324 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



August 



'the EDITOR'S answers'^ 



^ 



J 



When stamp is enclosed, this editor will answer questions by mail. Since 

 we have far more questions than we can print in the space available, several 

 months sometimes elapse before answers appear. 



Selling Queens 



Suppose I have been rearing queens of fine 

 quality for my own apiary and would like to 

 sell the queens by advertising, what are the 

 requirements of the law which I have to ob- 

 serve in selling and shipping queens? 



ILLINOIS. 



Answer. — The requirements for this State 

 are that you should have your apiary inspected, 

 to make sure that you have no foulbrood. A. 

 L. Kildow, Putnam, 111., is the Chief Inspector 

 just now. He will either send a deputy or 

 come himself, and it will cost you nothing. 



In addition, if you use honey to make the 

 candy for the shipping cages, you should boil 

 that honey for a half hour, and a certificate to 

 that effect must be put upon the cage contain- 

 ing the bees. This, with a certificate that 

 your apiary has been inspected, will be suffi- 

 cient, we believe, to enable you to send queens 

 anywhere. Such certificates are printed on 

 address tags for mailing purposes. 



Royal Jelly 



I would like to know where royal jelly can 

 be found in a beehive. WISCONSIN. 



Answer. ^ — ^In every cell that has young larv* 

 or "worms" of the bees less than 3 days old. 

 Buy some text book and read it. You cannot 

 keep bees successfully unless you Lre posted. 



Honey Vinegar — Sweet Clover 



1. Would you please advise me the propor- 

 tion of honey and water to use, or give me the 

 formula to make vinegar out of honey? 



2. I will also be in the market for some an- 

 nual sweet clover, but think it's too late to 

 plant it this spring, and would like to know 

 if I can plant it in the fall, like you do alfalfa. 



MISSOURI. 



Answers. — 1. About a pound and a half of 

 honey, with enough water to make a gallon of 

 liqi»fd, the honey had best be heated first, to 

 kill all germs. Then add to the liquid a little 

 yeast. Fruit juice is as good as the best yeast. 

 The liquid should be just warm when the fer- 

 ment is added. Keep the solution at a suitable 

 degree of heat to sustain fermentation, any- 

 where between 70 and 100 degrees. 



Alcohol fermentation takes place first, but 

 if the air is not excluded, the acetic or vinegar 

 fermentation soon sets in. The more air you 

 give, the quicker will be the change. 



2. Annual sweet clover has been very high 

 in price, about $1 an ounce. As many people 

 are cultivating it, it will probably be much 

 cheaper next spring. Sow it early, about the 

 time when oats are sowed. 



Races Compared — Requeening 



1. (-'ompare the goldens and Ihrtc-banded 

 Italian and Cyprian bees in regard to resistance 

 to European foulbrood. 



2. In Langs troth on the Honeybee, revised 

 by Dadant, is not Dr. Miller quoted as saying 

 he always left requeening to the bees? Is this 

 a fact? KANSAS. 



Answers. — 1. I do not know for certain, for 

 we have not had any Cyprian bees for years, 

 but I believe either of those three varieties 

 would be equally resistant to European foul- 

 brood. However, it is best to be on the look- 

 out and treat the uccs promptly when disease 

 is found. 



8. No, but 1 don't believe Dr. Miller ever 



practiced requeening, except in cases where the 

 queen was inferior. I have just looked through 

 his "Fifty Years" and cannot find any mention 

 of it. However, it is a good plan to requeen 

 when the queen is fully two years old. Queens 

 of less than a year will lay less drone eggs 

 than older ones. 



Entrance — Foulbrood 



1. How wide should the entrance be on a 

 hive when wintering bees in the cellar? 



2. Would it be safe to use frames for ex- 

 tracting ho'ney when the frames have been 

 used for the same, but the frames in the brood- 

 chamber have had foulbrood, that is put them 

 on when a good honey flow is on? 



3. Would it be a good plan to paint a hive 

 inside, where foulbrood has been? 



WISCONSIN. 

 Answers. — 1. Have the entrance as wide as 

 possible. We even raise the hive a little from 

 the bottom-board, so they may have plenty of 

 air. 



2. No, don't use any combs, or frames, or 

 hives that have foulbrood. Melt up the combs, 

 scald the frames, singe the hives. You cannot 

 be too careful. Most people boil the frames in 

 lye water for half an hour. 



3. It is a good plan to paint the hive inside. 

 But a still better plan is to singe it with a 

 blow torch such as tinners use. If you know 

 of a tinner you may be able to borrow his blow 

 torch If not, buy one. 



Extracting Granulated Honey 



Please tell me how to extract granulated 

 honey from super extracting frames. I put my 

 supers back on the hives last fall, after ex- 

 tracting, for the bees to clean and repair; the 

 honey was very thick; it was about impossible 

 to extract it, and the comb was left very rag- 

 ged. This was after heavy killing frosts, and I 

 thought no more honey could be stored; but I 

 found some of the frames nicely filled, capped 

 and granulated. 



