•■fo'BE.E._ _ 

 •ANbHoNEY- 

 •AND HOME, 



uBijiHEo BY (^l -rCo T* 



Vol. XIX. 



OCTOBER 15, 1891. 



No. 20. 



Stray Straws 



FROM DR. C. C. MILLER. 



Shake hands with me at Albany. 



J. F. McIntyke can go to the head with that 

 nncleus record on page 761. 



Sunday seems to be the favorite day for bee- 

 conventions among the Germans. 



Good honey sliould be a little more than a 

 third heavier than water. 



Appi.es are very plentiful in my neighbor- 

 hood this year. Bad for bees. Cider-mills. 



Cover a bup.n with what the grocery men 

 call wa.xed paper, such as they cover over butter. 



For' scraping sections I formerly believed 

 a dull knife was best. I have come to believe 

 a sharp one is better. 



Sixteen Thousand, or at the most twenty 

 thousand, is the limit of the number of bees in 

 a swarm, according to Cheshire. 



Winter casp;s, costing 2 cents per hive, are 

 made by A. N. Draper {A. B. K.), of lath, tar- 

 red twine, and forest-leaves. 



A r?:mei)y for stings, given in Leipzicjer 

 Bienenzeititng , is to cut an onion in two and 

 apply the cut surface to the part stung. 



Charles Dadant, in JRevue InternnUonale, 

 says that the United States stand at the head 

 in apiculture among all nations, because of the 

 study of bee- books. 



This country stands at the foot in the mat- 

 ter of bee-keepers' societies. We might learn 

 something from other nations which leave us 

 clear out of sight in numbers. 



My Punic queens were taken to the Wilson 

 apiary. When I told Mary Wilson I had 

 brought two Punic queens, she very innocently 

 asked, "Why do you bring puny queens here?'' 



"Piping," Cheshire says, "is certainly not 

 produced by the wings, since queens clipped 

 so vigorously that not a vestige of wing remains 

 can be as noisy as others." 



Bees fly GO to 100 miles an hour under fa- 

 vorable circumstances, D. A. Jones thinks. M. 

 Teynac. when using bees as carriers, found a 

 loaded be(^ to make 3 miles in 1.5 or 20 minutes. 



A meliuot stalk, that I found growing in a 

 clay bank on the roadside, measured 10 feet 4 

 inches in height. I can easily believe that a 

 few years' growth of such plants in clay land 

 would make it quite fertile. 



Record-books have one advantage that is 

 not to be despised. They are safe against the 

 meddling of other people, animals, or winds. 

 One year I had manilla tags on all my hives. 

 Some person or thing, I never knew what, tore 



off nearly every one. If my only records had 

 been on them it would have left me in bad 

 shape. 



To FASTEN COMBS iu frames when trans- 

 ferring, Doolittle says in A. B. J., punch holes 

 with an awl through top, bottom, and end bars, 

 and then push wire nails through the holes into 

 the comb. Leave the nails permanently if you 

 like. 



Honey candy. Take one pint of sugar, with 

 water enough to dis,solve it, and four table- 

 spoonfuls of honey. Boil until it becomes brit- 

 tle on being dropped into cold water. Pour off 

 into buttered pans to cool. — Ladies' Home 

 Journal. 



The British Bee Journal still insists vehe- 

 mently against using granulated sugar made 

 from beets, in feeding. I suppose much of it is 

 used on this side. Can't Prof. Cook demon- 

 strate beyond a doubt either that it is or is not 

 poisonous to the bees? 



A PATHETIC LETTER comes to me from a man 

 whose 128 colonies have been nearly ruined by 

 the bees getting into the furnace of a neighbor- 

 ing evaporator. The result is much the same 

 as if poison had been set out for them; but 

 there is redress against the poison and none 

 against the furnace. Ought there not to be? 



Weighing colonies is more satisfactory 

 than hefting them, or guessing at the weight 

 by looking into the hives. With the proper ap- 

 paratus two of us took less than a minute to a 

 hive in weighing. Even when weighing, allow- 

 ance must be made; for in some hives as much 

 as ten pounds must be taken off for extra 

 weight of old combs and bee-bread. 



Robbing bees can be stopped, even when 

 thoroughly under way, by wet straw or hay at 

 entrance. Pile it a foot thick all about the en- 

 trance, and then pour on water till every thing 

 is flooded. Pve tried it a number of years, and 

 this year saved a queenless colony thus, when 

 robbers were at it wholesale. The robbers did 

 not attack it afterward. 



Bees as dispatch-carriers.— A Frenchman, 

 M. Teynac. has been experimenting, and seri- 

 ously considers the advisability of substituting 

 bees for carri<'r pigeons in carrying messages. 

 A tiny piece of paper is pasted on the back of 

 the bee, with a cipher number on it, and, when 

 the bee returns to its hive, it can enter only 

 through I'ound perforations which will not let 

 its paper through, so the message is easily 

 found. 



Swarming was considei'ed a desii'able thing 

 50 years ago. Every year the desire for non- 

 swarming bees increases. If all who are anx- 

 ious for non-swarmers would breed only from 

 those colonies which swarm least, it seems rea- 

 sonable to suppose that some one of the num- 

 ber, in the course of a few years, would strike a 



