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GIvEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Oct. 15. 



stations give us five-banders ? Have they giv- 

 en us any improvements in bees ? Have all 

 the stations put together done as much "along 

 this Hue " as Doohttle ? Say, what'll you take 

 for a good glossometer? [Doohttle — well, I 

 would make an exception in favor of him. 

 He has already bred light-colored bees and 

 yellow Italians that he says will cap honey as 

 white as blacks. Now tell him to stretch the 

 tongues of those same bees and we will make 

 a glossometer to measure them.— Ed.] 



Herr Gr.wenhorst says that, after hav- 

 ing tried hundreds of cases year after year, 

 vnth half his swarms supplied with starters at 

 the beginning, and full sheets of foundation 

 later, and the other half with full sheets from 

 the start, he is thoroughly convinced that, on 

 the average, they do better to begin with the 

 starters. [Gravenhorst is the editor of the 

 Illustrierte Bienenzeitung (Illustrated Bee- 

 journal) published at Braunschweig, Germany, 

 and a bee-keeper of international reputation. 

 If he sees this I hope he will tell us how he 

 came to this conclusion. If he is right, then 

 a great saving of foundation could be effected. 

 It would be a bad thing for the supply-dealer, 

 but a good thing for the bee-keeper. Let us 

 have the truth, anyhow. — Ed.] 



L. L. Skaggs thinks it a great mistake to 

 suppose that bees do not thin the septum of 

 heavy foundation. He made a quantity of 

 foundation which weighed four .sheets to the 

 pound, and the bees thinned it so that one 

 could hardly tell the difference, when chew- 

 ing it, from natural comb. They used the 

 extra wax to build the cell-walls. — Southland 

 Queen. But it doesn't always work that way. 

 [I do not think it is claimed — at least we have 

 not done so — that the bees never thin the 

 bases of foundation; but I think that, as a 

 general rule, they do not; and we might say 

 they never do if honey is coming in fast; but 

 they almost invariably thin down the walls, 

 but do less of this thinning if honey is com- 

 ing in rapidly. — Ed.] 



P. A. SiOLi says in American Bcc Joui nal, 

 that he thinks the queen has an influence over 

 the morals and manners of the workers. He 

 had some vicious blacks that were lazy, and 

 formed a nucleus from them, giving the nu- 

 cleus an Italian queen, and the blacks of that 

 nucleus at once became gentle and industri- 

 ous. A more marked case came in my expe- 

 rience, in which a queen was killed because 

 her bees were so cross, and the temper of the 

 bees seemed to be changed utterly by a change 

 of queens, and that, too, before the old bees 

 had time to die off. [This question was dis- 

 cussed a few years ago, and the general ver- 

 dict then seemed to be that the queen did 

 seem to have quite a toning-down effect upon 

 the bees of the hives, even though they were 

 not her daughters. — Ed.] 



C. P. Dadant, basing his belief on 25 years' 

 experience with a number of out-apiaries, is 

 emphatic that bees do not work to any advan- 

 tage more than two miles from home. They 

 travel furthest where the country is smooth- 

 est, with no hills to climb or heavy timber to 

 pass. — American Bee Journal. [My limited 



experience goes to show that Dadant is about 

 right. The bees at our basswood orchard are 

 only about a mile and a half in a bee-line 

 from our home apiary; and yet our home bees 

 have never flown to the bass\\»oods, when in 

 bloom. I do not mean to say that the bees 

 have never gone over a mile and a half; but 

 as long as they can get plenty of nectar in 

 short ranges they will not go long distances. 

 If forage is scarce and at long range, bees will, 

 of course, take long flights. All depends up- 

 on locality, character and extent of the honey- 

 flow, and the sources of nectar. — Ed.] 



The old-fashioned plan of raising a hive 

 half an inch or an inch on four blocks during 

 hot weather seems coming again into favor. 

 Some are troubled with the thought that the 

 bees are hindered about getting on the combs, 

 there being no place for them to climb up ex- 

 cept at the four corners. I don't believe it's 

 worth while to worry over the matter so long 

 as the bees don't, and in actual practice you 

 don't find a lot of bees waiting for a climbing- 

 place. [I do not believe that bee-keepers re- 

 alize the advantage there is in having plenty 

 of space under the brood-frames, with a deep 

 entrance, during the honey-flow, when the 

 weather is hot. I am not a prophet nor the 

 son of a prophet, but I believe the time is 

 coming when wide deep entrances will be 

 used exclusively; and I have a feeling that 

 swarn:ing will be verj' materially reduced 

 thereby. Of course, when the honey-flow is 

 over, and robVjing is the order of the day, 

 then it may be advisable to contract the en- 

 trances down. Aside from the trouble of 

 swarming, deep entrances would prevent loaf- 

 ing to a great extent, and to a like extent the 

 melting-down of combs. Keep on talking 

 about and considering the idea, brethren, until 

 bee-keepers begin to ' ' sense ' ' it, as Samantha 

 Allen would say. — Ed.] 



' ' I NEVER SAW a queen pipe yet but there 

 was a decidedly tremulous motion to her 

 wings," quoth ye editor, p. 694. I never saw 

 a horse neigh but there was a decidedly trem- 

 ulous motion to his tail. But cut off the 

 tail and the horse will neigh just as well; 

 and cut off the wings, and the queen will 

 pipe just as well. Frank Cheshire says, page 

 157, Vol. II., speaking of piping, "It is 

 certain that the wings are not concerned 

 in its production, since queens clipped so 

 vigorously that not a vestige of wing re- 

 mains can be as noisy as others." [Cheshire's 

 argument looks like a clincher; and while I 

 am inclined to believe he is right, I should 

 wish to know first whether he was taking 

 hearsay evidence that queens would pipe when 

 both wings are cut off close, or had actually 

 tried the experiment himself. I may have to, 

 but I do not want to give up, that the wings 

 have nothing to do with the matter until I 

 have tried cutting off the wings. If I should 

 go right now into the apiary and do some close 

 wing-clipping I might have to wait days and 

 even months before the queen would pipe be- 

 fore my waiting eyes. But, say, doctor, our 

 Ohio horses do not give a tremulous shake to 

 their tails when they neigh, so I do not see 



