350 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



October 



groups of four. See discussion of this matter 

 in June Journal. 



9. I don't know of any disease occurring 

 periodically. 



What Kind of Plant 



I send you by parcel post some plants that 

 grow here, especially in the limestone quar- 

 ries. They blossom continually from now un- 

 til a killing frost in the fall, and the bees 

 work on them all the time I have seen them 

 leave sweet clover alone right beside these 

 and work on this plant. Can you tell me what 

 its name ts and describe it and its general 

 value as a honey plant? NEW YORK. 



Answer.- — The plant is the Blueweed or Vi- 

 per's bugloss {Echitim vulgarc). It belongs to 

 the Boraginacea family, having a woolly stem, 

 like borage. You will find it described on page 

 45 of 'American Honey Plants," by Pellett, 

 Sladen lists it as an important honey plant in 

 southern Ontario. It is probably not abundant 

 enough to be of importance in many places. 



Size of Hive — Foundation 



1. An old beekeeper here told me that my 

 hives were too large for this country (I have 

 10-frame Langstroth). Is an 8-frame better 

 than a 10-frame hive where the amount of 

 surplus honey is no large amount, say 40 

 of 50 pounds average ? This is my second 

 year with bees, and if this is so, next year 1 

 will order 8-frame hives. 



2. This same man told me that a new swarm 

 would not stay in a hive with full sheets of 

 foundation as easily as with starters. Is this 

 so? TEXAS. 



Answers. — 1. Having never kept bees in 

 Texas, I do not know upon what basis your 

 "old beekeeper" builds his assertion. But I 

 know that an 8-frame hive is not large enough 

 to develop fully the breeding capacity of a 

 prolific queen. So, if a queen in an 8-frame 

 hive can produce bees enough to harvest 40 

 pounds of honey, I am of the opinion that the 

 same queen, if prolific enough, will produce 

 bees enough in a lO-frame hive to harvest 50 

 pounds of honey. 



2. On this question, also, it would be in- 

 teresting to know what reason the "old bee- 

 keeper" gives to explain why a swarm would 

 not stay as readily in a hive full of foundation 

 sheets as in a hive containing only starters. 

 We have never seen any cause for making such 

 a statement. 



Molasses for Food 



1. Can Molasses be fed to bees to save syrup 

 and honey? 



2. What is present price of molasses in bar- 

 rel Quantities? DELAWARE. 



Answers. — 1. During the time when bees 

 are flying daily almost anything sweet may be 

 fed with safety, provided the bees will take it. 

 For winter stores one must be more particular. 

 On the whole, however, when one cannot have 

 good honey, nothing is better than the best 

 granulated sugar. Even at its very high price, 

 men of large experience are buying it this 

 year to feed by the ton. 



2. I don't know, and what I could buy it for 

 here, might be no guide for you. 



Drones 



In looking over a hive of bees for queen- 

 cells 1 fuund a strong hive with plenty of 

 worker brood and plenty of honey. That hive 

 had 5 combs that had drone-cells that were nice 

 and clean, but no sign of drone-brood or eggs 

 in drone-cells. The queen had laid in all the 

 cells right up to the edge of the drone-cells 

 and then had passed on. There were between 

 50 and 100 drones in the hive, and part of 

 them were black, showing that they were 

 raised in some other hive. 



All my other hives have an over abundance 

 of drones and drone brood, and my records 

 show this queen to be 2 years old. If you 

 can see in this any chance of developing a 

 strain of queens that would refuse to lay drone 

 eggs she is at your disposal, as she is sup- 

 posed to be of your strain. 



Answer. — If bees are anxious to rear drone- 

 brood, they will go quite out of their way to 

 do so, sometimes when there is no drone-comb 

 inside the cluster passing over one or two 

 frames outside the cluster to occupy dront- 

 combs. If conditions are such that they do not 

 wish to rear drones, drone-cells inside the 

 brood-nest will be left unoccupied. Not al- 

 ways, however. I have seen a good many cases 

 in which drone-cells had eggs laid in them, 

 and workers were reared from the eggs. But 

 before eggs were laid in them the mouth of 

 each drone-cell was contracted to the size of 

 the mouth of a worker-cell. So it is nothing 

 unusual to find plenty of worker-brood, but 

 no drone-brood, although drone-cells are con- 

 venient. But at a time when colonies in gen- 

 eral in the same yard are rearing drones, to 

 find a queen two years old with drone-cells 

 easily within reach unoccupied, is unusual. The 

 likelihood is that at least some of her royal 

 progeny will show the same characteristic, and 

 by persistently selecting such to breed from, 

 there is a probability that in time this charac- 

 teristic may be more or less fixed. No great 

 skill in the case is required on the part of the 

 beekeeper, and you may do the work perhaps 

 as well as an expert. But patience is required 

 in anything of the sort, and you must not ex- 

 pect results in a day. 



(When queens -are very vigorous, they often 

 prefer to lay in worker-cells. The drones that 

 you mention as being in the hive may be her 

 own drones, as the color of the drones is 

 often irregular. — Editor.) 



Unfinished Sections 



How do you get the bees to take the honey 

 out of the unfinished sections, so that these 

 may be used as bait sections the following year, 

 and without having the combs torn to pieces ? 

