August, 1907. 



Amcerican l^ee Journal 



stniclcd cells, altlioiigh the larvae may 

 have been transferred by the bee-keeper. 



I am inclined to the belief that the 

 queens, which are reared without any 

 interference of man during the swarm- 

 ing season, are a little the best, but 

 I do not know. Some hold that by 

 rearing queens out of the swarming sea- 

 son, and by compelling the bees to use 

 worker-larvx for the purpose, a strain 

 of bees will result which is less in- 

 clined to swarm. I find this opinion 

 expressed by German and American 

 bee-masters alike. 



Herr E. Bohm speaks in the same 

 paper of the new method of having 

 queens mated from queenright colonies, 

 i. e., without removing the old fertile 

 queens. That this may be done is 

 fully e.xplained in Doolittle's "Queen- 

 Rearing," of 1889. Herr B. in a way 

 gives credit to the Americans, but says 

 that their method is uncertain and un- 

 reliable, as well as too complicated and 

 taking too much time to be practical. 

 He himself is conducting experiments 

 along this line which he expects to fin- 

 ish this year, and which promise to 

 be superior in result to anything known. 

 This is good news, and we will be 

 thankful to Mr. B. if he gives us a 

 practical method to mate queens in this 

 way, but he will not be able to claim 

 priority of the idea, although he men- 

 tioned this idea to visiting friends last 

 season. 



I never had an entire success mating 

 queens this way, but my method was 

 not laborious. From the fact that queen- 

 breeders and bee-keepers employ fer- 

 tiliizng-'boxes it will seem, that the lat- 

 ter method of mating queens is regarded 

 as safer and cheaper. 



Demand for Propolis. 



There does not exist a demand here 

 for propolis. I do not know what use 

 it may be put to, but I notice that the 

 article is wanted in Germany. R. Spieg- 

 ler in Grosshenn-ersdorf, offers to pay 

 about 25 cents to 50 cents per pound 

 for it, according to purity. 



-After scraping my wide frames and 

 supers I had about 8 pounds of propolis 

 saved. Of course, some little wax-par- 

 ticles went in with it, such as little 

 "legs," which the bees build at times to 

 connect the comb and the separator. 

 I have not much trouble this way, but 

 once in a while I find a colony which 

 is great in this. I find, also, sometimes, 

 a little wax on the underside of the bot- 

 tom-bars, and in a good honey season, 

 or during the heaviest flow, pure wax is 

 sometimes used in lieu of propolis. 



To separate this wax from the pro- 

 polis, I dumped the whole mess into 

 an iron kettle, which was placed on a 

 hot stove. When all was melted, the 

 wa.x, being lighter than the propolis, rose 

 to the top and stood there in little pud- 

 dles. I poured it off from time to time 

 into a pail of cold water; to obtain the 

 last, I dipped it off with an iron spoon. 

 The melted propolis was finally poured 

 out on to a wet board. It formed a 

 cake of 5 pounds with a very little wax 

 still in it. The obtained wax is of fine 

 quality and weighs 3 pounds. It will 

 not bother me to find a market for this, 

 and I shall save up the propolis for a 

 future buver. 



I supposed at one time that propolis 

 and wax could be melted together and 

 form one mass, as in making grafting- 

 wa.x of resin, wax and tallow, but it 

 does not do so with me ; the two sub- 

 stances separate when hot. 



Naples, N. V. 



Spring Stimulative Feeding 

 of Bees 



liV A. C. F. BARTZ. 



These words have headed many an 

 article of bee-papers, in recent years, 

 and many and hot have been the discus- 

 sions on this very important topic, by 

 the advocates as well as by the non- 

 practitioner; and I believe that some- 

 times the reader has been led to believe 

 that the writers taking either side of the 

 question did not know what they were 

 talking about, as they, pursuing one way 

 one season and finding it a success, 

 would very often prove the contrary 

 another season. I, myself, have very 

 often been "at sea" to know exactly 

 whether or not it would be profitable to 

 feed bees in the spring in order to stim- 

 ulate brood-rearing; but with the ex- 

 perience I have now, I feel safe to say 

 to the bee-keeping world, when to feed 

 and when not to feed. In the following 

 I shall endeavor to explain why it does 

 pay to feed, and why it doesn't. 



Some of the readers of the American 

 Bee Journal will remember my advo- 

 cating feeding bees in cold weather. 

