DEVOTE! 



•ANDHoNEY , 



•AND riOMEL- & 

 • INTERESTS 





PublishedbyTHEA-I^OoY Co. 



$.i°° per Yea(0""\© "Medina-Ohio • 



Vol. XXVII. 



SEPT. i, 1899. 



No. 17. 



I don't know of any way in which a bee- 

 keeper can get more comfort out of ten cents 

 than to spend it for a pound of saltpeter, put 

 that in two or three quarts of water, wring rags 

 out of it, dry them, and cut them up into 

 pieces of 20 to 50 square inches, to be tied up 

 into little rolls to start his smoker. 



If it's right ever to bear the market, sure- 

 ly it is when the market is as bare as now. 

 There's no sort of justice in commission men 

 prejudicing the market by starting out with 

 prices that fit a year or so ago. Prices in 

 general are advancing, and a short crop 

 doubles the reason for an advance. Those 

 commission men and dealers who have put up 

 their figures are showing sense. [Yes, and 

 common cents too. — Ed.] 



Henry Alley says: "Remove the queen 

 from a hive, and the bees will in no case start 

 a cell-cup around an egg, but always select a 

 ■ larva two or more days old. " The only ex- 

 ception I have known is when eggs only are 

 present. I formerly thought they would wait 

 in that case till the eggs hatched out, but this 

 summer I saw at least one case in which a 

 cup was plainly formed about an egg, nothing 

 but eggs being present. 



Regarding that queen about which you 

 inquire, Mr. Editor, p. 603, her bees have fill- 

 ed 132 sections, and have a few pegs driven 

 in a fresh super. She's two years old, winter- 

 ed well, good-natured, but she's a hybrid. 

 Spoils her as a reliable breeder; but if she 

 holds her present record I'll breed from her 

 for all that. [A hybrid would not do for a 

 breeder. Her stock would run all the way 

 from almost black to quite yellow bees. That 

 is, I mean that the bees of her daughters 

 would show such variation. — Ed.] 



Speaking of measuring with a micrometer, 

 you say cells vary, and ask, " How are we go- 

 ing to prove any thing by measuring ? ' ' That's 

 easy. Take a piece of treshly built comb, and 

 another of 25 years, each measuring the same 



number of cells to the inch, and the difference 

 in diameters will exactly measure what 25 

 years' use has done. See? [Y-e-s. At all 

 events, send on your 25-year-old comb, and I 

 will try to give you within the ten-thousandth 

 of an inch the difference in measurement 

 found. — Ed.] 



In a former number I referred to J. J. 

 Cosby's way of using the Doolittle plan of 

 queen-rearing, p. 303, and feared in-breeding 

 by using the same mother for drones and 

 queens. I thank F. L. Thompson for calling 

 attention, in Progressive Bee-keeper, to my 

 error. A more careful reading shows that Mr. 

 Cosby has drones reared by the queen of the 

 hive in which the cells are stored, the larvae 

 for queen-cells coming from elsewhere. His 

 plan of having a best queen in his store-hive, 

 and furnishing hybrid brood from elsewhere, 

 is fine. 



Editor Hutchinson says his bees don't do 

 as mine do. His start all cells at nearly the 

 same time, and so nearly of an age that they 

 emerge from the cells within the same two 

 days. As he's a queen-breeder and I'm not, 

 that shook iny confidence in my own observa- 

 tions. But that veteran queen-breeder, Henry 

 Alley, who has reared many more queens than 

 both of us put together, says I'm right. He 

 says: " When I have removed a queen from a 

 colony for the purpose of introducing another, 

 I find, after waiting three days, cells nearly 

 ready to cap, while there are others just start- 

 ed." 



Decidedly, I like those organ-key springs 

 to squeeze together sections in super. Please 

 tell us who conceived such a bright thought. 

 [Those super-springs, as you found them in 

 the supers, were devised by Mr. Fr. Danzen- 

 baker. He got the principle, I believe, from 

 Mr. M. H. Mendleson, of California, who uses 

 a flat steel spring. It is more expensive, and 

 not as well adapted to the purpose. From 

 some correspondence that has come in of late, 

 it seems others have been using something 

 similar. But Mr. Danzenbaker says he was 

 prior in the specific form of springs used in 

 his supers. — Ed.] 



You've Tried drone-cells, Mr. Editor, and 

 bees with a laying queen don't take to them 



