Mar. 7, 1907 



Amc>rican ^ae Journal 



you. Hope I will have more honey 

 next year than I had this." 



If B was annoyed at the first postal, 

 his annoyance is greater at the second, 

 and he says in mental reply to it, " Big 

 crop or little crop, you don't bait me 

 again." Nor is it soothing to his feel- 

 ings when a bee-paper comes to hand 

 3 weeks later and he finds that same 

 honey, " ripe, rich, and thick," is still 

 being oflFered in undiminished quan- 

 tity : 



Bee-keepers, courtesy and honest 

 treatment pay. If you don't want to 

 send samples of honey don't offer to do 

 so. If you do offer, send along promptly 

 even if you are about to make a deal. 

 It may count for a sale another time. 

 And at least it should be worth more 

 than the sample to you to know that 

 your prospective customer can not pos- 

 sibly think that you have trifled with 

 him. Some people are, as is well- 

 known, touchy, and while it is un- 

 doubtedly true that "There ain't no 

 sense in gittin' riled,"' riled they will 

 get if you give them half a show. 



(Mrs.) a. L. Amos. 



Comstock. Nebr. 



Mrs. Amos is right ; the Golden Rule 

 should prevail among beekeepers as 

 elsewhere. It pays in the long run. 

 Let us hope that the transgressors she 

 is aiming at are not to be found among 

 the sisters. 



Cleaning Sections — A Day's Work 



A pleasant letter from Dr. Max 

 Boelte contains the following : 



Dear Mi3s Wilson: — I oiler my best 

 thanks to you for your kind answer about 

 cleaning sections for market, and appreciate 

 very much the pleasant and cheerful way of 

 expressing yourself. Your answer is of 

 greatest interest to me, yet I am compelled to 

 come back to the subject as soon as I shall be 

 able to do so, for even if it is an answer it 

 still leaves sundry points not exactly clear, 

 and does not establish clearly what I had 

 asked. You speak of the work with T-supers, 

 while we here in California use generally the 

 section-holder style of supers — 24 mostly, 

 some also 28 — and my inquiry was to know 

 about the average work that could be done 

 with our style of supers, not the T. 



De. Max Boelte. 



Valley Center, Calif., Jan. 6. 



It is much easier to tell just what has 

 been done right here with what we 

 have than to tell what may be done by 

 some one else with some other fixtures, 

 and under different circumstances. 

 But I'll do the best I can to give some 

 kind of an answer, based on actual ex- 

 perience. Before the adoption of the 

 T-super we used other supers, mostly 

 wide frames containing 2 tiers of sec- 

 tions; that is, each wide frame con- 

 tained 8 sections, said sections being 

 the 2 bee-way, i%K4%xlJi. They were, 

 of course, taken out of the frames be- 

 fore anything was done at cleaning 

 them, and if your sections are taken 

 out of the frames before any part of 

 them is cleaned, there may be a chance 

 for comparison. I cleaned thousands 

 of these sections, but, without definite 

 memoranda of work actually done, ex- 

 act figures can not be given. I feel 

 safe in saying, however, that 1200 to 

 1500 were cleaned in a day, possibly 

 more. 



It is only fair to remember that with 



much experience I became somewhat 

 expert, and, indeed, I have been ac- 

 cused of bein^ (|uick-fingered in gen- 

 eral. Just how much should be dis- 

 counted for that is not easy to say. 

 You, Dr. Boelte, can judge as well as I. 

 Possibly it may not be a very wild 

 guess to say that the average hand 

 ought to do three-fourths as much, or 

 somewhere in the neighborhood of 1000 

 a day. 



But we are talking now about doing 

 the work when the sections are so cold 

 that the propolis is brittle. In Cali- 

 fornia, or anywhere where the propolis 

 is soft and stringy, it is a very differ- 

 ent matter. If I were obliged to clean 

 such sections, I don't believe I could 

 get through with more than half as 

 many in a day. 



