Mar. 21, 1907 



American Hae Journal 



pounds of foundation, and there has never 

 been any foul brood among my bees. Hun- 

 dreds of others have done the same. The 

 continued high temperature to which the wax 

 is subjected when being made into founda- 

 tion, destroys even the spores in foundation. 

 I think that some hold, too, that even if a 

 spore were not destroyed by the heat it could 

 not germinate after receiving an impervious 

 coating of wax. 



3. No; and I do not think Mr. Doolittle 

 claims invariable success. Remember that in 

 the natural course of events every queen is 

 superseded by the bees, and that such super- 

 seding usually occurs somewhere in the 

 neighborhood of the close of the harvest. 

 Now when any colony has a queen that it is 

 about to supersede, if you will get in a little 

 ahead by having over the excluder a virgin 

 before one has been reared below, you may be 

 practically certain of success. If you do the 

 same thing early in the season, especially 

 wherp a vigorous queen is doing duty below, 

 you may expect failure. 



4. From what has been said, you will see 

 that the time of taking away the excluder has 

 little to do with success. If you want to take 

 advantage of the plan, about the close of the 

 harvest, give a cell from the best stock to 

 each queen you want superseded, and take 

 away the excluder immediately after the vir- 

 gin emerges, or a day later, or 3 or 3 days 

 later, and where you succeed you will have 

 better stock than if you had left the bees to 

 themselves; and where you fail you will only 

 have lost a queen-cell. But you stand a 

 chance of many successes. 



Best Bees for Comb Honey- 

 Sheets of Foundation 



Full 



1. What kind of bees do you consider the 

 best for the production of comb honey? 



2. Is it better to have full sheets of founda- 

 tion in the brood-frames? Also in sections? 

 If so, why? Maine. 



Answers.— 1. In general, the best workers, 

 that is, those which will store the most 

 honey. Vet there are two things to be taken 

 into account that might make one prefer bees 

 that are not the greatest storers. Suppose we 

 have a colony that stores a certain amount, 

 and another that stores 5 percent more, but 

 the latter daubs its sections very badly with 

 glue, while the former leaves them practically 

 clean. In that case we would be likely to 

 prefer the poorer gatherers, .\gain, there is 

 a great difference in the whiteness of sealing. 

 Some colonies seal snowy white, while others 

 make sections look watery or greasy. The 

 latter are not satisfactory for sections, no 

 matter how good storers. The Punic, or 

 Tunisians, are the worst I ever knew for both 

 glueing and watery sealing, and it is possible 

 that the two go together generally. Black 

 bees are said to seal whiter than Italians, but 

 I suspect that Italians are not alike in this 

 respect, for my Italians and hybrids have 

 made very white sections. On the whole, 

 you probably can do no better than to get a 

 good strain of Italians for section work. Pos- 

 sibly Caucasians may prove to be desirable, 

 but at present reports about them are too 

 contradictory to recommend them unreserv- 

 edly. 



It may not be out of place to suggest that 

 you can do well to watch which colonies do 

 best at giving a big Jot of very white sections, 

 and breed from such colonies. 



2. Yes; because you will then be sure of 

 having combs entirely straight, and no drone- 

 cells. 



The San Antonio Convention Pic- 

 ture is a good one. It shows over 100 of 

 those in attendance. We are mailing them, 

 unmounted, for only 60 cents. They can be 

 mounted by a local photographer for only 10 

 or 15 cents more. We will mail one of these 

 pictures with the American Bee .Tournal one 

 year— both for only $1.40. Send all orders to 

 the Bee Journal offlce. 



Gathering Clover Pollen— Fission 



On page 152, Mr. Hasty says, " Live ones 

 (meaning bees) seldom have pollen when 

 working on clover." It is all very different 

 here. I believe at least X of all the pollen 

 gathered is from clover, in my locality but 

 very little buckwheat is grown. Frequently 

 I have found the combs over-stocked with late 

 clover pollen — even the extracting combs 

 sometimes contain sickening quantities of 

 clover pollen. Clearly a case of conditions 

 and locality. 



REPRODUCTION ET FI38ION. 



When Mr. Hasty gets his endowed institute 

 in successful operation to study Fission with 

 a hundred microscopes, till the secret is dis- 

 covered why the cells of creatures that repro- 

 duce by Fission do not grow old, I guess it 

 will be found out that they do grow old, and 

 that new ones are constantly forming. 

 Meekly and lowly, I beg to suggest that it 

 may not be profitable or wise to discuss the 

 birth of Christ in the fashion found on page 

 153. S. T. Pettit. 



Aylmer, Ont., Feb. 25. 



Very Early Season 



Our season is very early. Bees are at the 

 swarming point. First eggs were found in 

 queen-cells on Feb. 2". Prospects for honey 

 are fine. J. W. K. Shaw & Co. 



Loreauville, La., March 11. 



A Beginner's Success 



I am a young man, who, by lucky chance, 

 got a couple of colonies of bees 2 years or 

 more ago. And having good luck last sum- 

 mer I increased to 4, had lots of honey for our 

 own use, and sold some $12 worth of comb 

 honey. I am in favor of the T-super, which 

 I use with plain sections and fence-separa- 

 tors. Walter M. Adema. 



