232 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



April 10, 1902. 



^ The Afterthought. * 



The "Old Reliable" seen througti New and Unreliable Qlasses. 

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



PICTURES OF APIARIES AND DESCRIPTIONS. 



Yes, when you give us that picture of your apiary for 

 publication, " fall to " and tell us the whole thing. Mr. 

 F. W. Hall, pages 161 and 162, sets a most excellent and 

 long-needed example. And the magazines of the outside 

 world need the same sort of teaching worse yet. Who has 

 not felt, on looking through them, sorely tried, and almost 

 insulted ? Such numerous, costly, interesting, resplendentlv 

 beautiful pictures, and not descriptions enough to amount 

 to a hill of beans ! It's amazing that publishers, after so 

 much expense and pains, can be willing to throw three- 

 quarters of the value of the illustrations away by leaving 

 the reader with no means of knowing about them. Well, we 

 know that that stack of honey had speaking relations with 

 a remarkable queen. We " allow " that 250 sections and a 

 super of extracted honey and a swarm all in one season is 

 going it gay. Have their tongues surveyed, Mr. Hall. A 

 unique swarm-catcher is a one-legged milking-stool daubed 

 in slum-gum. And four-fifths of the swarms used the stools 

 zt'/ien the inventor made a hobby of them, and only four- 

 twenty-fifths when he got indifferent. And more of us 

 have wondered if sweet-corn tassels didn't yield some honey 

 at times. 



KILLING YOUNG QUEENS IN THE FALL. 



Mr. T. F. Bingham, you succeeded well in giving us 

 that sense of novelty — killing your young queens if they lay 

 too late in the fall. Why didn't you kill the bees ? They 

 are the ones to blame in the case if the colony breeds late. 

 All queens lay till the bees stop them of it (by neglecting 

 to feed them, and by neglecting to hatch the eggs), d'ye 

 hear? And will you kill all the queens now and get along 

 with laying workers? But your idea that a colony breeding 

 in the cellar endangers the colony next to it — it will hardly 

 pay us to throw that idea overboard with a laugh. Guess 

 that's so. Bees sometimes are as bad as their keeper to 

 catch on to a novel but dominant idea — and better posted 

 than Mrs. Grundy about what goes on behind their neigh- 

 bors' walls. It doesn't very clearly appear what we can do 

 about it, however — but that may be found out later. Paee 

 164. ^ 



WINTERING BEES OUTDOORS. 



Mr. Dodo, of the Michigans, furnishes a suggestive and 

 somewhat puzzling fact. Three rows of hives were snug- 

 gled up next to a high fence and packed there. Outside row 

 wintered pretty well, while of the row next the fence one- 

 half died. Premising that deep snow banked up beyond the 

 fence and covered the hives, also it might be guessed that 

 the whole establishment got too warm, and that the outside 

 row naturally sufifered much less from that cause— not enough 

 to do much harm. But if the bees had a general flight after 

 they were moved, and before they were shut in, why, then, 

 as Mr. Coveyou suggested, they would largely re-enter in 

 the outside row, and leave the inside row to perish from 

 weakness and lack of young bees. Page 165. 



TALL SECTIONS AND TWO COLORS OF HONEY. 



Is Mrs. Morrow right, that tall sections are more apt to 

 get two colors of honey in them ? Not to any great extent, 

 I think. In a good flow all kinds of sections will be uniform 

 in color; while in a very bad, halting^ flow all are more or 

 less in danger of being piebald. Page 165. 



GLOSSOMETER AND MICROSCOPE— LONG TONGUES. 



One phrase I found in Prof Cook's excellent paper, page 

 166, which I hardly like. '■ I found, as of course I must, that 

 the glossometer and the microscope told the same story." 

 No "must" about it, quoth the know-it-all fellow. He 

 would call it a triumph instead of a mere rolling off the log. 

 Happy is the man who can reach the same result by two 

 lines of investigation — or make either one of them tally 

 with big, clumsy facts. It is of interest, as well as a little 

 puzzling, that races vary more in tongue-length than do 

 individual colonies inside the race. And the shortest- 

 tongued race (so reported) can beat the longest-tongued race 



at putting up section honey — leastwise, the latter has been 

 universally abandoned in America. This is a pretty strong 

 hint that tongues are not all. 



Questions and Answers. 



CONDUCTBD BY 



OR. O. O. MILLER, Marengo, 111. 



(The Qnestlons may be mailed to the Bee Journal office, or to Dr. Miller 



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



Doctor to send answers by mail. — Editok.1 



Moving Bees in Winter. 



I intend to move my bees from Taylor County to Kansas 

 City. I have them still in winter-cases over the supers 

 packed with leaves. Would you to take the winter-cases off ? 

 If so, would you take off the supers? I have text-books 

 on the subject but none of them say anything about moving 

 bees in the winter. Iowa. 



Answer. — It will be better not to take away the winter 

 packing till the warm weather comes. Whether you can 

 handle them in moving without taking away the packing is 

 the question. If convenient to do so, leave the packing. If 

 inconvenient, it must be a question between the inconveni- 

 ence to you if the packing is left on, and the inconvenience 

 to the bees if it is taken off, and I cannot decide that. Pos- 

 sibly you could take away the packing and then return it 

 after moving. 



#-•-♦ 



Bees Coming Out of Hive at Night. 



I had one colony of bees that cast 2 swarms last summer, 

 the last one about June 1. I put them into a chaff hive and 

 for a while they seemed to work well, but after a time did 

 not do much, and would come out of the hive at night and 

 hang in a cluster covering the entire end. In the morning 

 they would gradually go in until all disappeared. As I was a 

 beginner in the business I did not know the cause of it. One 

 morning while they were out I opened the hive and found 

 that nearly all the bees inside were drones. Thinking they 

 might be the cause, I killed a large part of them, and I have 

 had no more trouble of the kind. What was the cause of 

 their coming out of the hive in the night ? What can I do 

 should I have another case like it ? Maine. 



Answer. — It looks as if the bees might have been hang- 

 ing out as a matter of comfort, because it was too warm in 

 the hive, and when you killed off part of them they could 

 all stay in the hive without being to warm. Possibly, how- 

 ever, the bees may have been queenless, the unusually large 

 number of drones pointing that way. So look out for that 

 this spring. Aside from the matter of queenlessness there 

 was no need for you to do anything. 



Transferring— Feeding Bees, Etc. 



1. I have a colony of bees in a frame hive, but it is not 

 the size I want it. I want to transfer into a Langstroth 

 hive this spring. How shall I do it ? and when is the best 

 time ? 



2. I am afraid my bees will be short of food before sum- 

 mer comes. They are in the cellar. How and what shall I 

 feed them ? I have some honey in the comb in sections. 



3. Can I feed them without taking off the covers ? 



4. Can I take off the covers in the cellar and examine 

 them without their flying out all over the cellar ? 



5. Can bees fly when it is SO degrees above ? 



6. I intend to clip the wings of my queens this spring. 

 How shall I do it ? And when is the best time — before they 

 swarm ? 



7. Would you advise me to do this ? I cannot be near 

 the hives all the time, as I will be out in the fields, etc., but 

 will be around them at meal-time, and at other times when 

 I am at home. Minnesota. 



Answers. — 1. Full directions for transferring hardly 

 belong in this department, but a good te.xt-book will give 

 you fuller instructions than there is any room for here. The 



