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GLEANINGSIN BEE CULTURE. 



Mar. 15. 



Critic Taylor comes up smiling in Review 

 with a new argument in favor of boiling foul- 

 broody honey only 15 minutes. The specific 

 gravity of honey is nearly a half more than 

 that of water, hence when you boil honey you 

 make it a lot hotter than 212°. I don't know 

 the proper reply to that, so I've taken to the 

 fence, and am looking for a soft spot to alight 

 Inside Bro. Taylor. Gather up your duds, Er- 

 nest, and come along. But I wish some one 

 would tell us just how hot boiling honey is. 

 [See editorials.— Ed.] 



Editor Hutchinson and C. P. Dadant are 

 at loggerheads as to the expense of queens in 

 -pring. One says they are the least expensive 

 part of a colony, the other says they are the 

 most expensive part. Hutchinson says when 

 bees swarm they build a lot of queen-cells, 

 and " the building of these cells and the feed- 

 ing of the embryo queens cost the bees some 

 labor, and that is all that queens cost the reg- 

 ular honey-producer." That wouldn't make 

 them cost 10 cts. each ; but getting them fer- 

 tilized and keeping them through till spring 

 will make them cost £0 cts. more. 



A hedge OF EVERGREENS is a fine thing to 

 slow up the wind in winter, but you must re- 

 member that it will also slow up a breeze in 

 summer, so that, with a dense hedge on east 

 and west side, combs may melt down in a hive 

 in dense shade. [Yes, it is true that, while 

 evergreens make most excellent windbreaks, 

 they produce almost a dead calm under a hot 

 pouring sun in summer. Our apiarists have 

 often complained about its being so " dread- 

 fully hot " in our apiary in the summer, and I 

 suppose it is because of those same evergreens 

 that are so useful in winter but so useless in 

 summer. — Ed.] 



I'm ashamed to say I had forgotten that 

 Cheshire gives what is probably the true cause 

 of the blackening of brood combs, that is the 

 residua of the bowels being " plastered outside 

 the exuvium, within the cell-wall." As to 

 darkening in supers. J. E. Crane is sound, and 

 we may as well dismiss the dirty-foot business 

 entirely. But I do think that bees add dark 

 material to the outside of white cappings when 

 left long enough. [I believe that Crane and 

 Cheshire are, on the whole, correct, although 

 I am inclined to the opinion that propolis has 

 probably as much or more to do with discolor- 

 ing honey than pollen. — Ed ] 



I'd like To SEE Doolittle use tin separators 

 20 years without cleaning, where I live. He'd 

 have to enlarge his supers. [Yes, yes. Dr. 

 Miller, if my memory serve me correctly, has 

 more real propolis to the square foot than 

 Doolittle has to the square yard. My compar- 

 ison may not be accurate, but I know there is 

 a vast difference. In the State of New York, 

 fixed or self-spacing frames are used very large- 

 ly ; in Illinois, very sparingly, at least in the 

 northern part of the State. There can be no 

 question but that, in this matter, locality does 

 have a great deal to do with one's ideas and 

 real practice. — Ed.] 



Some may have a misunderstanding from 

 the statement, p. 176, that Ontario has propor- 

 tionately less foul brood than any other coun- 



try. Foul brood has just started in Belgium, 

 if I am rightly informed, and I think there 

 are countries where foul brood is unknown to 

 bee-keepers. [I hope there are many coun- 

 tries and States where foul brood is unknown. 

 It begins to look as if, next season, there 

 would be a good demand for bees, owing to 

 the fact that there will be rather heavier win- 

 ter losses this year than last. Sending bees in 

 the form of nuclei is very liable to carry foul 

 brood, if those nuclei come from a locality 

 that has been or is infected with the disease. 

 —Ed.] 



"The sides of the cells are porous, also 

 the cappings," says James Cormac, page 180. 

 Brood-cappings are porous, cappings of honey 

 less so, Cheshire finding about one cell in 16 

 not porous; but he found no porosity whatever 

 in the walls of cells. [I think we may safely 

 say that the cappings of both brood-cells and 

 honey-cells are porous. One does not need to 

 consult any authority to prove that; but if one 

 will take a strong glass, and inspect the sides 

 of honey or brood cells he will see that they 

 seem to be more dense, and are probably im- 

 pervious to air. We know that honey ripens 

 somewhat after it is capped over, and there is 

 no way it could ripen unless the cappings were 

 porous. — Ed.] 



" BEST thing in the line of an interview I 

 ever heard from a bee-paper," said my auditor 

 when I finished reading the Root-Crane inter- 

 view, p, 169. [The Crane part of it was all 

 right. Some little time ago, when I had that 

 little chat (interview) with Chalon Fowls and 

 H. R. Boardman, I regretted that we did not 

 have our stenographer on hand to take down 

 in permanent form the valuable suggestions 

 that were thrown out. It is my purpose to in- 

 troduce this feature in the future as often as 

 conditions will permit ; so that those of our 

 bee-keeping friends who come here must not 

 be surprised if they are put through a course 

 of questions — not so much to see how much 

 they know, but to pump out of their wells of 

 knowledge as much as they are willing to 

 give. — Ed.] 



" Your choice for 16 cts.," marked over a 

 dozen sections (p. 168) will work all right if 

 sections weigh alike ; but if there's a differ- 

 ence of several ounces between the heaviest 

 and lightest, won't the last go a little slow? 

 [Mr. S. A. Niver, who is an advocate of sell- 

 ing honey by the piece, grades his honey, if I 

 am not mistaken, both by appearance and 

 weight. I think that he told me he could 

 gauge his honey to the half -ounce by merely 

 picking it up and looking at it and setting it 

 in its proper grade. That takes practice. 

 When honey is sold by the piece, every sec- 

 tion box is very nearly an average of every 

 other one in that same case; if it is not, then 

 the customer will soon demand to buy by 

 weight. I do not remember whether Mr. Ni- 

 ver is the one or not; but some one has cases 

 of full-weight fancies and light weight ; also 

 full cases of full weight No. 1 and light weight 

 No. 1, and so on. The light weights are sold 

 to one set of customers, and the heavy weights 

 to another. — Ed.J 



