402 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



October 



little more or less will not nuitter, as 

 the acid is not harmful to the bees. 

 I have found that an empty 22 short 

 cartridge holds 2 Vi grains, s-o four 

 cf these measures will be about right 

 for a pound of sugar. To ms'ke the 

 candy proceed the same as in making 

 honey candy. This home-made in- 

 vert sugar is heavy and thick .-.nd will 

 have to be warmed in order to work 

 into candy. Do not warm to a tem- 

 perature higher than 125 degrees. 

 Put two or three pounds of pulver- 

 ized sugar on the table and pour onto 

 it some of the warmed invert sugir 

 and knead it into a thick, heavy 

 candy. There is no danger of making 

 it too stiff. If it is inclined to be 

 sticky the next day, work in some 

 more powdered sugar. This ic easy 

 to make and will be found even su- 

 perior to honey candy in every re- 

 spect. 



APIARIAN FLORA 



By R. Claustre 



Malope. Malope is a kind of mal- 

 low, annual and very melliferous, 

 blooming in May, June, July, and in 

 October and November. It seems to 

 grow in all sorts of soils, even really 

 bad. From the same spot at the top 

 of the soil, from 2 to 5 stems grow, 

 which may reach 80 to 1.50 cm., ac- 

 cording to the terrain. Each f f thos-i 

 stems bears, every ten centim- ters, .t 

 ramification of different lengths. At 

 the axils of the branches ;ie clus- 

 ters of some ten flowers, which 

 bloom one after the other. On each 

 stem, about five centimeter; apart, 

 at the axil of the leaves, is also a 

 small cluster of flowers. These flow- 

 ers are about of the size of those of 

 the creeping mallow, but with 

 brighter colors. Malope may be sowed 

 advantageously to cover the foot o'l 

 a wall, the leaves being as large as 

 the flat part of a plate. They are of 

 fine green color with the general ap- 

 pearance of those of the creeping 

 mallow, but more rugose and as it' 

 varnished. These leaves wilt and fall 

 when blooming begins. The bloom- 

 ing lasts fully a month, and the pollen 

 is of ash-gray color. This blossom is 

 less visited by the bees when the 

 phacelia blooms. 



The fruit of the malope resembles 

 a crown, which divides into several 

 segments, containing as many seeds; 

 therefore easy to gather. The seed 

 may be sowed in the bushes along 

 roads. The roots are much loss tena- 

 cious than those of the common mal- 

 low; it is therefore not difficult to 

 eradicate it out of the garden in case 

 of dissatisfaction. 



As it is inadvisable to introduce a 

 parasite into your land, be sure to 

 examine the seeds before planting 

 them; a small weevil prey.s upon 

 them. Plant the seeds under a little 

 soil and 20 to 30 centimeters apart. 

 They may be reset easily. 



While phacelia taken from its hab- 

 itat has not undergone any ihange, 

 malope sowed at Aix (Ariege, 

 France) reduced the diametei' of its 

 flowers and almost doubled the sur- 

 face of its leaves. — Gazette apicole. 



CLEANING SECTIONS 



By J. E. Crane 



I am cleaning section honey these 

 days. It might seem rather monot- 

 onous work to he shut up in a close, 

 hot room and work hour after hour 

 ever the sticky sections of honey, but 

 I do not find it so. In fact, I find it 

 quite interesting work, moie fas- 

 cinating even than a new book, for 

 these supers, as they come Ir m the 

 various hives, give me a chance to 

 study the individual characteristics 

 of different colonies of bees. Indeed 

 these supers read like an open book. 



It is as though the farmer', of the 

 town had brought their products to- 

 gether and I was to look them over 

 and be the judge. 



The first super I open I may find 

 that the colony from which it was 

 taken had gnawed away the edges 

 of the foundation in the sections and 

 used it for building the comb, leav- 

 ing it without any attachment at the 

 sides or bottom, and very light. 



The next may have brought up 

 dark bits of wax from the brood- 

 chamber and greatly injured the 

 looks of the comb. Another raay be 

 well filled and white, but the bees 

 that filled it seemed to have little 

 sense of the fitness of things and 

 have stored more or less pollen in 

 these sections. While the ^reat ma- 

 jority of sections may be well filled 

 and look very well, we may iind now 

 and then such as we have mentioned. 



