118 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



Fei. 25, 





CONDUCTED BY 

 DH. C. O. MHZ,ER, MAKENGO, TL.'L. 



[Questions may be mailed to tbe Bee Journal, or to Dr. Miller direct. 1 



What to Do with Sour Honey. 



On page 88 the question is askt what to do with that sour 

 honey. " Heating it to a certain degree," as the word heat- 

 ing is usually understood, will simply ruin it. If it can be 

 kept warmed for a few weeks at lOU' to 120'-', that may im- 

 prove its flavor, and if conditions are favorable for evapora- 

 tion it will certainly improve its consistency, for sour honey 

 means thin honey. It may, and it may not, be an easy thing 

 to keep it properly warmed for a sufficient length of time, and 

 another plan may be taken, providiug the honey has granu- 

 lated with coarse grains. Drain off the liquid part and use it 

 for vinegar, then melt up the grains. If it's in barrels it cau 

 be drained by allowing the barrel to be turned ou its side, or 

 by having a hole at the lower part. My good friend, T. F. 

 Bingham, protests against such advice, as reported on page 

 85, and it may be well to advise agaiust having honey that 

 by any possibility can be drained, but the fact remains that 

 there are tons upon tons of such houey, and it isn't a bad 

 thing to know what to do with it. C. C. M. 



Lieveliiiir Comb in Sections — moving Bce§. 



1. I have a lot of sections, that I extracted in the fall and 

 left the bees to clean them up. I read a good deal about 

 leveling the comb. You talk about B. Taylor's comb-leveler. 

 How would you do it, without the leveler ? I don't care to 

 have the work done in one day, for I have time to do it, if 

 there is any other successful way to do it. 



2. Have you any idea how you would manage to move 

 about 30 colonies of bees and fixtures, household furniture, 

 horses, etc., 150 miles by freight '? and at what time of the 

 year? Just three weeks before last Christmas, I was on a 

 freight-car loaded with household furniture, horse and buggy, 

 dog and chickens ; traveled one night and part of the next 

 forenoon. I couldn't see how to fix the bees to mive, where 

 there was a bumping and swearing like those railroad men 

 bad. The train stopt one hour at a station where a lot of coal 

 miners were traveling. Early in the morning, the horse was 

 scraping, the dog barking, and the rooster crowing — surely 

 some people must have thought it was some kind of a circus. 

 It is owing to how bees could be loaded, to have all on one car. 

 I have learned that a car will hold twice as much as I 

 would have thought at first. There was plenty of swinging up 

 and down when in full speed. E. B. K. 



Answers. — 1. It seems almost as though leveling combs 

 in sections was being pusht just a little too hard sometimes. 

 Some talk as though the object of leveling was nothing more 

 and nothing less than to reduce the depth of the comb. I don't 

 believe in that. Combs from unlinisht sections are sometimes 

 built out in such a way that when put In a new place some 

 part will come nearer to the separator than the space of '4 

 Inch, and in that case the comb will be built fast to the sepa- 

 tor. If no separators are used, there is danger of combs being 

 built together, making the matter even worse than where sep- 

 arators are present. So it is desirable to cut down the comb 

 sufficiently to avoid the trouble indicated. 



Again, it happens only too often that when sections are 

 loft on after the honey-How ceases, the outer edges of the cells 

 will be travel-stained, and sometimes badly varnisht with pro- 

 polis. This should be cut away. One way to accomplish the 

 work is to take a thin-bladed knife and bend the blade at right 

 angles or nearly so, having the part beyond the bond 8 inches 

 long or more. Heat your knife blade In hot water or over a 

 lamp and shave away the desired amount. But if you have a 

 hundred sections or more to trim, it may be well to get Tay- 

 lor's leveler, which is not expensive, as the work is done so 

 quickly and easily by its aid. 



2. I think I'd prefer to ship the bees at a time when the 

 thermometer indicated lower than .'52 - and not higher than 



55". Colder and warmer might do, but if colder there is more 

 danger of breaking combs that are brittle with the cold, and if 

 warmer there is more danger of the bees worrying themselves 

 to death or suffocating. 