There is another factor in the prob- 

 lem. Some localities are more gluey 

 than others. Indeed, in the same 

 locality some sections have five times 



as much propolis as others. I can 

 imagine sections with so little glue on 

 them that they might be cleaned in 

 half the average time. I can also im- 

 agine sections so gluey that they would 

 require double time. 



You will see. Doctor, that there are 

 so many ifs in the case that it is hard 

 to be very definite ; but if there is any 

 point upon which you have any further 

 questions, such questions will be cheer- 

 fully answered to the extent of ability 

 possessed. 



Honey In Infant's Food 



At first the child had half milk and 

 half honey, liquefied with water. Then 

 4 parts milk, 1 part honey, with a little 

 water. The child grew strong and 

 plump, and never had a single pain, 

 while it slept soundly the whole night 

 long. — British Bee Journal. 



r. /lasty^ 



The " Old Reliable " as seen through New and Unreliable Glasses, 

 By E. E. Hastt, Sta. B. Rural, Toledo, Ohio. 



Mbkting of Queen and Drone — 

 Size of Cells, Etc. 



I think Dr. Miller is getting a little 

 too near the line of discourtesy in 

 charging me with originality and 

 novelty in what I wrote about the 

 meeting of queen and drone. The Irish 

 Bee Journal has already acquitted me 

 of novelty ; and I plead that originality 

 is not what I'm at. I would be happy 

 to quote the publication, page and date 

 about these matters, but a very poor 

 memory forbids me to do so. I have 

 for many years been accustomed to 

 give extra attention to whatever I saw 

 relative to mating, and the whole has 

 "simmered "in my mind. Naturally 

 what seemed to me to be the most 

 illuminative had by far the most pow- 

 erful effect upon me — while another 

 cast of mind might be swift to forget 

 the very things which moved me the 

 most. There is a decided difference 

 between invention and deductions from 

 a lifetime of reading. When I spin 

 theories out of my own wool, isn't it 

 the fact. Doctor, that I am pretty free 

 to say so — as well as pretty free to do 

 so 7 



Now as to excess of drones lacking 

 food. So far as honey is concerned, 

 my understanding is that they help 

 themselves to it whenever it is not 

 offered to them iu abundance. So, of 

 course, they are supplied— until the 

 dread time comes when the workers 

 decide to make a general onslaught 

 upon them. But t don't believe honey 

 alone is sufficient to keep a drone in 

 best serving trim - do you ? If any one 

 thinks so, the burden of proof is upon 



him. The presumption is very strongly 

 the other way. Service calls for nitro- 

 gen, to be supplied by nitrogenous 

 food ; and honey is nearly destitute of 

 nitrogen. Don't believe anybody can 

 be found that will claim that drones 

 eat pollen, or that they could digest it 

 if they did eat it. If not this, then the 

 alternative would seem to be that they 

 are fed nitrogenous food by the work- 

 ers — with a bare possibility that the 

 nitrogen given them when larva: suf- 

 fices for a lifetime. I'm not ready with 

 any further proof, but I think that a 

 few drones in a hive are abundantly 

 fed, fed with stimulating food other 

 than honey ; that a larger number are 

 fed more sparingly ; and that with too 

 large a drone army the workers stop 

 feeding them almost entirely. 



As to the size of cells built, there are 

 times and seasons when you could 

 hardly coax bees to build a drone-cell 

 anyhow ; and then there are times and 

 seasons when it seems as if you couldn 't 

 make them build anything else. I sup- 

 pose Dr. Miller (and other people as 

 well) mend combs at leisure times in 

 the spring, and give them to the bees 

 when worker-comb is the only word. 

 Naturally the splicing shows few 

 drone-cells under those circumstances. 

 But when the honey-flow is on, and 

 drone-rearing is the best word — and, 

 moreover, when they have been several 

 weeks engaged in a running fight with 

 you as to whether they shall have a 

 drone out or not — under those circum- 

 stances the conditions are very greatly 

 altered, and one should hardly expect 

 them to build a single worker-cell if 