Occasionally we find a super witfi 

 sections having more or less drone 

 brood, but we are not disposed to 

 find much fault with such, for we 

 have shut off the drone comb from 

 the brood chambers as much, as pos- 

 sible. Some colonies seem to use a 

 much larger amount of wax in build- 

 ing their combs than others, for they 

 not only look waxy, but if you cut 

 into them you will find th-jm tough 

 and unsatisfactory. Again we may 

 find supers from hivesi where the 

 bees have a propensity for gathering 

 propolis rather than honey, and wo 

 find every crack and cranny filled 

 with this undesirable material. Not 

 only will the cracks be filled, but the 

 inside of the section too i.= coated 

 with it, and sometimes even h-lf fin- 

 ished comb gets a coating. So firmly 

 will the sections be glued to the su- 

 per that it is exceedingly difficult to 

 loosen them without breaking them. 

 Indeed I have broken several this 

 season in trying to take them from 

 the super. 



There is undoubtedly a great dif- 

 ference in the amount of propolis 

 that bees gather in different sections 

 of the country, but I believe there 

 is a still greater difference in colo- 

 nies in the same yard. We find that 

 while one colony is filling its supers 

 with the finest sections of honey, an- 

 other by its side is storing little but 

 this undesirable propolis. 



It is but human that we .should de- 

 sire to destroy the (luoens from such 

 propolis-gathering colonies and re- 

 queen from colonics that have filled 

 the sections given them with white 

 combs, well attached at the sides and 

 with so little propolis that they look, 



when filled, as white and clean as 

 when first set up. - 



Beekeeping is said to be the po- 

 etry of rural life, and I am r^re one 

 of our greatest joys in beekeeping i's 

 in our ability to change an undesir- 

 able colony, whose work ti/jes not 

 suit us, into one with more lesirable 

 qualities; to destroy the unpiufitable 

 servants and replace with th se that 

 have proved profitable, for v. e have 

 the power of life and death in our 

 hands, over our industrious subjects. 

 And as I sit and clean one section and 

 super after another I wonder if, af- 

 ter all, I am so much better than the 

 Pharaohs and Neros of ancient days, 

 who exalted one subject and be- 

 headed another as they willed. As I 

 muse over the strange world in which 

 we live, a mud wasp dressed in its 

 brightest color alights on my table. 

 I offer it a sip of honey from the 

 point of my knife. It takes it with a 

 relish. I did not know befure that 

 they liked honey. Does it feed its 

 young with honey and pollen? Not 

 at all, for it builds its cells cf mud, 

 and as one is completed it lays a 

 small, pearly egg at the bottom and 

 then fills the cell with spidefs, after 

 il has stung the spiders so as to par- 

 alyze them but not kill them. Then, 

 when the egg hatches it feeds on 

 those spiders — yes, eats them up 

 alive. Hard on the spiders, you say. 

 Yes, but those same spidei's have 

 lived on other live things ;.il their 

 lives. It is tit for tat. "Those who 

 live by the sword shall peri-h by the 

 sword." Why does that motne; wasp 

 gather spiders and only spiOirs fo" 

 her young? How does she know 

 that stinging them will not unfit them 

 for food for her young? Not one 

 mother wasp in a thousand genera- 

 tions has seen one of her offspring. 

 Surely this is a world where we prey 

 on one another. 

 "The falcon preys upon the finch, 



The finch upon the fly; 

 And that a rose may breathe its 

 breath. 



Something must die." 



As I sit cleaning sections, I have 

 time to think and do not find it 

 monotonous. 



INTRODUCING QUEENS 



By E. M. Barteau 



Upon receipt of a queen through 

 the mails, open the hive and remove 

 queen to be replaced. Next remove 

 the new queen from mailing cage, 

 letting her out inside a wirj veil; if 

 you haven't one, let her escape onto a 

 window pane, where she can easily 

 be caught and clipped. This done, 

 put her in a Miller cage without at- 

 tendants. Now take her to tiie hive 

 and place cage lengthwise and rest- 

 ing on top of two frames, that is, so 

 the space between the frames is di- 

 rectly beneath the cage. If the hive 

 has an inner cover, put it on deep 

 side down; or a queen excluder, or 

 Hodgson escape-board can be used; 

 any arrangement which leaves a bee- 

 space over top of cage, allowing the 

 bees free access to it. 



If supers are on the hive, use two 

 excluders, putting the fir.st one on 



