• DELVoTED. 



•ANCHoNL^ 

 'ARDHOMEL- 



e^'liltOOr- 

 f^EDiMA Ohio 



Vol. XX. 



FEBRUARY 15, 1892. 



No. 4. 



Stray Straws 



FROM DR. C. C. MILLER. 



Pi'Xic HKKs arc tluoatciiiiig a libfi suift in 

 England. 



Aij'auoh's t^koket is now ?2. I'd liU<! to 

 know, but— no uso trj'ing. I couldn't kocp it 

 sec rot. 



The IiJ.ixois State society ent(>r<>d an nar- 

 nost in-otest against opening tlio World's Fail' 

 on Sunday. 



Tiihee-sixteenths of an incli is advocated 

 as a bee-spaco by no less anthoiMty tlian J. B. 

 Hall, of Canada. 



That's HKiiiT. Mi'. Editor. Keep A. I. down 

 in Florida and Ciilia till settled warm weather, 

 then lie won't spring dwindle. 



Pkogrkssive Bee-kep:pp:r is the new name 

 oi \\w Missouri Bec-liceper. It can't progress 

 any further in getting up a neat, clear page. 



Now Tii.\T ther<' seems a general tendency 

 toward 4'4x4i4 as a standard section.it seems 

 loo bad to start up 43'.<x4J^2 as a desirable size. 



So it's a few. and not the mass of bee-keep- 

 ers tills side the line that are making trouble 

 with tlie Canadians. T wonder, however, if those 

 few are not the other side the line. 



Fx'iiTMEi! xoirrii. say in Wisconsin, although 

 colder, may bi' a safer jilace for outdoor winter- 

 ing than in Northern Illinois. The greater 

 amount of snow there makes it safer for the 

 bees. 



Bi.ACK HEE8 are best, in the opinion of the 

 White Mountain Apiai-ist. and Italians are 

 being boomed by editors and others. But isn't 

 it a rather long-continued boom. Bro. Ellin- 

 wood ■? 



The two Caxadiaxs, Cornell and Jones, are 

 having a lively tussle over bacillus alvei. Jones 

 says it's in honey. Cornell says "'no." There's 

 lots of grit and ability on both sides. May the 

 truth win. 



Color, in the scale of marking the Italian 

 bee. as adopted by the North American conven- 

 tion, counts 5 in a scale of 1(X). Doesn't it gen- 

 erally count about .50? I think there were 

 some level heads at Albany. 



Ceelarixg has one advantage— greater se- 

 curity against thieves. Two combs have been 

 taken out of one of my outside hives this win- 

 ter, and a Wisconsin bee-keeper has had 13 

 hives of bees stolen within a few years. 



Alfalfa fields don't, one tenth of them, 

 yield honey, according to R. C. Aikiii in a valu- 

 able article in the Review. They're cut for hay 

 before full bloom, and it's only fields left for 

 seed, or scattering plants, that yield the honey. 



Foul Huooi) may or may not be as plentiful 

 as it has be(^n, but it exists in Illinois where its 

 proprietors defy any interference: and if it 

 should break out to-morrow near you. you'd 

 wish a law to meet the case had Ijeen made a 

 year ago. 



Dadant's method of rendeiing old combs, 

 as given at bottom of p. 20, is all right as far as 

 it goe.s— mash 'em up line when cold— but a very 

 important part is left out. 6'offA" in water, and 

 then the broken cocoons can't absorb a good 

 share of the wax. 



Hox. EiKiENE Secok edits the '"bee column" 

 of The Fanner and Breeder, of Cedar Rapids, 

 lie knows enough to make a good editor, besides 

 being president of the Iowa Stat<' Society and 

 of the North American, and a really nice man 

 at the same time. 



I'm glad that bright bee-keeper, Capt. Heth- 

 erington, couldn't stand it to keep in his shell 

 any longer, but had to go to the convention at 

 Albany. But I've never blamed him one bit. 

 I'd rather be a recluse than to run a free tavern 

 with an information-bureau attachment. 



A REE- SPACE— formerly it was ^g" of an inch, 

 now it is scant 3€. But doesn't it make a little 

 difference where it is? Any horizontal space 

 over the bees needs to be less than a perpendic- 

 ular space to one side. Isn't the old ^^ space 

 about right still, between end-bars and end of 

 hive? 



The Guide darkly hints that the life-members 

 of the N. A. B. K. A. expect to have control of 

 the World's Fair e.xhibits. and that outsiders 

 may have trouble getting their traps on show. 

 First I'd heard of it. But say, friend Hill, if 

 that's so. bring on your things; I'll promise to 

 get you in. 



That drlxk on page 8 troubles J. A. Green. 

 I think that drink's all right, Jimmie. The 

 yeast is to make it good. So it is in bread. The 

 effect of a quart, or, for that matter, a gallon of 

 it, after it is "good for use," would be just the 

 same as so much water sweetened with honey. 

 Did you thought it was 'tosticatin'? 



The Dadaxt hive is very popular in France. 

 The apicultural congress at Paris decided to 

 change the size of the frame from l()..5x 10.6 to 

 1.5.7x11.8 inches inside measure. Mr. Dadant, 

 in Revue Internationale, very properly protests 

 against having the name " Dadant frame" ap- 

 plied to any thing so different from what he 

 approvi's. 



Foul brood, where it has been killed out 

 and reappears again, F. Morel-Fredel, in the 

 French Revue, thinks, may have been preserved 

 by wasps, bumble-bees, or hoi'nets, from which 

 the bees are infected anew. lie also thinks the 

 disease may be acquired by sound bees work- 

 ing on flowers which have be<Mi visited by fonl- 

 broodv bees. 