 Notwithstanding the protests made by 

 some, against the feeding of bees in 

 cold weather, I am now ready to take 

 all and every responsibility, as far as to 

 damages done to bees by feeding in ear- 

 ly spring, (excepting the feeding at 

 daylig'ht in cold weather), upon my own 

 shoulders, and if any one would get 

 a chance to go through an experience 

 like the one I am just passing (May 

 14) with my 250 colonies of bees, and 

 seeing the results of what feeding does, 

 I do not believe there would be any 

 more disputes as to whether or .not it 

 pays to feed. 



Now I will tell how I came to find 

 out. .After taking my bees from the cel- 

 lars on April 1st, and finding that they 

 had wintered in first-class condition, I 

 felt satisfied that nothing was to be 

 done after that, only to see that each 

 colony had enough honey to carry them 

 through until they could gather some 

 from the soft-maple and hard-maple sap, 

 in which this country abounds. 



I just gave them a hasty inspection, 

 and marked all colonies light in stores, 

 and also those having too much honey, 

 which were about 50 or 60, as I gen- 

 erally do take away from those having 

 too much and give to those having 

 not quite enough; but this last-named 

 chance I was not to enjoy this year, 

 as we did not get a day, after April 3, 

 on which it was safe to open a hive, 

 until away into May. 



I was compelled to put feeders on 

 those colonies not having enough honey, 

 and feed sugar. So I put on 12 feeders 

 of large dimensions, and about 24 small- 

 er ones; and I fed those bees every day 

 that I found their feeders empty, leav- 



ing those 60 colonies with their surplus 

 honey to themselves. Hoping from day 

 to day to get a chance to take away 

 some of their honey, but such a spring 

 I never saw ! 



A change in the weather came at last, 

 and on May 13 I was permitted to see 

 vvhat I had been doing; hence this ar- 

 ticle. 



In the 60 colonies with too much 

 honey, not one of them contained 4 

 combs of brood, and their number of 

 bees had melted away to half the 

 strength they had been when taken 

 from the cellars; others with not so 

 much honey had perished entirely, and 

 others dwindled down to mere handfuls. 

 But what about those fed? I'll tell 

 you. I was never more surprised in 

 my life, and I don't remember ever be- 

 ing much more pleased than I was when 

 opening the hives of those I had been 

 feeding, especially those 12 with large 

 feeders — why, some of them have brood 

 in 9 combs, none less than 6, and they're 

 "boiling over" with bees, so much so 

 that I have given them a second story, 

 and some even a third ! They look 

 like so many mammoth hives. I can 

 divide every one of tnem, and will do 

 so in a day or two ; this will give me at 

 least 24 rousing colonies. 



Now, you see what this feeding did — 

 it not only stimulated the bees to the 

 highest activity of brood-rearing, but 

 it prevented spring dwindling entirely — 

 the very thing which is so much feared 

 by some of our writers ; when writing 

 about feeding in early spring they claim 

 the bees leave the hives when the weath- 

 er is unfavorable, and get lost, and 

 thereby dwindle. This is a theory, and 

 entirely wrong, and "falls all to pieces," 

 as Mr. Hasty says, when brought against 

 practical experience. 



I wish to say, further, that the sugar 

 I fed was the best granulated cane- 

 sugar, made to the consistency of half 

 sugar and half water, by measure, and 

 fed very hot. 



My feeders have a galvanized iron 

 bottom, and cover the entire top of the 

 hive. Certainly the heat from this feed 

 had considerable to do with the bees 

 breeding up so fast, but I could not 

 get the heat unless I used the feed. 



Another thing I'd like to mention is, 

 that the amount fed to those colonies 

 was more than they could use — they 

 stored a little — from 5 to 6 pounds per 

 colony, and the feed was given at 

 night, sometimes by lantern light. 



I just want to mention that if bees 

 gather pollen every 2 or 3 days — or even 

 water — they need no stimulative feed- 

 ing in early spring, providing they have 

 plenty of honey in the hive, because 

 pollen is a stimulant, as well as water; 

 in fact, anything they can gather out- 

 side arouses them to activity, but when 

 they do not fly for 2 or 3 days or weeks, 

 or even a month, then the thing as- 

 sumes a diflfrent aspect altogether; and 

 should it become so cold as to compel 

 the bees to form a solid winter cluster, 

 then it will clip from day to day part of 

 the cluster, and many of the young 

 bees within the cluster will drop off for 

 want of honey, because there is not 

 unsealed honey enough within the clus- 

 ter to carry on breeding, and nour- 



