Feb. 27, 1902 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



137 



to be fed daily. TIic ln-cs feed lliernsi-lvcs, except in iiiifor- 

 tiinale cases. 



,\iid yet there are many drawbacks — winter losses. s|M-iiig 

 (hviiidliiig, wet seasons. ( )iir Krandf.ilhers used to coniit tlic 

 i)cc-nu>tli among the <lrawbacl<s. We have outgrown that. 

 But foul-brood sccnis to be nmru prevalent than formerly, 

 though I must say that personally 1 have never seen a case 

 of it. Hut the worst drawback of all comes from the possible 

 neglect, or greediness, of the apiarist. Of all lines of stock- 

 raising none requires more careful watching than bec-cullure. 

 "Know what is to be done, and do it in time," is the most 

 important motto of a successful apiarist. 



But if you do not love to care for link- things — lo go 

 into details, to watch the bees at work and keep an eye 

 on their actions; if, above all, you are afraid of your bees, 

 and cannot find pleasure in opening a hive full of bees and 

 taking it to pieces for examination or for show; if you do 

 not care to read a bee-book and get informed on the exact 

 habits of these toilers, you would best keep out of bee- 

 keeping. 



My advice to a begiiuier who wants to become practical 

 would be to go slowly. If he can find a position with a 

 bee-keeper, who can give him a season or two of practice, 

 this would be of great value. But such positions are hard 

 to find. If you have to gain your information on your ow'n 

 responsibility, have a dozen colonies, more or less, and try 

 to increase their numbers by following the methods most 

 recommended in the books. A few years will give you 

 more information on how successful you can be with bees 

 than could be imparted in a dozen articles on the subject. 



Hamilton Co., 111. 



Those Interesting Questions, Again. 



BY F. GREINER. 



Contributing a mite to answering the interesting ques- 

 tions, as on page 69, I wish to say the following: 



HONEY FROM CAPPINGS. 



To remove honey, which will not 7-un out, from the cap- 

 pings, if it is desirable to use said honey for culinary purposes, 

 about as good a way as I know of is to place the cappings 

 containing the honey in a can and warm the mass by 

 gentle heat, or better by placing the can with contents 

 inside a larger can with some water in it, and then setting 

 both on a hot stove. The wax will melt, the honey separate 

 and go to the bottom ; the latter will be but slightly im- 

 paired as to quality. 



If the cappings are run through the solar wax-extractor, 

 as Mr. Doolittle advises, the honey gained will usually 

 not be of good color or flavor without the solar extractor 

 was perfectly clean, and the sheet of iron in the bottom of 

 it is tinned. .\ solar wax-extractor that has been used for 

 the purpose intended is not fit any more to produce honey 

 for the table. It is all right for feeding or for making 

 vinegar. If wanted for vinegar-making I would prefer 

 to soak the cappings in warm water and wash the honey out 

 of them. This is the way I always treat cappings after 

 being drained. A press could probably be used to squeeze 

 this cheese dry, but ordinary ripe honey is too thick to 

 be squeezed out of cappings by simple pressure. 



PL.-VCING COMBS IN THE EXTRACTOR. 



On account of its stickiness and heavy body, honey can 

 not be as perfectly extracted from a comb in horizontal 

 position as when placed in vertical position, as in our 

 present extractors. The principle would be all right. As 

 an illustration : Take a glass in your hand filled with water. 

 Whirl around on your heels. The water in the glass, 

 pressing against its side, will come up and out of it and 

 fly away from the central shaft — a perpendicular line 

 through the heel and the head of the operator. If a small 

 tube was substituted, open at the bottom and small enough 

 so adhesion and atmospheric pressure would keep the water 

 m the tube, the operation would force the water down and 

 out. In other words, the liquid would have to go up 

 in one case and down in the other. It would have to go in 

 the direction where it finds no resistance. Theoretically, 

 a honey-comb could be emptied when placed horizontally 

 in the extractor, as the questioner proposes. The idea of con- 

 structing extractors on this principle is not at all a new 

 one. I think the Roots have tested it. 



