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THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



Dec. 30, 



self to believe that covering the tops of the sections is exactly 

 the right thing, he must yet adnalt that Mr. Morton produces 

 sections of honey in every respect first-class, said sections 

 being closely covered with enamel cloth, or else by slats. F. 

 Danzenbaker stoutly defends the practice of using paraffiue 

 paper directly over the sections, .-securing it there by some 

 kind of packing over the paper. He admits there will be some 

 propolis, but less of the parafline paper than on other mate- 

 rials. But his chief object in using it is to prevent the escape 

 of warmth from the super. 



Cane vs. Beet Sugar. — Across the ocean it has for long 

 been insisted that cane and not beet sugar should be used for 

 feeding bees, while on this side it has been held that granu- 

 lated sugar was one and the same thing, whether from cane 

 or beets. Now comes the other side on this side. That is, 

 the other side of the question is maintained on this side of the 

 water. L. A. Aspinwall, in Review, who has heretofore used 

 a quart of water to 12 pounds of sugar, found he had to use 

 this year double the water, and even then the syrup was 

 gummy. Owing to the Cuban war he finds beet-sugar has dis- 

 placed cane. He then got " Diamond A," which seemed all 

 right. 



Kearing ftueens. — Five conditions are indispensable to 

 obtain good queens : 1. The queen furnishing the eggs must 

 be of good stock. 2. The larva; chosen for qeeens must not 

 be more than three days old ; for it is known that the food for 

 the first three days is identical, whether fed to queens or 

 workers, but differs afterwards. 8. The royal cell must have 

 a position suitable for the workers to give it the proper dimen- 

 sions. 4. The colony should be at the culmination of its 

 development. 5. Finally, queens must not be reared by feeble 

 colonies, for the royal larva may suffer from lack of care, 

 nourishment, or heat. — Gerstung's Bienenzucht. 



Equalizing Brood is practiced by some bee-keepers in 

 spring, but D. VV. Heise, in a paper reported in the Canadian 

 Bee Journal, declares he equalizes brood " after the honey 

 season closes." His reason for doing so Is that some colonies 

 not having swarmed, and having stored large surplus, will 

 have large numbers of old bees that will die off before winter 

 sets in. Equalizing the brood will give these colcnies young 

 bees for winter. He also practices putting the heaviest combs 

 of honey at one side, grading down to the lightest at the other 

 side, with the view of avoiding the possibility of having the 

 bees stranded on one side of the hive with e-^pty combs while 

 abundant stores are out of their reach on the other side. 



Grading by Samples or Pictures. — In Gleanings, "Mor- 

 ton's brother-in-law" gives his plan of grading section honey. 

 He has before him a sample of two sections of each of the 

 grades of honey into which he desires to assort his honey, and 

 whenever he is in doubt as to any section, he compares it with 

 the sample. He does not say how the samples are chosen in 

 the first place, nor why, if they are chosen by himself, the 

 same judgment that selected the samples might not equally be 

 used in judging in the same way all the rest. A picture is 

 given of the four grades into which he would assort, and this 

 illustrates the idea suggested by Editor Root to use pictures 

 for grading. The remark is made that the No. 2 is not well 

 shown in the picture, as one of the sections is of light weight. 

 It is difficult for a picture to show light weight, color, etc. 



Non-Swarming, or as near to it as has been reacht, says 

 Skylark in the Southland Queen, can be accomplisht in this 

 way: Always supposing your bees are in first-rate condition, 

 place two broad frames of sections on each side of your 

 supers, one comb of unsealed brood and bees from the brood- 

 nest, and fill up with empty extracting-frames or foundation. 

 This will jerk the meanest colony of bees into the sections 

 that ever lived. When they get rightly started' put an ex- 

 tracting super under them, taking out all the extracting- 

 frames from the comb-honey super, and putting them into the 

 lower super. Fill up with empty combs or foundation. Now 

 fill up your upper super with sections, and the job is done. 

 You can produce a super of comb honey, or two or them, on 

 the top of every extracting-hivo, and come as near to non- 

 swarming as you will ever get. 



