

4 2d YEAR. 



CHICAGO, ILL, JANUARY 23, 1902, 



No. 4. 



^ Editorial. ^ I 



"The Truth About Honey."— The re- 

 port of the coniiiiittee appointed by the Chi- 

 cago Bee-Keepers' Association, ami published 

 in these columns last week — was given a 

 prominent position in the Chicago Daily News 

 of Jan. 10. We took a copy of the report in 

 person to Editor Smith, of the News, who had 

 it appear under large head-lines reading as 

 follows : 



" Pure Honey in Plenty. Committee of the 

 Chicago Bee-Keepers' Association Makes 

 Statement. Is in Denial of Report. Says 

 Adulterated Article Can Be Found Without 

 Dilliculty. No Artificial Comb-Honey." 



When it is known that the Chicago Daily 

 News has an evening circulation of about 

 300,1100, it will be seen what a wide reading 

 the report will have. Up to the time of this 

 writing, no other daily paper in Chicago has 

 published the report, though all the morning 

 papers were furnished with a copy of it by us 

 in person. 



We hope that wherever it is possible to get 

 that statement in the local newspaper it will 

 bedone. Bee-keepers everywhere can not do 

 a better service for truth and justice than to 

 ask the editors of their local papers to copy it, 

 or to send to us for a proof or copy with elec- 

 trotypes of the three pictures as we printed it 

 last week, and then place it before their read- 

 ers. 



•»■ 



Don't Discourage the Fanner from 



keeping bees, says A. E. Willeutt in the 

 American Bee-Keeper. Then he asks the fol- 

 lowing pertinent questions : 



Did our large producers, specialists and 

 noted queen-breeders, like ''Jonah's gourd," 

 spring up in a single night? or did they, like 

 the rest of us, start with a few colonies, and 

 work their way upward ; 



Did the reader ever see, or hear of, a horse 

 that wasn't a colt before it was a horse ; I 

 never did. 



Did not some of our most successful apia- 

 rists commence bee-keeping in some back 

 farmyard, with only one or two colonies ' 



Mating Queens in Conflnenient. — 



Less has been said about the matter this year 

 than last, but it seems all have not been idle. 

 Mr. W. E. Flower reports that he made a fer- 

 tilizing tent and succeeded in getting one 

 queen fertilized. As this is much poorer suc- 

 cess than had previously been attained, it 

 might seem hardly worth while to pay any at- 

 tention to Mr. Flower's efforts. But when it 

 is considered that the previous matings had 



been secured in a tent measuring :iO feet each 

 way, and that Mr. Flower operated with a 

 tent l'2xlOx() feet — a thing within reach of al- 

 most any bee-keeper — we can all heartily wish 

 him entire success in his future elTorls, and 

 watcli him with interest, if indeed we do not 

 follow his example. 



Instead of putting his nucleus hives out- 

 side the tent, he put them inside; then if a 

 queen flew when a hive was opened, she 

 would be inside the tent. He first put into 

 the nuclei drones from the other colonies; but 

 they worried themselves to death trying to 

 get through the excluder at the outside en- 

 trance. Then he put in the nuclei frames of 

 sealed drone-brood, and the drones from these 

 liehaved differently and seemed to feel at 

 home, flying freely in the cage, and returning 

 to the hive at night. 



Success to you in your further efforts, Mr. 

 Flower. Or, may you and your scheme be a 

 " blooming " success. 



Starting Queen-Cells ivith Eggs. — 



A writer in the Australian Bee-Bulletin pro- 

 poses to take away from a colony its queen 

 and all its unsealed brood, leaving nothing 

 but eggs in the hive, and says: 



"Only eggs being present they cannot start 

 too-old larva? to make queens with. 



A novice is very likely to entertain this 

 view, and yet there can hardly be a surer way 

 to get bees to start queen-cells with larva; too 

 old. For they are not satisfied with what 

 queen-cells are first started, but will continue 

 to start cells for several days, and by this time 

 the larv;v will be too old. If a!l are allowed 

 to remain, no harm will be done, for these 

 later and poorer cells will be among those de- 

 stroyed by the bees. The harm comes when 

 the ignorant novice takes the cells one at a 

 time and distributes them. The experienced 

 bee-keeper will see that in the distribution of 

 cells each nucleus shall have two or more 

 cells, so as to give the bees a choice, and 

 among those given there will be, in each case, 

 one that shows by its appearance that it is not 

 among those later started. 



The Comb-Honey Slander.— It is en- 

 couraging to know that at least some of the 

 papers that gave place to the misrepresenta- 

 tion of comb-honey have shown a willingness 

 to do all in their power to right the wrong 

 they have unwittingly done. Editor Root 

 says : 



Nov. "28 the Chicago Chronicle published 

 one of the worst slanders on the honey-busi- 

 ness I have ever seen. It was to the effect 

 that bee-keepers themselves were implicated 

 in this manufacturing business, and tlierefore 

 did not like to have the matter exposed. I sat 

 down and wrote as nice a reply to that paper 



as I knew how. and a few days later I had the 

 gratillcation of reading in their columns my 



letter in full. 



There Is also encouragement in the thought 

 that the Department of Agriculture at Wash- 

 ington stands on the side of right. The Ot- 

 tuniwa (Iowa) Courier published the usual 

 canard, to whicli Editor Root replied, and a 

 half-column retraction followed: 



" It seems," says Editor Root, "the editor 

 of that paper, after receiving my letter, wrote 

 to headijuarters, the Department of Agricul- 

 ture, Washington, asking if it were possible 

 to manufacture comb honey, etc. The Depart- 

 ment promptly replied in a long letter, over 

 the signature of Prof. Frank Benton. In this 

 letter the entomologist showed how impossi- 

 IMe it was to manufacture the comb and fill it 

 with glucose, and then stated that .$1,000 had 

 been offered for a single sample of adulterated 

 comb honey for a period of many years, with- 

 out a taker. ■ 



This, coming as it does from the Government 

 of the United States, bearing the Department 

 seal, will have great weiglit, and I suggest that 

 those who answer these canards about honey 

 always incorporate in their replies the state- 

 ment that the Department has denied in into 

 the foolish stuff that has been going the 

 rounds of the papers.'' 



Capping Queen-Cells Early. — In the 



Australian Bee-Bulletin, A. A. Roberts says 

 when only eggs are allowed in a queenless 

 colony, the bees may cap the queen-cells too 

 early ; and F. W. Penberthy says he has seen 

 queen-cells sealed with very young larvie in 

 them, in one case an egg only ! 



Influence of Nur.se-Bees on the 

 Queen. — A few years ago the idea was ad- 

 vanced by writers in foreign papers that there 

 was a marked influence upon a royal larva 

 m ade by the nurse-bees, so that an egg reared 

 by nurse-bees other than those of the same 

 hive in which the eggs were laid might produce 

 a queen very different from what she would 

 have been if the feeding had been done by 

 nurses that were progeny of the queen that 

 laid the egg. F. B. Simpson seems inclined to 

 this view in the last number of the Bee- Keep- 

 ers' Review. 



Undoubtedly, any growing animal may be 

 affected to some extent by the quantity or 

 quality of nourishment it receives, but no 

 facts have ever been brought forward to show 

 that it made any noticeable difference what 

 nurse-bees fed a royal larva. If the nurse- 

 bees have much influence on growing royalty 

 as some have urged, it ought not to be diffi- 

 cult to prove it by a single exchange of eggs. 

 Take a very cross and a very gentle colony, 

 and let each rear a queen from an egg taken 

 from the other colony, and when the result 

 ing queens get to laying, the progeny of each 

 should resemble largely the nurse-bees tha 



