 gan laying and soon tilled the hive with bees. 

 The queen was pure Italian and was im- 

 pregnated by a pure drone, and that hive to- 

 day is as valuable as any hive I have. I 

 winter on summer stands altogether. If we 

 would raise early queens, we should hardly 

 fail to get them pvu-ely impregnated as the 

 Italian drones are earlier than the black 

 drones. N. P. Allen. 



Smith's Grove, Ky. 



For the Ainerican Bee Journal. 



Candied Honey— Empty Comb. 



I was sumwhat surprised in reading Da- 

 dant's article under the above caption in the 

 Feb. No. of the Journal. lie says that to 

 Avant a means of preventing honey "from can- 

 dying is the same as to encourage a fraud. 

 Kow my extracted lioney had always can- 

 died until the present winter. None that I 

 put up in one and two lb. glass cans has as 

 yet candied and we have had as cold weath- 

 er as we ever had for twenty-five or thirty 

 years. 



Last spring I read an article in the .Jour- 

 nal from C. Muth. on "how to prevent hon- 

 ey fi'om candying. Ilis directions were to let 

 it set in a cold and dark room for a day or two 

 after extracting, with no top on tlie vessel 

 it was in and skim off carefully then cover. 

 This was to give it time to work and send 

 all the impurities to the to)). I treated my 

 honey in this way and no other, and if it is 

 not pure, I ask Dadant to say in what has 

 rendei'ed it impure. It was fully sealed 

 when extractect and very thick honey, but 

 as it has not candied yet ; it is according to 

 Dadant impure. I never thouj^ht of honey 

 being impure that did not candy or I would 

 never wished to know how to prevent its 

 doing so. Everyone who has bought ^this 

 honey pronounces it the very best. 



I likecandi<'d honey myself better than I 

 do tliat that does not can»ly, but we read in 

 tlie .Journal tlud candied honey did not 

 sell so well as the li(iuid ; that it looks like 

 a can of lard. Dadaufs reasoning is good 

 if he can exi)lain \\\\y luiue and ^Mutli's hon- 

 ey in glass jars didn't eanily. 1 ilid not, nor 

 would not, mix a single 'ingredient with 

 honey. Also it lias been in as cold a place 

 as the rest of the honey that candied every 

 other winter. 



It is plain that my honey this winter has 

 not come u]) to Dadant's test of purity ; I 

 have given the simple and plain facts how 

 it was treated and put up in the sealed cans. 

 It now remains for Dadant to say why it is 

 not pure, if he can. 



EJIPTY COMB. 



I see in sevei'al Bee Journals and also by 

 my correspondents an encjuiry for empty 

 comb. This is a move in the right direction, 

 for very few know tlie real value of such 

 combs. Hundreds of pounds of nice worker 

 comb is yearly melted into wax, by those 

 who would have gladly sold it for the price 

 of bees-wax. But we had better watch and 

 be careful from where it came or we may 

 bring disease among our bees by means of 

 it. i have never >-et exjierienced the bee- 

 disease, and would willingly give every 

 stand of bees in my Apiary to prevent it. I 

 believe that foul brood and dj'sentery are 

 diseases among bees, but I very much doubt 

 whether there are any other. I do not be- 

 lieve there is such a thing as Bee Cholera. 



Lowell, Ky. E. M. Akgo. 



For tlie American Bee Joumal. 



Numbering Hives. 



I have received much information fi'om 

 bee books, and as far as 1 am able, will do 

 my share in giving information to promote 

 the cause. There is one particular branch 

 that ought to be known to all, especially 

 those thot remove their bees from their sum- 

 mer stands, and that, is numbering. It is 

 said by one standard writer that it is all a 

 whim, but if he has ever read the Pilgrim's 

 Progress, where he often stejiped out of the 

 straight and narrow imtli. he will take warn- 

 ing and not use nidiind words, because oth- 

 ers do not agree with him. I know whereof 

 I speak for I have had two cases this spring. 

 Last fall I liad three Eureka hives, and left 

 them on their summer stands ; two were 

 near together and one a rod off, so I re- 

 moved it near tiie other two, and in Febru- 

 ary tliere was a warm day and they all had a 

 tly, and the bees from many of them 

 went back to their former home and if there 

 had been another hive of bees there, they 

 w^ould have tried to go in, then it would be 

 said they were robbing. At the same time 

 I took some bees out of the cellar, and by 

 nnstake moved two hives tlu-ee rods from 

 their former stand, and on coming out many 

 of them went back to their former stand, 

 and had there been other hives there, they 

 would have tried to go in, and a stranger 

 would have said "your bees are roljl)ing." 

 Now let the unbelievers try the experiment 

 place some hives on tlieir tornu>r stands and 

 nusplace others and see which are robbing. 



Marcellus, N. Y. A. Wilson. 



Is it a fact that first swarms issue in the 

 forenoon, and second in the afternoon ? 



