1921 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



229 



much good. Therefore the risk is 

 small. By old age or starvation (till 

 the queen is nearly dead) or the 

 smoke method, they will generally be 

 accepted. Never use a cage method 

 under such circumstances, unless you 

 keep the queen confined nearly a 

 week, making sure no young queen or 

 cells are developed, and then, gen- 

 erally, you are likely to fail. 



When your old worthless queen is 

 at work and thoroughly at home, 

 then as the colony is queenright, re- 

 place her with the queen you want in 

 the hive, by any method that you 

 normally succeed with. 



Another oversight, I think, by Mr. 

 Holloway, is given in his article. Two 

 virgins hatched on two different oc- 

 casions. Why was this permitted? 

 Only one cell should have been al- 

 lowed to emerge. 



However, these long queenless 

 colonies are generally not worth 

 much anyway. 



Texas. 



Surely there is much yet to be 

 learned about the burly, noisy, hungry 

 drone. 



Rhode Island. 



WHY IS A DRONE? 



By Arthur C. Miller 



Search me, I don't know; but I do 

 kinow they are strange fellows of 

 many peculiarities. Their coming, 

 staying and going is as the wind 

 which blpweth where it listeth. One 

 year they appear weeks ahead of the 

 usual time in almost all of the colo- 

 nies, and perhaps in mid-season 

 scarcely one can be found. Again 

 some fall, as in this one, the workers 

 start early to drive forth the drones, 

 and then suddenly the drive ceases 

 and then drone-brood in all stages ap- 

 pears in the hives. Also this year 

 much superseding has been observed 

 as late as the first of October. Why 

 are drones allowed in solid ranks to 

 cover outlying sealed brood? I ven- 

 ture to say they gathered there to 

 keep themselves warm and the work- 

 ers withdrew to the inner recesses. 

 And why did the workers desert the 

 outlying brood and leave it to the 

 care of the drones? 



Why are colonies with an excess of 

 drones more apt to swarm than are 

 those with few drones? What have 

 the big, lumbering, lazy fellows to do 

 with the swarm impulse, anyway? 



If odor of a colony is carried by a 

 bee and governs its reception by an 

 alien colony, then why are drones per- 

 mitted to come and go at will into any 

 colony they chance upon? • Surely 

 they did not shed their home odor. 



Now drones do possess a sex odor 

 and when they are abundant in a hive 

 their presence is easily detected by a 

 smell at the entrance if the apiarist 

 has a keen sense of smell. Some per- 

 sons have an exceptionally keen sense 

 of smell and can develop and train it, 

 and make it useful in bee culture, 

 even if it is oft an annoyance to its 

 possessor when compelled to enter a 

 crowded conveyance. 



Can we, by a more complete knowl- 

 edge of drones, their presence, abund- 

 ance, habits, retention and expulsion, 

 judge of colony, weather and crop 

 conditions? 



BEE FEED 



By A. F. Bonney 



During the past few years the price 

 of cane sugar was so high, and it was 

 so difficult to get, that I fed honey, 

 both for winter stores and brood 

 rearing, and am now glad that it hap- 

 pened, for there is no question in my 

 mind that honey, the natural food of 

 the bees, is the best thing to give 

 them. Of course we know they will 

 live when given sugar syrup, just as a 

 child will exist on a makeshift diet, 

 but as we know the child will not im- 

 prove, either physically or mentally, 

 we may assume the bees will not. 

 They will lack something. 



At a time in the past I secured a 

 sanmple of the "invert sugar," largely 

 advertised as a winter feed for bees. 

 An examination of it led me to think 

 it was not made of cane sugar. While 

 investigating this I had been trying 

 to invert cane sugar without using 

 an acid. I knew that a syrup made by 

 percolation would not crystallize in 

 months, but as I could not figure out 

 any chemical change, I finally gave up 

 and wrote to Park, Davis & Co., who 

 turned my letter over to Mr. J. M. 

 Francis, their head chemist, as I ex- 

 pected them to do. I wish to call at- 

 tention to his remarks, that "the in- 

 vert sugar which you refer to as be- 

 ing put on the market is probably not 

 made from cane sugar .... and : 

 "I should be very wary of feeding 

 those bees before I had demonstrated 

 by practical experience that it would 

 not cause disease during the winter 

 months." 