The combs should be parallel with the rails of the track. 

 I'd try to load the bees so they would be practically in a car 

 by themselves, by fencing them off from the possibility of 

 other goods being jammed into them. Cleats can be nailed 

 on each side of the car, and a fence built across by nailing 

 fence-boards on the cleats. If thought necessary, boards can 

 be nailed inside this fence to stay it, not having the staying 

 boards with the edges up and down as in a fence, but flat- 

 wise. If there is room enough so that one hive does not need 

 to rest on another, then it will be an easy thing to fasten each 

 hive in place by nailing strips on the floor around each hive. 

 If strips an inch high are nailed into the floor around a hive, 

 it will not jump out of its place. If one hive is to be placed 

 on another, then you must plan according to cireymstances. 

 In most cases you can hold the upper hives firmly ui place by 

 means of fence-boards across the car. Horizontal cleats must 

 be nailed on the sides of the car for the boards^to rest on, then 

 cleats nailed on above the boards so they can't get up or 

 down, then cleats nailed against the edge of the board — not 

 driving the nails, of course, into the board, but into the side 

 of the car — so that the hives will be held solid in their places. 

 Use plenty of boards and nails, so that the hives will be about 

 as solid as if built into the car. 



Bees Affected wiiii tiie Diarriiea. 



Some of my bees have a sort of diarrhea, which makes 

 the hives smell bad. What can I do for it ? 



P. A. B., Defiance, Ohio, Feb. 8. 



Answer. — If outdoors, they will probably get over it the 

 first fine day they can fly, and perhaps there is nothing for 

 you to do beyond seeing that the entrance is fully open to ad- 

 mit plenty of fresh air. If clogged with dead bees, clear it 

 out, and clean tbe dead bees off the floor-board. If the bees 

 are in the cellar, use the same precautions, and in addition 

 see that the air in the cellar is pure. Open it fully at any 

 time when you can do so at night without reducing the tem- 

 perature of the cellar below 40^ to 45'-'; 45'^ is generally 

 counted the best temperature in the cellar, but it is better to 

 have it at 40-' with pure air than foul air at 45'^. In the cel- 

 lar there's no danger of strong winds chilling the bees, so you 

 cannot have the bottom of the hive too open. Open it up all 

 you can, even to taking away entirely the floor-board and let- 

 ting the hive rest on its two edges. 



Oivins Otiicr Honey a Ba§»i«roo<l Flavor. 



If your bees did not have access to basswood, but had a 

 steady pasturage from miscellaneous wild flowers, sweet clover 

 and mustard, would it not be easy to change the flavor of your 

 extracted honey by mixing in a little basswood honey after 

 extraction ■? E. W. 



Answer. — That depends entirely on the kind of honey. 

 Probably in the case you mention the flavor would be so pro 

 nounced as to be not easily afltected hy the flavor of basswood 



DonH Try to Feed €<luco§c -Standard Hive. 



I am a beginner in the bee-business, having bought 4 col- 

 onies about two years ago. I now have 45 colonies. In all I 

 have taken about 1,100 pounds of comb honey the past sea- 

 son. The main feed here for bees is alfalfa, which is plenty. 

 It makes very white honey. There is some heart's-ease. I 

 left my bees on the summer stands with packing in the supers. 

 I want to know something more about yellow clover. People 

 here are down on sweet clover. 



1. Is glucose fit to feed bees in tbe fall or spring ? If so, 

 where can it be had, and what grade is the best? Don't think 

 that I want to adulterate the honey, for I don't believe la 

 adulterating anything. The reason I ask is, it is very warm 

 for tbe time of year, and last fall the bees had plenty of winter 

 stores, but the weather being so warm they are flying every 

 day, and 1 fear they will run short of feed. 



2. What Is the standard hive? I have tbe dovetail, 8 

 and 10 frame. Is thare any better kind ? 



D. J. M., Harlan Co., Nebr., Jan. 20. 



Answers.— 1. It is now generally considered that glucose 

 Is not a fit food for bees at any time. 



