274 



THE BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW 



grasp it with finger ends touching the 

 comb itself, not to pick at it with pen- 

 knife or spUnter, and above all the never- 

 enough-repeated warning, don't put it 

 down cellar. G. A. Deadnian thinks 

 these should be printed in quantity on a 

 slip, and one put in each case of honey. 

 Canadian, 246. Good idea. One half of 

 private customers, and grocers as well, to 

 this day "don't know beans" on these 

 needful and trite subjects. 



Some valuable wax experiments appear 

 on page 248. Two pailfuls of crushed old 

 comb, soaked for two days, were steamed 

 out. Result 1 1 1^ pounds; and the residue 

 seemed to contain no wax. Put in a suit- 

 able press however the experimenter ( Mr. 

 F. A. Gimmelario) was astonished to see 

 SX pounds more come out. A somewhat 

 similar charge was boiled out in a sack, 

 in the old fashioned way, and only i 

 pound 6 ounces was recovered by the 

 press. The first treatment got out ^% 

 pounds. So unless the press is used also 

 steaming is not an improvement — drives 

 the water out of the cocoon silk so com- 

 pletely that melted wax is absorbed later 

 on. 



D. W. Heise the picker says that last 

 winter, so mild in Yankeedom, was both 

 mild and severe in Kanuckshire. It was 

 mild as to zeros, but severe in that it 

 wouldn't let up enough to allow of cleans- 

 ing flights. Page 249. 



In the same paper he says he 

 likes leaves for winter packing, although 

 he admits that they are bothersome to 

 take out and replace. Seems to me that 

 that is not their worst fault — will get wet 

 and stay wet with the moisture of the 

 cluster of bees. Doubtless in Canadian 

 zero weather damp leaves and drj- leaves 

 seem much alike; but in a mild climate 

 there is a heap of difference. He makes 

 a \&xy good point in saying that four 

 flights in winter [if equi-spaced of course] 

 are better than more. Yes, we should 

 keep that in mind. Probabl)- a shade 

 board set to keep the bees from flying 

 would often pay for the trouble of setting 

 it. Too much winter flight often seems 



to make wintering in the South about as 

 destructive as it is in the North. 



On page 257 Prof. Shutt of the Cana- 

 dian experiment station reports that in 

 some samples of foundation 50 percent 

 of the wax is di awn or moved into the 

 structure of the comb away from the 

 base, while other samples show various 

 lesser percentages, even down to a paltry 

 7 percent. But as these last were mostly 

 samples so thin that there wasn't any 

 wax to spare the enlargement of our prac- 

 tical knowledge seems not to be very 

 great. 



In an able article on spraying fruit trees 

 in bloom, the editor, R. F. Holterman, ex- 

 presses a doubt whether or not nectar 

 thus poisoned will affect the bee carrying 

 it if none is taken into the true stomach 

 for food. Page 259. I think the facts 

 we already have at hand enable us to say 

 with almost certainty that it must do so. 

 It is in evidence that bees carrying quanti- 

 ties of thin nectar are constantly ejecting 

 water as urine. This water must come 

 from the bees' blood; and the supply in 

 the blood must be kept up by percolation 

 directly through the walls of the honey 

 sac. Now for water containing poison 

 in solution to pass through a thin living 

 membrane and not carry any of the 

 poison along with it — well, pending posi- 

 tive proof, I think we should assume that 

 a trace at least of the poison will go 

 along. Perhaps a counter-minded per- 

 son would say, easier to hold back all the 

 poison and let the water pass than to hold 

 back all the honey and let the water pass. 



The two most important points of bee- 

 keeping, according to friend Holterman 

 (page 220) are, wintering bees with the 

 least loss of vitality, and, keeping down 

 the desire to swarm. It should serve to 

 keep us humble when we think that both 

 tho.se points are unsolved, if not unsolva- 

 ble. As to wintering, the change propos- 

 ed is the forced introduction of a small 

 but constant supply of piire air. As is well 

 known, self-acting ventilators work too 

 well in fiercely cold weather and almo.st 

 not at all during a thaw. The new de- 



