48 



THE BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW. 



ces in bee-cullure, and buyers and sellers 

 of honej', man)^ of whom are present 

 during only the first day, maj' get the 

 benefit of the decisions. Especially de- 

 sirable is it that uniform score-cards are 

 adopted for the whole country. He pro- 

 poses also a score-card for judging colo- 

 nies of live bees. 



Sugar-honey, a product of German su- 

 gar-factories, with which bees have noth- 

 ing to do, is often sold for heath honey, 

 and, strange to say, is said to be incapa- 

 ble of being detected by chemists. A 

 case arose in which a bee-keeper was pros- 

 ecuted by a dealer in the article, because 

 the former, Herr Guhler, had declared it 

 an adulteration. He was acquitted, and 

 the plaintiff condemned to pay the costs 

 and the defendent's expenses. The gov- 

 ernment chemist was unable to declare it 

 adulterated; but the testimony of six bee- 

 keepers and one of the largest maniifac- 

 turers of honey-cakes was accepted, to 

 the effect that the taste and smell showed 

 that it was not honey. 



BlENENWIRTHSCHAFTUCHESCENTR.\L- 



Bi^ATT. — "A colony that is to be stimulat- 

 ed by feeding, must, besides the feed, 

 have so much stores on hand that it 

 would get along without feed until the 

 beginning of the flow. The Hannoverian 

 liee-keepers are masters in stimulative 

 feeding, and know by experience that 

 real results are to be attained only by the 

 use of pure honey ; so they pay especial 

 attention to the preparation of a good 

 feed-honey; not allowing, for example, 

 a single open cell of honey to come into 

 thefeed-ca.sk." — P. Neumann. The bee- 

 keepers referred to commonly .select for 

 stimulative feeding such honey-combs as 

 also contain plenty of pollen. These are 

 put in a cask and mashed up with a stick. 

 Hence the name ' ' stampf honig, ' ' or 

 pounded honey. 



H. Niemeyer contends that May .sick- 

 ness, or paralysis, is caused by a lack of 

 pollen in connection with ensuing abun- 

 dance. If while the bees are gathering 

 plent}' of pollen, a number of days of bad 

 weather ensue, followed by fair weather 



and abundance of pollen again, the disease 

 appears in from 3 to 8 days after the 

 cessation of the bad weather. A few days 

 only of bad weather do no harm. The 

 violence of the disea.se is in proportion to 

 the length of bad weather, to the sudden- 

 ness of the change to good weather again, 

 and to the strength of the colony; the 

 strong ones suffering most. Colonies 

 which are not affected, he has found, are 

 those which have a reserved supply of 

 pollen. Colonies in sunny and shelter- 

 ed situations have it worse. The disea.se 

 can occur at any time in the year, though 

 most likely to do so in Spring. As a rem- 

 edy, he proposes to feed liberally di:ring 

 the spells of bad weather with the ' 'pound- 

 ed honey" referred to above; or with 

 cakes of sugar and flour in connection 

 with thin honey. 



Bee-keeping, according to Herr Lehzen, 

 is a profession in the province of Han- 

 nover, and most bee-keepers there are 

 masters in their trade, though they rare- 

 ly write or speak about it. They rent 

 apiaries of about sixty colonies each, of 

 the farmers. If a farmer's apiary falls 

 behind others in like circumstances, he 

 looks around for another bee-keeper. To 

 get a position, it is necessary to have 

 served an apprenticeship of two years 

 with another bee-keeper. The manage- 

 ment is peculiarly adapted to the locality 

 and the local strain of bees, the heath- 

 bee, which has the swarming tendency 

 well developed. In a moderate flow 

 it is inferior to the Italian bee; but 

 when nectar is plenty it surpasses all 

 other races. The bee-keepers are thor- 

 ough believers in the superiority of a 

 few strong colonies to a number of weak 

 ones. After-swarms are united or added 

 to the least populous of the prime swarms. 

 When it is desired to stop an old colony 

 from swarming further, it is ]>ut into an 

 empty hive over night. The next morn- 

 ing the combs are cleared of queen-cells 

 and drone-comb, and the bees returned, 

 which, meanwhile, have killed all but 

 one of the young queens with them. 

 Often, 20 colonies are thus treated in one 