If it was desirable to extract the honey in its raw 

 state, before any of it wa^ sealed over, it might be an 



advantage to use tliat kind of an extractor. Whole supers 

 could be placed into the txtraclor without loosening a 

 wedge or touching a comb and llic honey could be nearly 

 all thrown out; it would not matter so much whether the 

 honey did come out of the cells perfectly or not, as it 

 would not be lost. However, this method would necessitate 

 extracting the same supers every two, three or four days, 

 and this would mean a great deal of work, freeing supers 

 from bees, taking them to the honcy-housc and returning 

 again .so often. However, it is not desirable to extract 

 unripe honey, and I think on this account the whole idea 

 of constructing extractors on such a plan as the question 

 proposes is impractical, and has no future. 



CHOOSING A LOCATION FOR BEE-KEEPING. 



As to choosing a location, from what I have seen and 

 can learn, good locations for bee-keeping may be found in 

 nearly all States. The difficulty will be to single them out 

 without actually trying them. One cannot safely judge a 

 location by one year's test, either. My home yard, for 

 instance, gave me, in 1881, nearly lOO pounds of surplus 

 comb-honey; in 1885 about 70 pounds. Durmg the rest 

 of the years the crop has seldom averaged over 30 pounds 

 in a single year, and many a time only half of that. One 

 would have been badly fooled to judge my location by the 

 years l88l and- 1885; and if he had pitched his tent here, 

 depending on bee-keeping for a living, he would not have 

 much money in his pocket. 



On the other hand, if he should have hit such a location 

 as Mr Doolittle has, or if he had his ability to make the 

 bees "shell out" the honey like Doolittle's bees have done, 

 he would not know what to do with all the money. He 

 would have to be very liberal and extravagant indeed to 



^^^To 'illustrate further how difficult it is to select a good 

 location, I want to say : My two out yards within 5 miles 

 of my home yard— one of them lies m the same valley as 

 home yard-average nearly double what the latter does (and 

 put me in a position at least to live) ; I cannot understand 

 why the yields in these out yards are so much higher, tor 

 the' flora seems to be the same in all of them. 



In Colorado and some other States it might be easier to 

 select a location without making a mistake. 



Ontario Co., N. Y. 



The Mating of Oiueens in Confinement. 



BY W. E. FLOWER. 



I wish the bee-papers would devote a little more space 

 to the matter of matmg queens in confinement, as I firmly 

 believe it to be the keynote to the whole problem of suc- 

 cessful breeding of bees. It is useless to talk about breed- 

 ing horses, cattle, sheep, swine, dogs and all other "mam- 

 mals" in which the foetus is developed within the dam. Prin- 

 ciples or rules which apply to them do not, cannot and will 

 not apply to the hen or to the honey-bee, for the simple 

 reason that there is no union of circulation between the 

 egg and the hen. The egg is hermetically sealed and passes 

 out, and the first pulsation in the heart of the chicken may 

 take place a hundred miles away from the hen. 



The same may be said of the bee— there is no union of 

 circulation between the queen and the egg, but some rules 

 that aptrly to the hen do not apply to the bee. A virgin 

 pullet will lay, but her eggs will not hatch ; a virgin queen 

 will lay, and her eggs will hatch, but produce drones only; 

 and in my humble opinion (mind I don't make the assertion, 

 simplv give it as my opinion), if these drones can be util- 

 ized they are destined to become a very potent factor in 

 producing a strain of bees that will "git up an git, and 

 gather m the honey. Partlienogenisis exists in the bee but 

 not m horses, cattle, sheep, swine or poultry, hence it is a 

 factor that must be taken into account when mating queens 

 for certain results. 



I have had nearly 40 years' experience in breeding thor- 

 oughbred fowls, and have had some prize-winners m years 

 gone by I believe in inbreeding to fix points and character- 

 istics or types, and in careful and judicious selection ot 

 strono- healthy, vigorous breeding-stock to maintain vigor 

 and I'tamina of the breed. Darwin says that the "progeny 

 of a first cross always reverts to one or the other of the 

 original ancestors;" hence when we introduce new blood into 

 a strain of fowls we run the risk of getting a lot of scrubs, 

 because all the faults that have existed in the parent stock 