Comb-Building.— L. Stachelhausen, in a very interest- 

 ing article in the Southland Queen, says that bees first start 

 the midrib as a straight wall, and after it has progrest a little 

 way they start the sidewalls on it, then draw out with their 

 mandibles the sidewalls, and this drawing out it is that gives 



the pyramidal form to the base. When foundation is given 

 them, they invariably draw out or thin the sidewalls, no mat- 

 ter how thick they may be, but they cannot thin the base. So 

 he thinks the sidewalls of drawn foundation cannot be thinned 

 if they are more than ^a certain depth, and the base never. 

 Bees sometimes take wax from old combs in the hive and use 

 it for building, but only when they cannot secrete wax. If 

 wax scales fall to the bottom of a hive, as when a swarm is 

 hived, such scales are never used for comb-building. Wax 

 carried into the hive from outside is used as propolis, and he 

 has never known it to be used for comb-building. 



Tl?e Weekly Budget 



Mr. Pbed Sibvert, of Porter Co., Ind., writing Dec. 17, 

 said : 



"The American Bee Journal is a welcome visitor. I don't 

 see how I could do without it." 



Editor HnxcHiNSON, of the Bee-Keepers' Review, said in 

 his November issue : 



" ' Beedom Boiled Down ' is the heading of a most excel- 

 lent department in the American Bee Journal." 



Mr. J. A. DeWitt, of Ontario, Canada, when renewing 

 his subscription, wrote us : 



" I am pleased with the Bee Journal. I read one article 

 in it that is worth more than the price of the Journal." 



Mr. D. W. Heise's Apiary Is pictured in the last number 

 of the Canadian Bee Journal. He is another of Ontario's 

 good bee-keepers — one of the more youngerly class. He is 

 fast coming to the front as an apiarian writer, being a fre- 

 quent contributor to our Canadian contemporary. 



Mr. D. B. Abbott, of Osage Co., Kans., wrote us, Dec. 8, 

 that he was starting that day for California for the good of 

 his health. We trust he may find in abundance what he goes 

 for. Would like a trip to California ourselves. Think it 

 would be a good thing for us, but it looks as if we'd have to 

 stay here now and keep the Bee Journal going regularly to 

 our readers. 



Mr. G. C. Allinger, of Marion Co.. Ohio, sent the follow- 

 ing with his reuev.al subscripton for IStlS: 



" With the help of the American Bee Journal I secured a 

 little over three tons of comb honey from lil colonies the past 

 season, and sold it for 11 cents per pound at home." 



Mr. F. a. Gemmill, of Canada, has a son. He's not a 

 new one. He was 21 years of age last month, and, judging 

 from a fine portrait of him in the Canadian Bee Journal, he is 

 a real "chip of the old block." His full name is " Raeside 

 Alexander Gemmill," and he intends " to follow apiculture." 

 " With his father's knowledge to begin on, and his own experi- 

 ence to add to this, he should develop into an exceedingly 

 useful member of the fraternity." So says Editor Holtermann. 



Mr. Geo. H. Stipp, of Alameda Co., Calif., wrote us 

 recently : 



" So far as I am concerned the American Bee Journal it- 

 self is sutlicient inducement for subscription. The man who 

 cannot get §I.()0 of good out of its 52 numbers, can't get a 

 dollar's worth out of anything, and ought not to be a bee- 

 keeper." 



Mr. G. M. Doolittle, of Onondaga Co., N. Y., is a great 

 man in more ways than in avoirdupois. We have met him 

 twice, and each lime our previously-formed estimate of his 

 sterling character has been hightened very much. While he 

 Is known very widely as a painstaking, practical bee-keeper, 

 yet he has another side that cannot be shown on paper or 

 through his pen. lOditor Hutchinson pays a very just tribute 

 to him in the following from the Review, which wo are glad 

 to reproduce here : 



" Doolittle was certainly what Gleanings called him, the 

 ' uncrowned king of the Buffalo convention.' I' think no one 

 will be offended if I say that I think that he was the best 

 speaker there was there. No one who has simply read his 



