June 12, 1902 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



377 



— and so not pure honey according to the wording of the 

 Act — and yet not bad either as to taste or wholesonieness. 

 Most of the producersdo not themselves know whether their 

 honey is New- York-pure or not. ( )f course, the experts who 

 <lrew up the wording of the law " allowed " that no one, 

 either for fun or for spite, would go around slaughtering 

 these innocent lambs. This critic, however, doesn't believe 

 it's wise to have legal power to slaughter lambs put in the 

 statute books. Page 275. 



CLBAN DIKT KKOM THE BEES. 



"Clean dirt," is it, Mrs Axtell, that vire get from the 

 bees ? Yes, I often try to console myself a little with that 

 maxim, too. Unfortunately bee-dirt is rather worse than 

 the average dirt as to being tilthy looking. Those who con- 

 stantly and tremblingly ask, " How do I look ?" will find 

 scant peace behind a nice white apron well propoli;-,ed. 

 Page 278. 



VAIA'ABLE REMEDIES THAT ARE NOT NEW. 



Miss Wilson will not be able to patent her panacea- 

 Get well by not thinking of your disease — too many before 

 have recognized its curative value. Every mother knows a 

 funny story heals a bump. Nevertheless it's good and 

 profitable to advertise afresh valuable remedies which are 

 not new, as Miss Wilson does on page 279. Sometimes, and 

 just right, give earnest study to your ailment. Sometimes, 

 and just right, cast the whole thing off your mind, utterly 

 and absolutely. As to our moral ailments, same yules. A 

 vast number of people are greatly in need of a little self- 

 examination. On the other hand, many (by counting here 

 and there one) suffer terribly — suffer almost to the destruc- 

 tion of sanity and life — by ill-advised and too constant 

 moral introspection. Don't brood. Some chickens will die 

 of cold and neglect if they are not brooded. Try it on that 

 ineradicable sin, and that incipient cancer of the stomach, 

 and that internal tumor. 



CROWDING HIVES MAKES BEES CROSS. 



The idea of Mr. A. Boomer and his friends, that crowd- 

 ing the hives makes the bees cross, is an idea not much in 

 the papers. Is it that the children " sass " each other from 

 yard to yard when the homes are thus near, or what ? In 

 manipulation, if we disturb other hives besides the one or 

 ones we smoke, that might tend to general bad temper. The 

 closer the spacing the greater that difficulty will be. It is 

 tolerably plain that manipulation, if it ends pleasantly all 

 around, improves the temper of the bees ; while all ugly 

 " musses " (especially if the bees think they have driven 

 you off) have a contrary effect. Page 284. 



MORE PROMENADE SURFACE FOR SWARMERS. 



As a general approximation, 75 percent of the bees to 

 go with a swarm and 25 for the old hive will do very well. 

 I think the percentage varies very greatly ; nearly all that 

 can fly going sometimes, and on rare occasions not more 

 than 25 percent. If you want more of the bees to stay I 

 think I can tell you how to compass your desire without 

 much trouble. Have a big, empty upper story. Set in sev- 

 eral division-boards, or whatever " gingerbread work " you 

 can lay hands on, with intent to increase the promenade 

 surface there is inside. Fix the quilt so the bees can easily 

 get above if they wish. Most beholders do not see all there 

 is of swarming. While taking flight is going on at the 

 door a grand promenade is going on inside, up and down 

 and all over, entrance forced into every crack and cranny. 

 Now, the idea is that the more promenade surface there is 

 the more promenaders there will be that will satisfy their 

 appetite for excitement without going to the door and tak- 

 ing flight at all. Page 291. 



PUTTING BEES OUT AND RETURNING TO CELLAR. 



Putting bees out and then returning them to the cellar 

 — presumably most of the cases where that has been tried 

 were cases where dysentery had become very bad — bees 

 sure to die any way, in or out. This would naturally lead 

 to the idea that the plan was a bad one. Bees in tolerable 

 health, only uneasy and distended, would constitute a very 

 different case. It would not be surprising if a partial re- 

 versal of doctrines should come in with more exact and dis- 

 criminating experiments. Page 291. 



