120 



GLEANINGSOIN BEEoCULTURE. 



Feb'13. 



honey was coming in, while a look at the sur- 

 plus showed very few but Italian bees at work 

 there; this also showing that no field-worker 

 ever deposits its load of nectar in the cells in 

 the surplus-apartment. Yes, you are familiar 

 with that. Well, how do you account for Bro. 

 Pettit's success ? What! " don't know "? Sup- 

 pose we admit that the raising of the hive (as 

 he tells us about), for the time being, retards 

 the bees from entering the sections till the col- 

 ony gets strong enough, or till some hot wave 

 comes along, then they go in and " possess the 

 land" en masse. This puts his bees in the same 

 shape that Manum keeps his, and in just the 

 shape all colonies should be in to build and com- 

 plete perfect comb honey in sections. If we 

 have, as a multitude of bee-keepers, erred in 

 any one direction, I believe that to have been 

 in the direction of trying to "stretch " our bees 

 out too much, and in this way have received, 

 as pay, imperfect combs of honey, together with 

 thousands of unfinished sections in the fall. 



Now, doctor, in letting your crippled, dehorn- 

 ed frame crawl out of that Gleanings arena, 

 let me turn your face toward Bro. Ernest Root. 

 What! scent the thing at once ? Oh, yes! I see 

 you do! Yes, that's it exactly! When that 

 comb foundation with ^^-inch side-walls comes 

 out, all of this trouble, worry, fussing, and 

 locking-of-horns-in-the-arena matter will be at 

 an end. Then we can use strips only an inch 

 or two wide, and they will not turn, twist, or 

 be eaten full of holes by the bees, or use tall or 

 square, plump or lean sections; while if we fill 

 the sections full we can secure as much section 

 honey as we now do extracted. 



And now as we agree again, or agree to dis- 

 agree, at the worst, you just say to E. R. R., as 

 you leave the arena, that the price of that ^g'- 

 inch side-wall foundation must not be very 

 much above the square-foot price of the ordi- 

 nary thin foundation, or the arena will be full 

 of blood and fur, from the many disappointed 

 gladiators who will fight over the price. 



Borodino, N. Y. 



[From the very beginning we have constant- 

 ly kept in mind that the new deep-cell-wall 

 foundation should be sold at a price not very 

 much in advance per square foot of the ordi- 

 nary thin foundation; and while we shall not 

 probably be able to realize that point this year, 

 owing to the great expense in experimenting, 

 in making hydraulic presses, dies, etc., we 

 hope to be able to do it next year. The price 

 of any commodity must not exceed what con- 

 sumers can afford to pay. If for instance, the 

 new deep-cell foundation costs three or four 

 times as much as the ordinary foundation, bee- 

 keepers would not buy it, and consequently it 

 couid hardly be called a practical success — see 

 editorials.— Ed.] 



REASONS FOR THE TWO-STARTER PLAN ; DR. 

 MILLER WHACKS BACK. 



So the editor would like j[to see Dr. Miller 

 and Doolittle lock horns." Naughty editor! 

 Would like to get two little boys into a fight! 



Well, I don't know any fairer man to fight with 

 than Doolittle; and whether he comes oflf vic- 

 tor or vanquished, he's always good-natured 

 afterward. 



It looks a little as if my " Straw " on page 884 

 was written in reply to the article on page 861; 

 whereas it was written a week or two before I 

 saw page 861. For some reason a good deal has 

 been said lately about the matter of having 

 sections built to separators. Whether my the- 

 ory is correct or not, the fact remains that for- 

 merly I had no little trouble of the kind, and 

 latterly no trouble of the same kind. That is, 

 formerly a section was often built to the sepa- 

 rator at the central part of the lower edge of the 

 foundation, and in the few instances that now 

 occur it is at one side, and comes from careless 

 work failing to fasten one end of the starter to 

 the top-bar of the section. 



Friend Doolittle says, "The greatest cause 

 for attaching combs to the separators lies in 

 not having the hives stand level." When I 

 read that I said to myself, " Doolittle's off ; for 

 a hive would have to be a long way out of level 

 to bring the foundation within ;V of the separa- 

 tor." Then I went to figuring, and was sur- 

 prised as well as somewhat humiliated to find 

 that, with sections 1% wide on an eight-frame 

 hive, and starters coming down to within J^ in. 

 of the bottom, one side of the hive would need 

 to be only a little more than 2 in. higher than 

 the other to make the bottom of the starter 

 come within ^^ of the separator. Now, it's easy 

 to say that hives are not likely to be so far out 

 of level as that; but one who has always done 

 his leveling by the eye might be quite surprised 

 on applying the spirit-level to find how far out 

 of true his hives are; and I'm afraid there are 

 a good many hives, especially on a hillside, that 

 have one side nearly or quite two inches higher 

 than the other. 



But in my own experience, leveling the hive 

 and obviating all the difficulties Doolittle men- 

 tions would still have left 19 cases out of 20 un- 

 remedied; for the hives were leveled with a 

 spirit-level, full sheets of foundation were cor- 

 rectly put in, the sections were not put on until 

 the harvest was ready and the colonies were 

 fairly strong, and still the centra' part of the 

 starter was attached at the lower edge to the 

 separator. I think the trouble was that the 

 honey-flow was not sufficiently strong, and per- 

 haps that would come under the head Doolittle 

 gives as putting on sections too early. Still, if 

 I had waited till the trouble was over I would 

 not have put sections on at all; and as it was, I 

 got something of a crop. 



The trouble came very much as Doolittle de- 

 scribes it, only, instead of curling at the sides, 

 it was the central part of the lower edge of the 

 foundation that reached the separator. If I re- 

 member correctly. The honey came in so slow- 

 ly that, instead of being put all over, it was put 



