152 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



March 6, 1902. 



kind going on, and have to report that I cannot discover 

 any such movements. Some of the colonies have bees 

 hanging below the frames to the amount of one-fourth of 

 a good-sized swarm, at least; and if such moving up after 

 honey was going on as has been supposed, it would seem 

 that now and then a bee would be crawling in after honey, 

 especially as the lowest bees would have to travel sonie 

 six or eight inches up through or over the cluster lo get 

 where the honey is. . But I saw nothing save a big cluster 

 of nearly or quite motionless bees hanging and overlapping 

 each other— each one, or nearly so, having its head under 

 the body of some other bee. 



Of course, it is impossible to see or know just exactly 

 what is going on inside of the cluster of bees during 

 winter; but I had always supposed, and so believe now, 

 that bees give honey to each other; that is, the bees which 

 are near the honey in the combs give to those under them, 

 and these, in turn, to those next further away, and so on 

 till the last bee is reached at the very bottom, outside of the 

 cluster. Bees are continually passing honey around during 

 the summer, and why should they not do the same thing 

 in winter, when it is more to their interest to do so than 

 in the summer time, when all can go about as much as 

 they please? All know that the honey carried with a swarm 

 is passed around, when bad weather comes immediately after 

 the swarm issues, and all are kept alive, or the whole perish 

 together. 



I am well aware that these things are of minor impor- 

 tance : but I have always believed that it is better to be 

 infornied on all of the minutia of bee-keeping than to pass 

 anything by as non-essential, as such a course allows us to 

 drop easily some important point which would otherwise 

 be brought to light. Onondaga Co., N. Y. 



* The Afterthought. « 



The "Old Reliable" seen through New and Unreliable Glasses. 

 By B. E. HASTY. Sta. B Rural, Toledo, O. 



THE HOME CIRCLE DEPARTMENT. 



Exit "The Home Circle !" A surprise for us that was not 

 agreeable. Gone, but not altogether forgotten, Prof. Cook 

 may be assured. In the real home circle it oft happens 

 that the one who is gone is, in a kind of a way, more em- 

 phatically permanent and present than those who remain. 

 We can hope that some of the tender sentences of our 

 "Home Circle" may enjoy a portion of the same sort of 

 immortality. Page 89. 



A "horse" that never was a colt. 



So Mr. Willcutt never saw a horse except he was once 

 a colt. Most wish I could say so, too. I have a horse that 

 w^as never a colt. And this long, trying cold-spell I have to 

 go out and stand over him for a long while every day. It 

 isn't because I love him so; (Never saw a man that loved 

 that kind of horses) it's merely that "a cruel fate has fixed me 

 there." Page 51. 



AIKIN HITS the "bULL's-EYE." 



You often hit the "bull's-eye," Mr. Aikin ; and one of 

 the times you did it was when you said that a man may 

 be an expert with insects, and yet a failure in dealing with 

 iiis own kind. Jars their hive and wonders at the results. 

 Can never get over expecting them to look at everything 

 from his own point of view— and swallow all he tells them, 

 —and frequent his feeder when he has put no feed in it — 

 and give up swarming, and everything else, when he sings 

 out, "Whoa!" Page 69. 



extracting with combs the other WAY. 



Undoubtedly, thin honey can be thrown from combs placed 

 "t'other way;" but part of the centrifugal force is wasted 

 against the side of the cell in so doing, and we need it all. 

 Cases in which the honey will not come out at all will be 

 more frequent, and the percentage left in the combs will be 

 larger when you get the "improvement" running. At best the 

 amount left sticking to the comb is a sadly large part of 



the whole — say a quarter-pound to 4^ pounds, thrown out 

 — 5 per cent — and I should expect twice as much, or 10 per 

 cent with the suggested position. Of course, the top-bar 

 should be out, to take advantage of the slant of the cells, 

 as Mr. Doolittle suggests, and also to support the comb lest 

 it may break. Page 70. 



bees dying in the hive. 



I don't believe moribund bees will be satisfied unless 

 they can get further away from the combs than lyi inches. 

 Although their efforts to get further away to die may not be 

 any great disturbance to the colony, yet it is as far as it 

 goes a disturbance, and a disturbance introduced where we 

 want to do all that we can in favor of quiet. Sad to do 

 so much "carpentering" and stop short of satisfaction. Why 

 not go a little further and have the death-chamber outside 

 altogether? Page 70. 



EAR better than THERMOMETER. 



That was a wise saying of Mr. Pettit (page 71) that an 

 acute ear is a better guide than the thermometer as to just 

 how warm to have the cellar. That is. I suppose, if you 

 detect a wrong note try warming or cooling — or both. 



AMOUNT OF water IN HONEY. 



That a Professor (with a big and governmental P) 

 should be unable to tell the exact amount of water in honey, 

 after making a careful series of experiments — well, it rather 

 jars us. How, then, shall poor we'uns believe they can tell 

 the more abstruse percentages? Differences reported 

 largely a difference of method, not a difference in the 

 amount of water. We see. Our savants potter away for 

 awhile by some method or other — and then guess the prob- 

 lem. Naturally, we practical folk think we can do our own 

 guessing. When w-e go to the professors we go for a different 

 article. All the same, we love Prof. Shutt. Honor to the 

 man who says he failed to find out, when that was the 

 case. Far better the doctor who says he don't know what's 

 the matter with us than the one who looks enormously wise 

 and says he knows all about our case, when he doesn't 

 know a thing. But as they have been encroaching on my 

 prerogative of guessing, I'll encroach on theirs and suggest 

 a method. Try how many cubic inches of acetyline gas an 

 ounce of honey will liberate, using honey instead of water, 

 or say half honey and. half water. When the amount of 

 water in green wood is to be dealt with by practical folks 

 it falls naturally into two parts: First, the water which can 

 be got out by prolonged drying ; and, second, the water which 

 cannot be got out without disorganizing the wood. This 

 second portion is, I understand, a quite large percentage of 

 the whole weight of the wood. I begin to suspect that a 

 similar non-get-outable increment of water in honey is large. 

 Remember how alum, when it seems to be perfectly dry. 

 will, nevertheless, when you heat it a little, dissolve in 

 its own water and become a fluid. When we get around to 

 complete statistics let's have the water in honey reported in 

 two columns, "removable" and "non-removable" water. 

 Page 72. 



Questions and Answers. 



CONDUCTED BT 



DR. C O. MILLER, Mareaso, HI. 



(The Questions may be mailed to the Bee Journal ofiBce, or to Dr. Miller 



direct, when he will answer them here. Please do not ask the 



Doctor to send answers by mail.— Editor.] 



Transferring— Repetition of Questions. 



We've took It — the bee-fever. Besides buying 8 colonies 

 of bees, we got a barrel ol bees-; have ord<^red some hives, and 

 when the proper time arrives we want to ;j;ct the barrel-bees 

 into a hivo. 



We're absolutely green as to the ins and outs of handling 

 bees; have subscribed for the American Uee Journal, and 

 read the whole of it — ads. and all— but as yet we have seen 

 nothing regarding liow we are going to get those bees trans- 

 ferred to a hive, or the proper time for tackling the job ; 



