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fublishedby THE>1^0oY Co. 



$iej> ptRVtAR^^'X® "Medina-Ohio 



Vol. XXVIII 



APR. I, 1900. 



No. 7. 



Honey poultices of honey and flour spread 

 on a linen rag are recommended in British Bee 

 Journal for boils, carbuncles, etc., and for in- 

 jured bones. In my own family, poultices of 

 honey and castile soap have done good service. 



D. W. Heise, speaking of cleaning out hives 

 in spring, makes this point : " Neither should 

 we forget that the less propolis we leave in the 

 brood-chamber the less we are likely to have 

 in the sections. ' ' ( Canadian Bee Journal, 797. ) 



Be sure to plant at least three hybrid per- 

 petual roses ; say Alfred Colomb for red ; Mrs. 

 John Laing, pink ; Mad. Geo. Bruant, white. 

 The last is not good full-blown, but the bud is 

 fine and the foliage unusually so. It's a Jap- 

 anese rose. 



The writer mentioned on page 207, who 

 thinks brood-rearing goes on all rie;ht 28° be- 

 low Doolittle's mark, is probably talking 

 about temperature outside the cluster, and 

 Doolittle means in the cluster. If eggs would 

 hatch at 64°, wouldn't they roast at 92? 

 [Just so. — Ed.] 



As A CONTRIBUTION to the Subject L. Stach- 

 elhausen has treated so well, p. 213, I may 

 say that I know bees will forage at five days 

 old if forced to it. I shut an imported queen 

 in a hive with frames of ripe brood, but not a 

 bee. Five days later I saw young bees carry- 

 ing in pollen. 



"The majority of the qneen-cells are 

 built off from a worker cell after cutting it 

 down," p. 221. In this locality that's the case 

 when the queen is taken away, but I think 

 never when bees prepare for swarming. In 

 that case the bottom of the cell is like the left 

 end of that stick on p. 221. 



Speaking of Holy Land bees, the editor of 

 Australasian Bee-keeper says: "For comb- 

 honey producers they are not suitable, for the 

 capping of the comb has a very greasy ap- 

 pearance.'" I believe that has been the gen- 

 eral verdict. If correct, greasy sections are 

 due to bees and not conditions. 



The bottom-boards of my "barns "leave 

 an inch space under the hives. That's not 

 enough for winter. Some of my bottom- 

 boards are 1>^ and some 2 inches deep. The 

 deeper are much better. [Two inches deep 

 may be better ; but a supply manufacturer 

 would hardly dare jump from the regulation 

 ^-inch space under the frames to more than 

 five times that. — Ed.] 



"In any case you should not use frames 

 spaced less than 1^^ in.," says British Bee 

 Journal. I sometimes wonder whether that 

 may not be better than \y%. [A few years ago 

 there seemed to be quite an array of testimony 

 against l>^-inch spacing, and in favor of 1^ ; 

 and if any thing the indications seemed to be 

 that less than 1 ^ would be better than more. 

 The arguments pro and con are all summed up 

 under the head of " Spacing of Frames," in 

 the A B C book.— Ed.] 



Now comes X. Levrier, who, in a series of 

 articles running through several numbers of 

 Revue Eclectique (C Apiculteur [insists that 

 bees are not needed for fertilization of flowers 

 — Lubbock and Darwin are in error, and seed 

 matures perfectly when insects are excluded 

 by covering. Where are we at? [We are all 

 right ; so are Lubbock and Darwin ; but X. 

 Levrier is all wrong — that is, if we can believe 

 a great mass of evidence that seems to be al- 

 most entirely one-sided in favor of the bees. 

 —Ed.] 



BeE-parai,ysis is reported in The Austral- 

 asian Bee-keeper as cured by a number of bee- 

 keepers as follows : To a pound of honey add 

 Yz ounce of a mixture of one part sulphurous 

 acid with four parts tincture of podophyllin. 

 Heat to 90°, and dail}' spray combs, bees and 

 all. Three to five days' spraying cures. [I 

 almost wonder, doctor, that you did not tell 

 us something about podophyllin. If I mis- 

 take not, it is a laxative, and the purpose of 

 giving it to the bees is to enable them to clean 

 out the intestines, which seem to be clogged 

 by this peculiar disease, bee-paralysis. There 

 may be something in it. — Ed.] 



Canada has some strong advocates for win- 

 tering on full combs of honey with few or no 

 empt)' cells inside the brood-nest. One ad- 

 vantage claimed is that, with the cells in the 

 cluster filled with honey, the queen does 



