088 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Sept. 



seen queens lay three eggs a minute ; and 

 yet if she lays two a miimte, at lliis rate she 

 will lay very close on to JiOOO eggs in 24 hours. 

 You say that she does not keep this rate up. 

 Opening the hive and exiiosing tlie queen 

 and frame to the light is apt to bieak up the 

 normal condition of affairs. Were the hive 

 closed, a good fertile (jueen on a frame of 

 foundation nearly drawn out ought to be 

 able to 1111 the frame nearly full in a day ; at 

 least, we have had queens do it repeatedly. 

 Bear in mind, that we are talking about 

 what queens can lay, not the daily average 

 number per day. 



^ I ^ 



UNFINISHED SECTIONS, ETC. 



WHAT TO Df) WirU THEM. 



TN I'csponse to Bro. Stewart, on page 054, I will 

 j^ say that there are two ways to handle unfln- 

 ^l ished sections of honey. They may be finished 

 '*■ by feeding- back extracted honey; but most or 

 all who have tried this plan have abandoned it. 

 Our method has been as follows: All combs that 

 are not sufHciently filled and sealed to make a fine 

 appearance on the market, we place in a frame (six 

 at a time), and after uncapping the pai't that is 

 EGaled we sling- out the honey which is particularly 

 clean, and place them in storing-cases, to be placed 

 on the hives during the most excessive flow of the 

 following season, when the bees can not build 

 comb fast enough to hold the nectar they can easily 

 gather. 



Now about the "bulging" of the combs in these 

 replaced sections. We have suUered this inconven- 

 ience, and know the cause and prevention. When 

 you are re-casing the sections of combs, combs of 

 various stages of development, never put thin and 

 thick combs next to each other; neither put the 

 fuller side of one section next to the shallower side 

 of another. Put full sides together, and shallow 

 sides together, and only such sections in any one 

 I'ow as are about equal in comb growth. This is 

 the way we handled the few bulged sections that 

 were left unfinished. With these precautions, bulg- 

 ing is made straighter, rather than crooked, the 

 second year. 



We have never had any trouble with pollen get- 

 ting into the sections because of "contracting," 

 and we have practiced it five years, and are quite 

 sure that we shall continue its«practice as long as 

 we produce surplus honey. We are sure we have 

 abundance of pollen here. No, we have never no- 

 ticed that "reversing" combs tended to the depos- 

 iting of bee-broad in the sections. During the past 

 three years we have had in use from a few to as 

 many as 6000 reversible frames, and have never yet 

 been able to discover any objection to them, but 

 many advantages instead. We never expect to use 

 other than invertible combs. 



We have never yet had a cell of brood "chill" 

 when practicing our method of preventing after- 

 swarms, and can not see how any can become 

 chilled if my dii-ections are followed. 



Now, friend Root, 1 consider it my diUy to offer a 

 public protest against the article in last issue, pages 

 ti51-'2, signed E. Kretchmer, wherein he again lays 

 claim to one of the prominent functions of my new 

 hive, patented last Sept.; viz., the use of a brood- 

 chamber divided in two horizontal parts. You will 

 recollect, that, on page 211, Mr. K. claimed to have a 



patent. No. 07,123, that antedated my invention, and 

 that co])ies of that patent showed that claim to be 

 untrue, as not a single function of my hive was 

 therein shown. I claim this and the use of half- 

 bee-spaccs as prominent parts and parcels of my 

 invention, and hereby respectfully ask all brother 

 bee-keepers to I'cspcct mj' rights in them. 

 Dowagiac, Mich., Aug., 1886. James Heddon. 



Friend II., our answer to friend Hutchin- 

 son covers partly what you say in your last 

 paragraph. We published friend Iv.'s arti- 

 cle because it seemed to suggest or call at- 

 tention to something of value. Very likely 

 it would have been better to omit the last 

 paragraph of friend K.'s article to which 

 you allude. I do not believe it is best to 

 discuss the question of rights again on tliese 

 pages. 



THE WAX QUESTION, AGAIN. 



ARE THERE ANY MISSING LINKS IN HASTV'S EX- 

 PERIMENTS, AS RECORDED ON P. 641? 



WAS very much interested in reading friend 

 Hasty's article on the wax question, but it still 

 seems to me that there are some " missing 

 links" in the really wonderful chain of evi- 

 dence and experiments that he has con- 

 sti-ucted. 



In the first place, how did he ascertain that the 

 swarm, when first hived, had no wax secreted? He 

 Si'ij's that he thinks they did not have any. Bee- 

 keepers have generally supposed that a colony be- 

 fore swarming always begins seci-eting or forming- 

 wax, or, at least, that a swarm after issuing is pro- 

 vided with quantities of wax scales. If this be true, 

 then how can friend H. estimate the amount of 

 nectar used to form thiK wax? and, also, what pro- 

 portion of the wa.Y stoi-ed during the days of test- 

 ing was already secreted when the swarm was 

 hived? 



Again, on account of the bees being in a waxse- 

 creting condition (allow me to use such a phrase), 

 would they be obliged to draw as heavily upon the 

 nectar already stored, for this secretion, as would 

 an older swarm, just beginning to form comb, as in 

 working in section boxes? He writes, that a col- 

 ony rearing brood will consume about seven ounces 

 only, during a night. If this is the case, what be- 

 comes of the large amount of honey that a swarm 

 of bees contains when the bees leave the parent 

 hive? We all know that the bees gorge themselves 

 before swarming, and I have hived such swarms 

 (which I should judge had fully 2 lbs. of honey in 

 their sacks) after they had been clustered about an 

 hour, and then they did not have much if any hon- 

 ey, and they took nearly 2 lbs. of honey from a feed- 

 er, immediately after I had hived them, and this be- 

 fore they had any combs built in which to store this 

 feed. Now, what had become of their first load? 

 They could not have eaten it all simply to satisfy 

 hunger. I have seen bees from new swarms return 

 from the fields with a load of honey, and also with 

 wax scales adhering to them. Who can say but 

 that this wax was secreted while the bees were at 

 work in the fields? and how can we get at the 

 amount of nectar required to form it? It seems to 

 me, that, in order to get exactly at this question, as 

 Mr. Hasty would desire, we have got to pursue a 

 diftereat line of investigation, and have tiH points 

 tally more correctly than they seem to in his article. 