I have read somewhere that if a super of 

 granulated honey be put below the brood- 

 chamber that the bees will transfer the honey to 

 super above. If I do this, should I make an 

 opening in super for the bees to go in and out 

 from the alighting board? 



I am of the opinion that my best plan is tn 

 cut the honey out of frames and extract it 

 over the fire, and rewire and put new founda- 

 tion in. MONTANA. 



Answer. — If the honey is of a soft granula- 

 tion, the bees will use it whenever they can- 

 not find honey in the fields, but if it is of 

 coarse granulation some of it may be lost in 

 sucking it, as sometimes it -gets so hard that 

 they throw it away. 



You may put the super below the aliRbling 

 board, but it would be better to put il just 

 iinmfd lately below the brood-chamber and on 

 top of the alighting board. If your honey crop 

 is on, you had best delay this until a time when 

 they will be willing to take the honey, say after 

 a rainy day or two. 



Perhaps it will be as economical lo heat the 

 honey and melt it as you propose. But honey 

 which has been heated hot enough to melt the 

 comb usually loses some of its quality. 



ncrease 



foundation below, queen excluder on, with two 

 supers on and rest of brood on top of all; then, 

 when they are well started below, take off the 

 top brood to another stand and introduce queen. 

 Or, if they raise queen-cells in upper brood- 

 chamber, could cut out to one? I use 10-frame 

 Danzenbaker hives. VIRGINIA. 



Answer. — 1. I don't believe we can count on 

 making increase zinthout detriment to honey 

 storing, unless we make the increase when there 

 is no longer any need of increase in the num- 

 ber of workers, or, in other words, unless the 

 swarm thus made comes when it is too late for 

 the first crop and may be produced in time to 

 secure the winter stores from a second crop. 

 All this depends upon the season and the 

 locality. If you manage to have two colonies, 

 instead of one, for a late crop, you may even 

 harvest more honey, upon the whole, than if 

 you had kept the colony single. 



So the thing to do is to figure out, from your 

 locality conditions, at what time the first crop 

 is to end and the second crop to begin, and 

 act accordingly. But, as a rule, increase in 

 colonies decreases the possibilities of honey 

 storage, for we cannot eat our cake and have it 

 left. 



Drone Layer 



I have a large colony of bees which shows 

 raised sealed cells in plenty Does this not 

 designate laying worker bees? Am unable to 

 find a queen. The colony is very strong. 



WISCONSIN. 



Answer. — If those raised sealed cells are laid 

 close together in a regular way, then it may be 

 a young unmated queen that is laying. But if 

 they are irregular, here and there, your sur- 

 mise is probably correct and there may be a 

 lot of drone-laying workers. At any rate, this 

 colony is worthless until you give it a fertile 

 queen. It will probably weaken down to a 

 small number of bees soon, as there are no 

 worker bees hatching. They get old fast, when 

 spring opens. 



I wish to run my bees this sca&un for in- 

 crepse without detriment to honey-storing. 

 Would llu' fnllnwinfi plan be all right: 



One frame with queen and nine full sheets of 



Robbing, Increase, Etc. 



1. How can one stop robbing after it has be- 

 gun in an apiary? 



2. Can a queen be introduced successfully 

 on a couple of frames of brood in the top story 

 of a 2-story hive, if the two hive bodies are 

 separated by a queen excluder? 



I would like to introduce a queen in this 

 manner and then divide the colony after the 

 top story is filled with brood. I intend to 

 leave the old queen in the bottom story. 



3. How does Nebraska compare with other 

 States in honey production? NEBRASKA. 



Answers. — 1. There are many ways to stop 

 robbing, none is always successful. The best 

 way. if you can find the irobbing colony, is to 

 substitute it for the robbed colony, exchanging 

 their locations for one another. You may also 

 put the robbed colony in the cellar for 2 or 3 

 days. That does not always succeed. If you 

 can notice when robbing begins, you may often 

 be able to stop it by throwing loose grass on 

 the entrance of the irobbed colony, so that the 

 rohlicrs have some difficulty in getting through. 

 The bees of the robbed colony station them- 

 selves in this grass and grab thtm as they 

 try to enter. But the very best way is to pre- 

 vent robbing from beginning by keeping strong 

 colonies and exposing no sweets where bees 

 can be spoiled by getting a chance to roh. 



2. I never tried this. It may succeed, but 

 I would much prefer to- make the division at 

 the time when the queen is introduced. 



a. Nebraska is like most all other States. 

 There are excellent spots and poor ones. 



Queen Rearing 



1. I have started in beekeeping witli the 10- 

 framc hive and am thinking of changing to the 

 12-frame size, as a swarm preventative. I have 