 Or do you leave the honey and use the sections 

 as they were taken off, provided the honey in 

 them is not granulated? CALIFORNIA. 



Answer. — I wouldn't want to have the least 

 bit of honey in bait sections, whether it was 

 granulated or not. If there is honey enough in 

 the sections they may be extracted. Whether 

 extracted or not, they should be cleaned out 

 by the bees. I have tried different ways of 

 getting a colony to clean out sections without 

 letting the bees of other colonies have access 

 to them, but never with great success. So the 

 sections must be set out in the open, allowing 

 the bees to rob them out. If you set out a sin- 

 gle super of sections for ten or more colonies 

 to rob out, you may count on the combs being 

 torn to pieces. Reverse the thing, setting out 

 ten or more supers with .only one colony to 

 work on them, and there will be no tearing. 

 So if the number of sections to be cleaned be 

 large, give the bees full access to them ; the 

 more exposed the sections are the better. But 

 if the sections be few in nroportion to the 

 number of colonies, say less than a super for 

 each colony, then give the bees very limited 

 access to them. Pile five supers in a pile, and 

 allow an entrance for only one bee at a time. 

 Or, pile the supers up highe., and allow the 

 small entrance named for each five supers. 



(A very good way to get the bees to re- 

 move the honey is to place the super under the 

 brood-chamber instead of on top of it.— Editor). 



Ventilation — Introduction 



1. Arc 1-inch blocks too high on bottom- 

 boards to raise the hive for ventilation? They 

 have not built any comb from bottom frames 

 to bottom-board yet. 



2. I have a colony to which I gave the above 

 ventilation and have them tiered up about five 

 stories to prevent swarming. The other day 

 I noticed a few bees at the entrance fanning 

 with their heads half in the hive. What was 

 the meaning of this? 



3. Will a pound of bees and a queen re- 

 ceived June 14 build up by fall? 



4. When I receive a queen could I take the 

 old queen and give her a 10-frame super and 

 bees in it and set her on a stand and intro- 

 duce the new queen to the colony? 



5. What is the best way to run for extracted 

 honey? 



6. What is a good way to unite bees? 



WASHINGTON. 

 Answers. — 1. With a space of an inch be- 

 tween bottom-bars and bottom-board there may 

 and there may not be combs built down. But 

 these may easily be cut away when it comes 

 time in the latter part of the season to let the 

 hive down. 



2. It meant that fresh air was needed in the 

 hive. No amount of space under the hive, 

 and no amount of tiering up, can be counted 

 on as a sure thing against swarming. But you 

 can greatly increase the effectiveness of tiering 

 up if you have ventilation between each two 

 stories, "staggering" them, that is, shoving 

 the stories alternately forward and backward. 



3. Very likely, if the season is good enough, 



4. Yes, it will make introduction safer if 

 you give the new queen to the super placed on 

 a new stand. 1 you want the new queen on 

 the old stand you can afterward let the two 

 hives swap places. 



5. Just put on extracting combs a little be- 

 fore the bees are ready to store surplus. 



6. The newspaper plan 's a good way. Put 

 a sheet of newspaper over the topbars of one 

 hive and set the other hive over it. The bees 

 will dig down the paper and unite kindly. 

 Four or more days later you can assemble in 

 the lower story the best frames of brood of the 

 two stories. 



Requeening — Best Race 



1. When is the best time to change queen? 

 I have a hive of native bees and I don't like 

 them, so I want to know when is the best timb 

 to kill the old queen and introduce an Italian 

 (lueen ; and will they accept a queen of dif- 

 ferent breed? 



2. Do bees know their master? I can do 

 anything with my bees and they won't sting, 

 but when a stranger gets near the hives they 

 sting him. 



3. Last year I got 7 supers of honey from 

 one 10-frame hive. Does anyone ever get 

 any more? The bees that did the job I got 

 out of a tree the year before. I got 46 one- 

 quart fruit jars full of strained honey. 



4. The bees don't swarm. What is the 

 reason? 



5. Which is the best honey producer, the 

 golden or leather colored Italian bee ? 



WASHINGTON. 



Answers. — 1. Other things being equal; there 

 is perhaps no better time than toward the 

 close of the harvest. You can get as good 

 queens then as at any other time; the cost of 

 a queen will be less than early in the season, 

 and changing the queen then will interfere 

 less with the honey harvest. Of course, if it 

 is early in the season and you want a new 

 queen to breed from that season, it would be 

 better to get the queen earlier in the season. 

 A colony will accept a queen of any other 

 breed. 



2. No, I don't believe bees know their 

 master. Some people are more likely to be 

 stung than others, because of their move- 

 ments, odor, or something else; but such per- 

 sons are as likely to be stung by their own 

 bees as oy others. 



3. As many as 16 supers of sections have 

 been stored by a single colony, each super 

 containing 24 sections. Of course the yield 

 would be greater if the honey were extracted. 



4. Hard to say. It may be that your man- 

 agement may have had something to do with 

 it, and it may be that the bees are somewhat 

 inclined to non-swarming. 



5. Some goldens may be better than leather- 

 colored in the same yard, and the reverse may 

 be the case. Take it as a general rule and 

 the leather-colored may be the better. 



