July 24, 1902. 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



473 



Htider co-operation and mutual help we grow in wealth and 

 luxury, in peace and wonderful attainments. Hrcthron, I 

 warn and exhort you, for the sake of all that is jjood and 

 just, curl) the spirit of f,Teed and selfishness, and work fcjr 

 the greatest (,'ood to the fjreatcst number. It is the true 

 road to prosperity, the only safe, riffht, and comniendalilo 

 way. Ivarimer Co., t^olo. 



i * The Afterthought. ^' I 



The '^Old Reliable" seen throut^h New and Unreliable Glasses. 

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



LONG-LIVED QUKENS AND BEES. 



Lengthening the lives of our bees won't shorten their 

 tongues or their tails, eh ? I guess that's so. Dr. Gallup. 

 And another thing you hint at is probably so : If we can 

 add an average of even two days to bee-life, that extra time 

 will not have to be divided between indoor and outdoor life, 

 but will be all honey-gathering time. As to long-lived 

 <iueens producing long-lived workers, that's very possible — 

 and especially possible that queens such as are superseded 

 in one year may produce short-lived workers. But all that 

 is in urgent need of some more verifying. To shout 

 "Long-Lived Bees 1 !" when there is nothing back of it but 

 desire to sell queens, and to shout, " Long-Tongued Bees I '." 

 in the same unproven but thrifty way — what's the differ- 

 ence? So, Doctor. I entreat ho/ to have either made exactly 

 a fad. Both far too important. Page 374. 



S\V.\RMING AND SUPERING. 



And he didn't even tell the fellow how to prevent the 

 first and most provoking item (bees boomed and forced for 

 the greatest number of swarms refusing to swarm at all), 

 so I guess we have here another chapter from the big book 

 of what none of us know yet. He's level-headed in saying 

 to put on the supers betimes ; for then, if the anticipated 

 swarms fail to come, only part of the honey crop will be 

 lost. Doolittle, page 375. 



TBLBGONY. 



And so it's Telegonj'. Glad I know now what it is. We 

 need some such word so badly that it will not be so hard to 

 make us remember and use it — and so, happily, it won't 

 superinduce any more " bug " and " worm " unpleasantness 

 between us and the scientific folk. 



Believed in by many of the very highest authorities. 

 Apparently proved by some striking cases. Doubted, per- 

 haps doubted increasingly, because divers and sundry ex- 

 tensive and careful efforts to produce it fail so utterly. The 

 influence imis/ be small, and one of the strong evidences on 

 the books provokes doubt becaqse it seems to show great 

 influence. The horse kind furnishes a great share of the 

 evidence, and very young colts often show faint stripes 

 without any Telegony. Very distant Atavism it seems to 

 be. And so, and so, and so another fine case of nobody 

 knows yet, and believe just what you like — about the drones 

 from mismated mothers being slightly impure. Pages 375, 

 376. 



BOGUS FLOWERS. 



C. C. Parsons, page 377, is wrong in calling the showy 

 part of the dogwood blossom a "calyx." The calyx is a 

 part of a true flower, while the flaunting imitation referred 

 to is not one of the essential floral parts at all, but an " in- 

 volucre " of whitened leaves — technically called " bracts." 

 Queer that we should have bogus flowers in Nature as well 

 as genuine ones. The sunflower is also a bogus flower, of 

 a somewhat different sort, many real flowers so arranged as 

 to simulate a still larger flower which is not real. 



THAT CORNCOB FEEDER. 



The bunch-of-corncobs bee-feeder, page 380, I should 

 lay to give tolerable satisfaction /o/- a while — an indefinite 

 while — until it gets soaked and sour once. Perhaps waste 

 some of the feed by soaking before that time. 



A POINT IN OUEKN-INTRODIXTION. 



The main queen-introduction point which Pridgen 

 furnishes, page 381, is not by any means universally 

 familiar Introduce in a bran new cage, and first scent it 



by keeping the old queen in it for an hour. To add to the 

 scent, and also to secure other good ends, put in a new 

 escort of her future subjects. I think this likely to be 

 valuable. Very likely we do not consider enough the pro- 

 vocative .scents bees get in the m'ails. Rules ought to work 

 both ways. Bees are undeniably liable to kill their own 

 (jueen if caged an hour where she gets a provocative scent : 

 why should they not then accept an alien when she comes 

 with the right scent ? The main rub is, I suspect, that she 

 has an individual scent which, while it may be overlaid 

 somewhat, can not be entirely gotten rid of. Colony must 

 take her scent, she can not take theirs, except partially and 

 temporarily. 



Questions and Answers. \ 



CONDUCTED BY 



UR. O. O. MII.I.EIt, Marengro, III. 



|The Qaestlous may be mailed to the Bee Journal office, or to Dr. Milder 



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



Doctor to send answers by mail. — Editor.1 



Dragging Out Brood. 



1. Why do my bees drag their brood out of the hive? I 

 first noticed it in a nucleus to which I had given frames of 

 brood and bees, giving them an Italian queen, and thoug'ht 

 perhaps it might be owing to mismanagement of my own 

 in some way ; but I find this morning (July 2) it is going on 

 in all of my colonies. The brood is fully developed, can 

 crawl about, and upon my attempt to replace them in the 

 hives it is either lugged out again by the bees or come out 

 themselves, seemingly bent upon staying anywhere but in 

 the hives. 



As the weather has turned quite cool and cloudy, with a 

 chilling wind blowing, the young bees are dj-ing by the 

 hundreds from exposure. The trouble affects the strong' 

 as well as the weak colonies, and all are perfectly free from 

 moths. I am at a loss to account for it. 



The honey-flow is on the wane in my locality, but about 

 4 miles from here at the apiary of an acquaintance it is 

 about at its height, but he is having the same trouble, so it 

 cannot be from lack of stores. California. 



Answer. — I confess I do not understand the case. You 

 speak of brood being dragged out, but again say that it is 

 fully developed and can crawl about, so it seems it is bees 

 rather than brood. It is just possible that the trouble may 

 be paralysis, in which case you will see the diseased bees 

 making a tremulous movement of the wings, some of them 

 being black and shiny, and other bees are inclined to worry 

 them much as they do when a strange bee is caught in the 

 hive. If it is paralysis, there is no certain cure known. 

 There is also the possibility of poisoning. 



A Swarming Experience. 



I have just had an experience with bees that I can't find 

 duplicated in any of the books and papers, and I thought 

 you might be interested or perhaps had had a like experi- 

 ence. 



One very full colony had several queen-cells two weeks 

 ago when I clipped their queen, and I have been expecting 

 them to swarm, but they did a little work in the super and 

 then loafed. I ventilated the hive well but thej- would come 

 out and cluster on the currant buShes, that is, about ' ■, of 

 the colony, and one night they stayed out so late, and I saw 

 it was going to storm so I put them back into the hive. 

 Next day they came out again and went into an empty hive 

 and went to work like nailers. On opening the old hive 

 yesterday. I found plenty of capped brood but no eggs or 

 unsealed brood, and 12 queen-cells, one of them evidently 

 just opened, but on account of so many bees (for I could 

 hardly miss the loafers that had gone into the other hive) 

 no queen was to be seen. 



I gave the loafers a frame of capped brood and 2 queen- 

 cells, and cutting 2 more out of the old hive I found a queen 

 just ready to come out, so I gave her to the loafers, and they 

 have 5 or 6 brood-frames drawn out from foundation, and 

 are also working in the supers. 



