456 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



July 17, 1902. 



much oftener than it actually does, is one of the minor 

 wonders of apiculture. Practically, to throw brood away — 

 or worse — would be a heavy price to pay even for non- 

 swarming-. But perhaps I am an alarmist seeing ghosts 

 and things. This about the paragraph on preventing 

 swarming, page 371. 



CHEMICAL CONSITUKNTS OF BEESWAX. 



The convenient delinition that beeswax is chemically a 

 varying mixture of three different waxes, seems to be upset 

 by the report of Prof. Eaton, page 361. Mixture of two 

 compounds with small quantities of two other compounds. 

 Whether all the four are properly called waxes or not seems 

 to be left a little " in rtudibus." All right. Getting exact 

 truths is bothersome, and comes high ; but we can't do 

 without it — not even if the next chemist finds five sub- 

 stances, and quarrels with previously reported proportions. 

 But next time he must tell us what the " ester number " is. 



HOW THINGS SEEM IN CANADA. 



I smile — but not so broad a smile as might transpire in 

 Canada. In that region, it seems by page 363, an object a 

 foot across is a /i///e larger than one's face. 



AN EXTRACTING KINK. 



From Aikin's paper to the Chicago convention I take 

 this item : The bees of an extracting super, when an ex- 

 tracted super with honey-bedabbled combs is put beneath, 

 stop persistently at the border of it, so that you can't smoke 

 them out of the super you wish to clear. This is just what 

 might be expected, and still what many of us would fail to 

 foresee. Page 374. 



Questions and Answers. | 



CONDUCTED BY 



OR, O. O. MILLER, Af^az-eng-o, D2, 



[The Qaeetlons 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 mall.— Editor.1 



Getting Rid of Burr-Combs. 



This has been the best season I have ever had with my 

 bees, and as a result there are great masses of burr-combs 

 built between the tops of the frames and the supers, and 

 also between the frames. What is the best plan to get rid 

 of these next spring ? Alabama. 



Answer. — I know of no other way but to scrape off the 

 objectionable combs. For this purpose a knife of any kind 

 may be used, the knife not sharp enough to cut the wood 

 easily. Years ago the general space over top-bars was ^s 

 inch instead of '4, and every year I cleaned off the burr- 

 combs over top-bars at the time of putting on supers. I 

 used a sharp garden-hoe. Bracing my foot against the top 

 of the hive in front, I scraped the hoe toward me, while an 

 assistant kept the bees smoked out of the way. 



Plan for Working for Comb Honey. 



Do you think it is a good plan to work for comb honey 

 in the way E. E. Coveyou tells about on page 411 ? 



Subscriber. 



Answer. — The plan is an excellent one, being substan- 

 tially the same as has been repeatedly given in this depart- 

 ment. His communication, however, is not entirely without 

 error. He says nothing about using a queen-excluder, al- 

 though he seems to put on at once the super that has al- 

 ready been occupied. Whatever may have been his experi- 

 ence in this regard, others have found that in such case 

 the queen is very likely to go up and lay in the super, if no 

 excluder hinders, even if full sheets of foundation be in the 

 brood-chamber. So the safe thing is to put the super on 

 the swarm after the queen has established a brood-nest be- 

 low, unless an excluder is used. 



He says to move the old colony about a week after 

 swarming so as to have the flying force united with the 

 swarm, which is really the core of the whole matter; but he 

 is a little confused when he says, "it is better to have the 



flying bees from the parent colony enter with the swarm, 

 as it gives the swarm wax-workers, which is very impor- 

 tant at this time, and it gathers later." There will be a 

 full quota of wax-workers with the issuing swarm, and the 

 bees that join the swarm when the old colony is removed 

 will be field-bees that are already gathering and will do 

 little at wax-work. So instead of helping to have more 

 wax-workers, the proportion of wax-workers will be less 

 than it was before the accession of the flying force from 

 the old colony. But this is simply a little matter of misun- 

 derstanding, and leaves the plan all right. 



A Beginner's (Luestions. 



On June 19 I had my hive open and counted the queen- 

 cells, there were 4 capped, 7 or 8 ready to cap, and 19 in vari- 

 ous stages of construction, nearly all with eggs or larva;, 

 each side of the brood-frame had one or more. Now I have 

 had the drone-guard on since June 12 ; on that day I moved 

 the hive to one side, and put an empty one in its place with 

 a guard on it, and shook the bees off the comb in front of 

 the trap. I found it impracticable to get all the bees off, 

 but I cleared the combs sufficiently to expose the queen, if 

 she was there (as I thought). After doing this I replaced 

 the combs in the new body, and watched as the bees went 

 in ; there were lots of drones, but no queen could I find. 

 Now that trap has been on ever since (that night I allowed 

 drones to enter the hive). All this morning (June 24) the 

 weather was wet and dark, but at 2 p.m. the sun came out 

 brilliantly, and I was out feeding chickens when I saw the 

 air was full of bees ; they clustered in the forks of a little 

 apple-tree, about 3 feet from the ground, and I left them 

 there and went and took the trap off of the hive, as the bees 

 were still issuing ; then I took a frame from the hive with a 

 little uncapped brood in it, some honey and the rest uncap- 

 ped brood, with 3 capped queen-cells at the bottom, and held 

 it among them. It would hold only a few, however, so I 

 placed it in the hive with frames of foundation and shook 

 the bees off into a box. It held 6 quarts and was filled once 

 and three-quarters, or more than a peck of bees. They all 

 went into the hive all right, but I do not know whether the 

 queen is with them or not, and that is my trouble. I put 

 the super they had been working in on their hive, but no 

 honey-board. There is only a little honey in 3 or 4 sections. 



1. Should I now cut the queen-cells out of the original 

 hive, leaving but one ? 



2. In case the queen stayed behind, will the bees stay in 

 the new hive and hatch queen-cells without trying to swarm 

 out with the queen as they fly out ? And if the queen is in 

 the old hive will she kill off hatching queens ? 



3. Should I have put the honey-board under the super? 



4. The bees clustered within SO feet of tlie old hive. 

 Can I move them back beside it ? 



5. I suppose the drone-trap must come off now, to allow 

 young queens to take their wedding-flight. Illinois. 



Answers. — 1. Under ordinary circumstances, cutting 

 out all cells but one would be all right. In this case it is 

 not safe, because you did the very unwise thing to shake 

 the combs. Please never do that again. If you shake 

 combs with queen-cells you are likely to injure or destroy 

 the young queen. So if you should now cut out all queen- 

 cells but one, the one you left might contain a deed queen. 

 The safer thing now is to put your ear to the hive each even- 

 ing, and when you hear the young queen piping, go to the 

 hive the next morning and cut out a// queen-cells that are 

 left. Of course it is now too late for this, but I am talking 

 about what you ought to have done. When the swarm 

 issued there was possibly a young queen with it (the old 

 queen having been killed or lost), and in that case you 

 would need to cut out n// queen-cells that were left. You 

 could tell whether a young queen had emerged by seeing 

 whether there was a full-sized cell empty. 



2. If I understand you rightly, the hive on the old stand 

 is one you are talking about, it having most of the bees 

 and brood, with a number of queen-cells. The great proba- 

 bility is that when the first queen emerges the bees will 

 swarm. (The plan mentioned of listening for the piping 

 queen would help out.) 



3. If bees are put into a hive without empty frames or 

 foundation, and sections upon which they have been work- 

 ing are at once put on, there is danger that the queen will 

 go into the sections. Either wait a day or two before giv- 

 ing the super, or else use an excluder. 



4. After bees have been flying even for a few hours, it 

 is difficult to move them a short distance without loss of 



