Jan. 31, 1907 



American Hee Jonrnal 



a notion of mine. Probably he was 

 figuring mainly on warmer mornin^js 

 and less torrid afternoons. Page 1048. 



That Section-Ci.kaning Discussion. 



I, too, was amused at the section- 

 cleaning confab. Some of us are ex- 

 pected to clean 960 sections in a day, 

 and some expected to clean % — with 

 2016 as mountain-top beacon to encour- 

 age us. The range from 92 to 201i> 

 certainly looks as though it ought to 

 be shortened up somehow. By the 

 way, my toes are getting pinched, too. 

 I indulged iu a fling at the T-super 

 because it lets the sections get propo- 

 lized on the bottom, with the inference 

 that cleaning must take longer. Yet, 

 as my favorite brood-frame does not 

 lend itself readily to wholesale scraping 

 pears like I haven't even a glimmer of 

 a chance to draw up to the T- super 

 workers — not even near enough to be 

 counted as an "also ran.' 



The question, What is a clean sec- 

 tion ? has hardly been finally disposed 

 of — can not be by one person's prefer- 

 ence. I take off the propolis, but don't 



try to take oil tlic stain which lies un- 

 der it. I largely ic-ep it off, but don't 

 try to take it off. As Miss Wilson uses 

 sandpaper, she evidently doesn't think 

 a section done till the outside flat sur- 

 faces are free from stain. I'll guess 

 she doesn't sandpaper the edges — where 

 my propolis lies. Some sections — even 

 some tolerably heavy ones — have half 

 an inside side exposed — pretty apt to 

 be stained and also punctured with 

 small dabs. Looks bad. Wonder if 

 any of the brethren tackle the job of 

 making these spots lily-white — and 

 how, in the process, they keep from 

 breaking the honey that lies so near. 

 Page 1049. 



Beks Building Round Cells. 



Before somebody slaps me about bees 

 never trying to build a round cell. I 

 would better follow the luminous ex 

 ample of Davy Crockett's coon and 

 " come down " — far enough to confess 

 that the mouth of a queen-cell, when it 

 is iu its contracted state, is round — and 

 that fact damages my whole remark 

 badly. Page 1051. 



dreds of them— for In every colony with lay- 

 ing workers it isn't a single worker, but a 

 whole lot of them, at the miserable butiness— 

 but I never could tell which the laying work- 

 ers were, except onesingle laying worker thai 

 I caught in the act of laying. 



' •*-« 





:?eDd (,!uestioDS either to the oliice of the Amenoan bee -puurnai, or to 

 Dr. C. C. Miller, Marengo, 111. 

 ' Dr. Miller does nut answer Questions "oy mail. 



Uncapped Sections in Center of Super 

 -Age of Larvae for Queen- 

 Rearins;— Hive-Dummies- 

 Laying Workers 



1. What causes bees to leave a few sections 

 of honey uncapped in the central part of a 

 super all tilled with honey, plenty of bees and 

 warm weather? 



2. As a general rule, will bees, after remov- 

 ing their Cjueen, select a larva of the right 

 age to rear another J 



3. Is there any way of placing dummies in 

 a hive in place of combs, and have just as 

 .good work done in the sections! 



4. In appearance are laying workers differ- 

 ent from workers? New York. 



Akswers. — 1. I don't know, and can only 

 guess. There's a difference in nectar, some 

 of it being ripened up more slowly than the 

 majority. It is just possible that when the 

 bees commenced work in the supers the cen- 

 tral sections were tilled with nectar of this 

 kind, or with honey that possibly tor some 

 other reason they were slow about sealing, 

 and then the rest of the super was flUed with 

 honey of a character to be promptly sealed. 

 Another possibility is that the central sections 

 were in someway objectionable, possibly from 

 having foundation or comb that had been 

 used before and left too long in the care of 

 the bees when not being filled, and so covered 

 to some extent with propolis. Still another 

 possibility is that there was brood in the cen- 

 tral sections; then after the brood hatched 

 out they were filled with honey which, of 

 course, would be later in being sealed. 



2. I believe the general teaching is that 

 when bees become queenless they are in such 

 haste to rear a successor that they select lar- 



va' of too great age to make good queens. I 

 am very sure that this is a libel on the intelli- 

 gence of the bees, and it is a marvel to me 

 that honest and intelligent men will go on 

 repeating this hoary error when a very little 

 investigation will show that it is an error. I 

 have proved it so hundreds of times. The 

 only sort of ground for such belief that I 

 know of, comes from the fact that bees are 

 not always satisfied with the number of cells 

 started at first, but will continue to start ad- 

 ditional cells perhaps a week after being made 

 queenless, when larvn- sufficiently young are 

 no longer present. If left to their own de- 

 vices, no harm ever comes from this, for these 

 late cells will be destroyed by the young 

 queen reared from the earlier brood. But if 

 you save all the queen-cells, giving them to 

 nuclei so as to have queens reared from them, 

 you will have some worthless queens. 