Berlin, Mich., Feb. 23. 



Large Hives Are Best 



On page 16", Dr. Bohrer, in an article under 

 the heading, " Non-Swarming Hives to Pre- 

 vent or Control Swarming," says that in 1864 

 he used a hive with 16 or 18 frames Lang- 

 stroth size. From my experience with many 

 sizes and styles of hives, the Jumbo lOframe 

 comes nearer tilling the bill than an odd-size 

 hive-body will. By all means let us have uni- 

 form sizes of hives, except as to depth; that 

 is a matter of choice. It one desires to pro- 

 duce extracted honey, supers 6V inches deep, 

 with frames 6 inches deep, will give better re- 

 sults than deeper ones. The combs will not 

 break down in hot weather, and are sealed 

 over, and you can give surplus-room as it is 

 needed. Thos. M. Chekrt. 



Quincy, 111., March 1. 



Starting With Bees, Etc. 



I started a year ago with 7 colonies in box- 

 hives, and with the aid of " A B C of Bee- 

 Culture" and reading bee-papers I increased 

 them to 50 colonies, and took off about 500 

 pounds of nice section-honey. This year, with 

 an extractor, I expect to make them do much 

 better. The §1.00 queens I bought in the 

 springdid not do well. I suppose it was too 

 hot. But in August I got 2 dozen from a 

 Louisiana breeder. They all did fine. 



The last 3 winters we have had plenty of 

 rain in Arizona. Spring is here now with all 

 of its beauty. Thej beesl^are just as happy 



and busy as they can be. I do love to see 

 them come in with their loads of pollen. The 

 little birds are building their nests under the 

 eves of the porches. I want to kill them, but 

 my wife says, "No, no; you must not kill 

 them; they are just as happy as your bees;" 

 and so they are, bringing sticks, straws, and 

 strings. I am afraid they will eat my bees, 

 but the good lady and the birds will have to 

 have their way about the matter. 



I make my own hives, and I believe every 

 beginner, if he is noi able to buy them, should 

 make as many of his bee-fixtures as possible. 

 I think every bee-paper should give instruc- 

 tions, simple and plain, how to make a good 

 hive, with drawings and cuts of every part of 

 it, so as to make it easily understood by any 

 one; and keep these instructions continually 

 in the bee-papers. It is the poor people who 

 need help. The rich can and will get on all 

 right. T. J. RiGGS. 



Teviston, Ariz., Feb. 16. 



[We imagine if the same instructions and 

 drawings were kept in Mr. Riggs' bee-paper 

 for a year or two, he would get pretty tired 

 of seeing them. The better way would be for 

 the beginner to get one hive all complete, 

 nailed and painted, and then use it as a sam- 

 ple.— EniTOR.] 



Feeding Bees in Winter 



I have 6 colonies of bees, and they are 

 doing nicely. I fed them all through the 

 winter. In January I fed them on 15 days, 

 and in February, 1? days. I fed them out- 

 doors, taking 2 pounds of sugar and 2 pounds 

 of water to make the syrup, and put it in old 

 brood-combs, and then laid them on top of 3 

 one-gallon jars. It is great sport to watch 

 them work. J. F. McClure. 



Gay lord, Kans., March 1. 



Bees and Grapes 



I have seen a good many men discussing 

 the question of bees destroying grapes and 

 fruit. I have often read of this but I think 

 none of them are correct. I believe the cause 

 of grapes cracking open is their ripening in a 

 dry spell or a drouth. Last year they cracked 

 open in this part of the country more than 

 they have for years, and the bees worked on 

 them so badly that it was a disagreeable job 

 to cut them without getting stung on the 

 fingers. 



The grapes ripened in 2 or 3 weeks in dry 

 weather, and when they did get ripe there 

 came a heavy rain a week afterward ; then the 

 vines drew more moisture out of the ground, 

 causing the ripe grapes to get more juicy and 

 riper, and they began to crack. 



The same is true of a tomato. If a tomato 

 gets ripe in one week and is left on the vine 

 until the next week, and there comes a rain, 

 it will crack just the same as do the grapes. 



Milan, 111., Feb. 28. Josiah Johnston. 



Increasing 1 Colony to 7, and Get- 

 ting a Crop 



How I happened to be reduced to one col- 

 ony might be more interesting, but a hundred 

 or more empty combs and stacks of empty 

 hives and fixtures would be a strange con- 

 trast with the reports given in the bee-papers 

 for the past poor season. So I will start with 

 my one Italian queen of the red clover strain, 

 in a 10-frame hive packed in a chaff case of 

 large dimensions. When I found myself re- 

 duced to this in the spring of 1906, I held a 

 " bee-convention " all by myself, and re- 

 solved to devote the remainder of my life to 

 the science and art of bee-keeping; that I 

 would turn over a new leaf and pay more at- 

 tention to queen-rearing; that I would at- 

 tend to the wants of the bees, no matter what 

 else was neglected. 



I commenced the season by getting one 

 more queen. I gave 2 frames of brood and 

 bees, and one of empty comb, to the new 

 queen, and some D. section-cases to the old 

 one. About as 1 soon as they got well started 