The Francis letter follows : 



"Invert sugar can be prepared, and 

 in fact is prepared, from cane sugar 

 by heating in the presence of a little 

 dilute acid. 



"There is absolutely no reason to 

 assume that invert sugar would be 

 formed from cane sugar by age or ex- 

 posure to the oxygen of the air. 



"Theoretically, cane sugar syrup, if 

 slightly acidulated might produce a 

 trace of invert sugar on long standing 

 at comparatively warm temperature. 

 One could hardly expect, however, 

 that there would be any appreciable 

 amount produced in this way. 



"I am rather inclined to believe, 

 therefore, that if you could learn the 

 true history of the sample of syrup 

 which you found not to show any 

 tendency to crystallization, you 

 would find that it originally had been 

 invert by heating after the addition 

 of a little citric or tartaric acid in 

 preparing it for bee feed. 



"The invert sugar which you refer 

 to as being put on the market is prob- 

 ably not made from cane sugar at all, 

 but is undoubtedly prepared by a 

 chemical process from starch or some 

 other very much cheaper material. 

 In other words, this commercial invert 

 sugar is very likely to rank pretty 

 close to the artificial dextrose or glu- 



cose which is now prepared in enor- 

 mous quantities and procured at a 

 relatively cheap price. I should be 

 very wary of feeding these to 1 ees be- 

 fore I had demonstrated by practical 

 experience that it would not cause 

 disease during the winter season." 



HONEY BUTTER 



By Allen Latham 



One of the greatest drawbacks to 

 succeessful marketing of extracted 

 honey is its tendency, indeed almost 

 certainty, to candy. I find people in 

 general very suspicious of candied 

 honey, and that much argument and 

 considerable skill are required to con- 

 vince the average person that granu- 

 lated honey is pure. Even when con- 

 vinced, they are convinced against 

 their will, and, I fear, "are of the 

 same opinion still." A very deter- 

 mined campaign of education is vi- 

 tally necessary, and this article is in- 

 tended as a gun to help in this cam- 

 paign. 



One of the strongest arguments 

 that can be offered is that arising 

 from the injury done to honey 

 through heat. I find that people will 

 listen when I tell them that unless 

 honey is heated and kept hot for a 

 long time before it is bottled it is 

 very likely to granulate. As granu- 

 lation in the glass jars hurts the sale 

 of the honey, the bottler is likely, in 

 his efforts to prevent this granula- 

 tion, to carry the heating so far that 

 he seriously injures it, as he 

 causes the loss of the aroma and fla- 

 vor, for these are volatile oils and 

 heat drives them out of the honey. 

 The heating also causes the loss of 

 vitamins, those mysterious some- 

 things which are apparently so very 

 essential to our health and well- 

 being. 



Then one can follow up this argu- 

 ment by saying that honey hardened 

 into a solid mass is very edible as 

 soon as one gets over his suspicions 

 that it is not pure honey. This hard 

 honey carries all the good points of 

 fresh, liquid honey, except that it is 

 not a liquid. What of that? Use it 

 like butter. Spread it on bread and 

 biscuits. Use it like real butter, or 

 like peanut butter. 



When this point is reached a coun- 

 ter argument is advanced. "But I 

 don't like it, it feels as if I had some 

 sand on my tongue." Now, how are 

 we going to meet that argument? It 

 is real. It is no phantom of the im- 

 agination. One cannot pooh-pooh it 

 away. 



A few years ago a well-known bee- 

 keeper of another State presented 

 me with a jar of candied honey. He 

 told me that he sold most of his honey 

 in that form. Well, if his customers 

 ate it in that form I think that they 

 must have been very indifferent to 

 what they put into their mouths. That 

 honey was granulated very coarsely, 

 with almost nothing between the 

 granules. The grains were so coarse 

 and hard that they dissolved very 

 slowly, so that the flavor and sweet- 

 ness were almost completely camou- 

 flaged. I can frankly say that if that 

 were the only form in which honey 



