(Entered at the Post-OflSce at Chicago as Becond-Class Mall-Matter) 

 Publisheil Weekly at $1.00 a Year, by George W. York & Co., 11« W. Jackson Blvd. 



GEORGE W. YORK, Editor 



CHICAGO, ILL,, JUNE 20, 1907 



Vol, XLVn— No. 25 



:diforial .A(ote*3i 

 md Commeiits 



sa^ 



Invention of Movable Frames 



The editor of the Far- Western Bee-Keeper 

 wields a facile pen, his matter and manner 

 both good, but surely he must have been nap- 

 ping when he wrote; " Dzierzon was the 

 man who first made bees build combs on 

 slats, and starters, which was the beginning 

 of the movable frame." 



If credit is to be given for what was done 

 previous to the invention of the movable 

 frame by Langstroth in 1851, as " the begin- 

 ning of the movable frame," why not go back 

 to the "beginning" at an earlier date of 

 combs built on slats? In Dadant's Lang- 

 stroth, paragraph 2S2, occurs the following: 



" The bee-keepers of Greece and of Candia 

 seem to have been the first to provide their 

 hives with movable bars, under which bees 

 suspended their combs. Delia Rocca men- 

 tions these, and gives some engravings of 

 them in his work, published in 1790. In 1838, 

 Dzierzon revived this hive and improved it." 



Virgin Loafing on Her Wedding=Trip 



The distance to which a virgin tlies on her 

 wedding-trip is a matter of practical impor- 

 tance, the question often being asked how far 

 it is safe to be from other bees to make sure 

 virgins shall not meet drones from them. It 

 has been advanced that by noting the length 

 of time a virgin is absent from the hive one 

 can figure upon the distance she has flown. 

 That this is not to be depended upon is shown 

 by the following testimony from Thomas 

 Johnson in the British Bee Journal : 



In one case the queen, returning, missed 

 the board and settled heavily on the brick 

 wall, where she remained while I fetched a 

 hand-magnifier from the house and examined 

 her as she sat. Under the glass the drone- 

 trail (a silvery-looking filament) could be 

 plainly seen. The queen remained so long on 



the wall brushing herself that I began to 

 think she was disabled, but on touching her 

 she took wing, and, after taking one circling 

 flight around the yard, she entered her own 

 hive, and is now at the head of an excellent 

 colony from which I hope to rear more queens 

 this season. 



This experience is, I think, valuable, be- 

 cause it is evidence that when a queen is ab- 

 sent on her mating-flight, it is by no means 

 certain that she is on the wing the whole 

 time. While the watching bee-man imagines 

 her flying miles from home to consort with a 

 favored drone from a distant apiary, she may 

 be sitting preening her ruffied "feathers" 

 within his reach, but unnoticed. 



Bees and Colors 



(In another page in this number will be 

 found an article of much interest discussing 

 the color of flowers as related to bees, written 

 by Prof. Gaston Bonnier. It was sent by Mr. 

 Stadler Menhall, as a clipping from the New 

 Orleans Times-Democrat, and was, no doubt, 

 translated from the French. Prof. Bonnier 

 stands high in the council of bee-keepers in 

 France, and what he says is worth consider- 

 ing. He is not likely to antagonize the views 

 of such an authority as Sir John Lubbock 

 without thinking he has good ground for it. 



The question whether bees go by sight or 

 scent is an interestiog one. When one ob- 

 serves the actions of would-be robber-bees in 

 the apiary, they will be seen sneaking about 

 cracks between hive and cover, where cer- 

 tainly they can see no honey inside, but no 

 doubt can smell it. Hut watch closely at a 

 hive where desperate attempts are being 

 made to break throiu^h, and while most at- 

 tention may be given to the cracks, one will 

 often see a cluster of bees attacking a solid 

 knot on the side of the hive. Sight, not 

 scent, evidently iti that case. 



Look again at the bees upon the flowers. 



Here is a flower that has just been rifled of 

 its sweets, and a bee comes along, looks it 

 over, and quickly leaves it without getting 

 anything from it. Was not the bee, in that 

 case, attracted by sight? Or was there just 

 enough nectar to attract by its odor, and not 

 enough to be worth spending time upon it? 



It is quite possible, indeed probable, that 

 both sight and scent play a part, but the care- 

 ful investigations of Prof. Bonnier seem to 

 give to scent the chief part. 



Metal Frame-Spacers 



The chief objection urged against metal 

 frame-spacers has been that they would in- 

 jure the uncapping-knife. Producers of comb 

 honey have protested that it was unfair to 

 them, since their combs were never used for 

 extracting, to deprive them of the advantages 

 of metal spacers just because such spacers 

 might be objectionable when extracting. Now 

 comes Editor Root, who goes so far to think 

 it possible that metal spacers may even be 

 allowed on extracting-combs. He says (Glean- 

 ings, 754) : 



The oft-repeated objection to metal spacers, 

 to the effect that they will interfere with the 

 uncapping-knife, exists more in the imagina- 

 tion than in fact. There are not wanting ex- 

 tracted-honey men who use metal spacers of 

 various sorts; and when we have talked with 

 some of them on the question whether they 

 dulled the uncapping-knife edge on these 

 spacers, they ridiculed the very idea. One of 

 them in particular made the remark that 

 "any one who would dull his knife on a 

 small projection at the end of the frame must 

 be a blundering manipulator." Unless some 

 one will actually testify that the metal spacers 

 make uncapping difficult atd annoying, let 

 us scatter this man of straw to the four winds. 



" Bees Exterminating Bugs" 



C. G. Chevalier sends the following item 

 with the above heading, clipped from the 

 New York Herald : 



Professor S. J. Hunter, of the Entomo- 

 logical Department of the [Kansas] State 

 University, who, for the past month, has been 

 collecting and sending free to the farmers of 

 the Southwest, parasite bees to Kill the green 

 bugs that have been destroying wheat, re- 

 ceived a telegram to-day from Secretary of 

 Agriculture Wilson at Washington, asking 

 for full particulars of this work. 



Professor Hunter replied that he had dis- 

 tributed 2000 boxes containing the parasites 