Queenie Jeanette is the title of a pretty song in sheet 

 music size, written by J. C. Wallenmeyer, a musical bee- 

 keeper. The regular price is 40 cents, but to close out the 

 copies we have left, we will mail them at 20 cents each, as 

 long as they last. 



Questions and Answers. \ 



CONDUCTKD BY 



DR. O. O. MJI.J.KK. Marengo, J/J. 



(The Qnestlons ma; be mailed to the Bee Joamal office, or to Dr. Miller 



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



Doctor to send answers br malL— Editor.! 



Dividing Colonies and Introducing Queens. 



1 have 13 colonies of bees (blacks) that I wish to divide, 

 and this is the way I thought of doing : About the time 

 they are preparing to commence to swarm divide both 

 brood and bees about equal, and have a laying queen ready 

 for the queenless half. Now for the questions : 



1. Which should I leave on the old stand, the old queen 

 or the queenless half ? 



2. How long should I leave the queenless half before 

 introducing the new queen ? 



3. I intend to use the old black queen this season, but 

 want to Italianize all this fall, or in the spring. What 

 would be the proper time to have them for the next season ? 



Pennsylvania. 



Answers. — 1. Better leave the old queen on the old 

 stand. But if you want the two parts to be equal in 

 strength you should put the larger part of the bees and 

 brood on the new stand, for all the field-bees will return to 

 the old stand. 



2. With a provisioned introducing-cage you can give 

 her at once, or you can wait a day or two. 



3. Toward the close of the honey harvest is a good time. 



Honey from Dogwood and Bitterweed. 



Dr. Miller :— I notice on page 282, that in your reply 

 to " Mississippi " you say that you do not think dogwood 

 (Cornus florida) yields honey. 



Dogwood, in Jefferson County, Ala., begins to bloom 

 about April 15, and yields much honey. (You will notice 

 that the showy part of the blossom is not a part of the 

 flower, but only the calyx— the flowers proper are in a com- 

 pact cluster, and are composed of petals, stamens and pis- 

 tils, making a perfect flower.) 



The honey from the bitterweed is intensely bitter. 



I write you this hoping to aid you in a small degree in 

 your work. C. C. Parsons. 



Escambia Co., Fla. 



I am very glad to be corrrected, and to know that the 

 beautiful dogwood is useful as well as ornamental. 



Management for Extracted Honey. 



Dear Dr. Miller : — I have been reading articles from 

 your pen for years with much pleasure, and sometimes with 

 profit. But what I admire most is what you "don't know.'* 

 When one has passed the " know it all " stage, he usually 

 knows something, and can make a good guess at what he 

 "don't know." But I wish to warn you against following- 

 the advice given by Dr. Miller in the American Bee Jour- 

 nal to " California," in regard to putting the queen in the 

 lower story on empty frames. Don't do it. I tried it last 

 year on 7 colonies, and had 7 failures. In every case the 

 bees followed the brood in the upper story and left the 

 queen. Two of them were allowed a flight-hole from the 

 upper story, and they left the queens entirely, and they both 

 died — starved, I suppose. The others were compelled to get 

 in and out through the lower story, and they fed the queens, 

 but were so slow in building combs that I lost the use ot 

 the queens for a long time, and the colonies, being prac- 

 tically queenless, stored but little surplus. It prevented 

 swarming for a certainty. 



This season I am practicing two methods, and both are 

 proving a success as far as I have had time to test them. 

 First, I took two frames of brood and the queen and put 

 them in a new hive and filled up with frames, left them on 

 the old stands, and put the remaining combs and bees on 

 top of another one-story colony with excluder between, thus, 

 making a very strong colony that begins storing honey at 

 once, and I think the old queen and returning bees will 



