644 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



AUG; 



thing-8, makes me think it possibly worth while to 

 reconsider the question. 



AT WHAT AGE SHOULD BROOD-COMBS BE RENEWED? 



I had laid this upon the shelf as a settled (jues- 

 tion, saying- that I had used combs :i.5 years old, and 

 could see no ditference between bees raised in 

 them and bees raised in new combs. But if, in the 

 course of years, a lining is left In the cells suffi- 

 cient to increase the division wall an eighth of an 

 iiich, may there not have been a ditference in the 

 size of bees raised that would have been noticed by 

 a more careful observer? Not long ago a writer in 

 The Ladies' Home Journal advised, if I remember 

 rig-htly, that brood-combs more than two years old 

 should be renewed. Undoubtedly that is rather 

 wild advice; but in the British Bee Journal for Nov. 

 10, 1887 (and the B. B. J. is not addicted to giving 

 wild advice), occurs the following: " We may fairly 

 suppose that three batches of brood are hatched 

 from the same cells— taking the brood-nest only— 

 in every season. In five years, therefore, we shall 

 have fifteen layei-s of exuvia? in these cells, pro- 

 vided they are not removed by the bees, which ex- 

 perience seems to prove thej' are not. The brood- 

 cells, consequently, are much reduced in size, at 

 this age, and the bees reared will be small in size. 

 We have used the same combs for fifteen years, 

 without a break, when the brood-cells became so 

 diminutive that the bees hatched therefrom were a 

 pigmy race, and the combs were as black as Ere- 

 bus, and pollen-clogged. This was before the days 

 of foundation. With our present advantages we do 

 not think it profitable to use combs longer than 

 four or five years." Dzierzon, in his book, p. 38, 

 says, "The more frequently a comb has been used 

 for breeding, the darker will be its color and the 

 thicker the walls of the cells, the latter becoming 

 more and more narrow and less and less fit for use, 

 so that in time it becomes necessary for the combs 

 to be renewed, although in case of need the bees 

 themselves partly remove the casings, or even pull 

 down the cells entirely." 



Now, I suppose there are a great many like my- 

 self, with combs by the thousand more than four or 

 five years old. We do not want to have the ti-ouble 

 and expense of renewing all these; but if there is 

 any gain in it, we must do it. Although some of 

 these things have somewhat shaken my former 

 views, I confess 1 am anxious not to be convinced 

 that it is necessary to remove combs four or five 

 years old, and will be obliged for any facts that 

 may help to stiffen my faith. 



Looking at the old comb an inch thick, and pull- 

 ing it apart, I find it has a division wall made chief- 

 ly by the successive deposits left by the brood at 

 the bottom of the cell, these deposits in each cell 

 being about a sixteenth of an inch thick. If such 

 addition were made to all parts of the cell-walls, 

 the cells would be each one narrowed about an 

 eighth of an inch, making the cell less than half its 

 usual diameter; and it is easy to believe that bees 

 raised in such cells would be a "pigmy race." In 

 the comb under examination, however, I find that 

 the addition is only at the bottom of the cell— at 

 least, the addition to the side wall is very trifling. 

 Is this the general rule, that, in old comb, the bot- 

 tom of the cell is gradually filled up, but that the 

 diameter of the cells remains practically unchang- 

 ed? If this be the case, then perhaps we may con- 

 clude that the only matter necessary to consider, 

 as combs grow old, is to see that sufficient addition- 



al space is allowed betweeh combs to make up fot 

 their increased thickness. Is any thing furthel' 

 necessary? C. C. Miller. 



Marengo, 111. 



Friend M., I watched anxiously to see you 

 strike one point that has been several tinaes 

 made in this matter of old brood-coml»s. It 

 is this : Even if the bees are a little smaller 

 when first hatched, in a few days they re- 

 gain tlieir usual size, and I do not believe 1 

 ever saw a colony of bees where the size of 

 the workers was diminished in the least by 

 old combs. Tliere are some queens that pro- 

 duce large-sized bees, and some that produce 

 small-sized bees ; but I do not believe that 

 changing brood-combs would make any dif- 

 ference eitlier one way or the other. In the 

 same way, raising worker-bees in drone- 

 comb does not make tiieni permanently 

 larger. We have combs in our apiary that 

 have been in use certainly 15 years, and I 

 do not believe I would make the years they 

 have been in use decide about melting them 

 up ; but I would melt them up whenever it 

 seems as if new ones would be enough better 

 to pay for the exchange. A great many of 

 our combs were taken from box hives when 

 transferring. Very few transferred combs 

 furnish the nmnber of cells that we get from 

 a comb of wired foundation. On this ac- 

 count we have been melting up our worst 

 combs more or less for several years. Since 

 the advent of foul brood we have made quite 

 a change in the way of getting nice new 

 combs built from new foinidation in place of 

 our old ones. So you see tliat foul brood in 

 an apiary works a reform something like 

 fire in a "town composed of old buildings. 

 The fire accom])lislies that which might 

 never have been done without. Still, we do 

 not need to be anxious to see foul brood nor 

 fires either. 



BEES ATTACKING AND INJURING 

 FRUIT. 



THE EXPERIENCE OF ONE WHO KEEPS BOTH BEES 

 AND FRUIT. 



T BELIEVE that it has been generally considered 

 (^ that bees do not injure fruit; but, otherwise, 

 ^t that they are really an advantage, in the way 

 '*' of helping to fertilize the blossoms. Whether 

 they are any help in this way, I am unable to 

 say; but I can say positively that I know that they 

 at times do great damage to fruit. For the past 

 two years I have had considerable trouble with my 

 own bees, for the most part damaging both straw- 

 berries and red raspberries. Toward the latter part 

 of the strawberry season they apparently began on 

 the overripe berries fli-st, which had been left by 

 the pickers, and then they would take to the good 

 berries until they were a real nuisance. Even after 

 the berries were picked they had to be protected in 

 the crates in order to keep the bees from them; 

 and if any crack or crevice were left, top or bottom, 

 they were sure to find it and work their way in. 



With the red raspberries they were a gi-eat deal 

 more troublesome than with the strawberries, be- 

 ginning on the first ripe berries and keeping up 

 their depredations to the very last. In the best of 

 the season (or would have been the best if it had 

 not been for the bees), scarcely a sound berry could 