It may be worth while to repeat briefly 

 what I have told in the book, " Forty Years 

 Among the Bees,'' about getting queen-cells 

 started. To a colony of best stock I give a 

 frame with one or two small starters of foun- 

 dation, and in perhaps 10 days, when the 

 frame is half filled or more with comb, eggs, 

 and brood up to sealed brood, I give it to a 

 queenless colony. I liave reared hundreds of 

 queens in this way, and never yet knew the 

 bees to start cells except around the outer 

 parts where there was only young brood. 



3. If you put the dummies at either side, 

 the bees will make sluwer work over theiu. If 

 you put the dummies between the combs of 

 brood, it will not mal.e the same difference. 

 During the harvest time I have had 2 or 3 

 dummies in the broml-chamber (but no 2 to- 

 gether), and I could not see that it made any 

 trouble. But I nevei tried it a great deal. 



4. Not a bit. I suppose I have seen hun- 



Selling Bees to Farmers— T-Super 

 Questions 



1. What effect does selling bees to farmers 

 have on the price of honey, considering that 

 the farmers and local stores buy most of the 

 comb honey produced! With such a practise 

 would bees get so numerous that there 

 would be demand for honey in the neighbor- 

 hood, or do you think the farmers so neglect 

 their bees, usually, that there would still be a 

 demand for some honey? As you are a comb- 

 honey producer, probably you can give some 

 advice about selling bees to the farmers of 

 the neighborhood. 



2. How do you fix the ends of the T-supers 

 to make them as long as the hives, both top 

 and bottom ; Do you put 2 cleats or strips on 

 the end, top and bottom? If so, how wide, 

 or how do you lix it? 



3. Are the thin strips of wood better Ihan 

 an extra set of tins at top of the sections? I 

 was under the impression that the tins were 

 better. 



4. I think you spoke of driving the bent 

 staples in level with the wood. If I under- 

 stand it rightly, the T-tins are supported just 

 the thickness of the staples above the bottom 

 of the super. Am I right? 



o. Do you use a follower in T-supers, or 

 only the plain sawed separators for the 

 springs to press against? 



6. I have some 10-frame dovetailed hive- 

 bodies that are '4 inch wider than the stand- 

 ard, or 14'^' inches inside. Would you advise 

 ' utting tliem down the '4 inch to prevent 

 thick combs at the sides of the hives, or do 

 you think the space left will allow the use of 

 a thin dummy? I had thought some of using 

 9 frames and a dummy part of the time if I 

 cut them down, or would you use one at each 

 side? I suppose the T-supers should be made 

 I4J4 inches inside. Then they would not 

 quite fit these bodies. I have not used any of 

 them yet. Pennsylvania. 



Answers. — 1. If you have enough bees to 

 occupy the field, it is no benefit to you to 

 have bees within your territory owned by 

 others; and if you have not enough to occupy 

 the field, and care to keep more, it will prob- 

 ably be more to your advantage to own the 

 additional bees yourself than to have them 

 owned by others. Besides, there is the ob- 

 jection that slipshod bee-keepers will throw 

 upon the market honey in poor shape at a 

 low price, thus injuring your market. At the 

 same time, slipshod bee-keeping is likely to 

 run itself out. A bee-keeper should not ob- 

 ject to others keeping bees near him so long 

 as he has no thought of fully occupying the 

 field, and if he has the field occupied intelli- 

 gent farmers should have some respect for his 

 claim to the territory. 



2. A single strip tacked on at the bottom of 

 the super is enough. No particular matter 

 about the width ; I generally use one an inch 

 wide or so. 



8. The wood strips leave propolis only at 

 the corners of the sections, while T-tins on 

 top would invite lines of propolis at some dis- 

 tance from the corners. The wood is prob- 

 ably easier to put in place, and it holds the 

 sections square, while a T-tin on top would 

 allow a little variation. Yet these differences 

 do not amount to so very much. 



4. The idea is to get the bottoms of the sec- 

 tions as nearly as possible on a level with the 

 bottom of the super, but in actual practise 

 that will vary, for in bending over and driv- 

 ing down the staple it will be sometimes em- 

 bedded into the wood. 



5. A follower. The 1-16 separator would 

 hardly be stiff enough. Possibly it might be 

 an improvement instead of a single follower 

 on one side to have a thinner follower on each 

 side, but I'm not sure there would be room 

 for it. 



6. If you want to reduce the width of the 



