1900 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



355 



The Brosius pure-food bill, a measure that 

 is of vital interest to bee-keepers, is now in 

 the committee of the House, and will proba- 

 bly be reported in some form in a few days. 

 Mr. Abbott, our delegate from the National 

 Bee-keepers' Association to the Pure-food Con- 

 gress, requests that all bee-keepers write to 

 their Congressmen, urging them to support 

 the bill when it comes up for vote. Undoubt- 

 edly the glucose interest will have a strong 

 lobby against it, and bee-keepers should help 

 to offset this by writing at once to their Con- 

 gressmen. 



CANDYING NOT A PROOF OK PURITY. 

 AFTER the article by S. T. Pettit, on p. 340 

 was made up and in the forms, I noticed there 

 was one very important matter which I did 

 not refer to in my footnote ; and that is, as to 

 whether, when honey is "candied solid," it is 

 " absolute evidence that it is pure." Taking 

 this statement just as it stands, it is not ; but 

 if the statement is taken in connection with 

 what I said on the same page, one will under- 

 stand that glucosed honey will candy clear 

 through the mass ; but it has a very different 

 appearance from pure candied honey. The 

 greater the amount of glucose, the less the 

 tendency to candy ; and the greater the amount 

 of pure honey in proportion to the adulterant, 

 the more compact and sol'd the mass of gran- 

 ules. I agree with Mr. Pettit in all he says. 

 This article is one of the best we ever received. 



THE FOUR CLASSES OF SOILED SECTIONS. 



Dr. Miller has already spoken of the con- 

 fusion that seems to exist over the question of 

 travel-stained, soiled, yellow, greasy, or water- 

 soaked sections. All of these terms have oft- 

 en been confounded for one and the same 

 thing. There are really four classes of dis- 

 colored sections, each due to a distinct and 

 separate cause. First, there is what is called 

 the real travel-stained section. As its name 

 indicates, the cappings are soiled because the 

 bees have gone over the surfaces of the cap- 

 pings with their dirty feet. 



Then there is another lot that are stained 

 because the boxes are capped over in the vi- 

 cinity of old comb, dirt, or propolis. If the 

 faces of such sections are examined carefully 

 it will be found that the stain or discolora- 

 tion goes clear through. These discolorations 

 are due to the fact that the bees take up pieces 

 of old black wax, propolis, or any thing that 

 will answer as a substitute or filler for pure 

 wax. I have seen the cappings of some sec- 

 tions of this sort filled with bits of old rope, 

 lint from newspapers, small hard chunks of 

 propolis, fine slivers of wood — any thing and 

 every thing that is right handy. Sections of 

 this class often look like those of the first 

 class, hence the frequent confusion. 



In the third class are those with soiled rap- 



pings, due to pollen dust or possibly a thin 

 layer of propolis stain. All such may be 

 bleached white, as explained in our last issue, 

 but the other two are hopelessly beyond reme- 

 dy. All white honey with yellow cappings is 

 apt to be in the third class 



The fourth and last class takes in all those 

 that are called " greasy " or " water-soaked," 

 having cappings that lie on the honey. The 

 covering to each cell is more or less transpar- 

 ent, or water-soaked — the transparent part be- 

 ing half-moon shaped, or in the form of a ring 

 encircling a white nucleus center that is not 

 greasy or transparent. The general surface of 

 such sections is mottled with little transparent 

 half-moons or circles over many of the cells. 



If the reader will look over the unsold odds 

 and ends of the grocer's he will be able to find 

 samples of all these classes, and it is a good 

 time of the year to find them, as they are the 

 last to sell. 



LARGE HIVES AS NON-SWARMERS, AND 

 ADAPTED TO COMB-HONEY. 



It will be remembered that for years the Da- 

 dants, the well-known foundation-makers of 

 Hamilton, 111., were almost alone in the cham- 

 pionship of large colonies in large hives, 

 maintaining that they wintered better, gather- 

 ed more honey, and were practically non- 

 swarming. Some years later, having made 

 some experiments that seemed to prove the 

 value of large brood-nests, the editor of this 

 journal had the audacity to say a few things 

 in their favor. At the time quite a number 

 admitted that, while they might be excellent 

 for extracted honey, insisted thev were not 

 suitable for comb. But a few took the position 

 of the Dadants and myself. 



Very recently it was no little pleasure to 

 read an article that seems to be quite in line 

 with my experience on the subject of large 

 versus small hives, by H. H. Hyde, in the 

 Progressive Bee-keeper for April. From this 

 article I have made the following extracts: 



I am a large-hive mau. I believe in strong colonies 

 at all times of the year. Large colonies not only gath- 

 er large quantities of honey, but also require much less 

 work and attention. Now, right in line with strong 

 colonies comes the importance of good prolific queens 

 to fill the large hives, or barns, as some call them. 



I wish to say that I was not a large hive advocate 

 from the start ; in fact, I have had it almost pumped 

 into me little by little, for we (O. P. Hyde & Son) 

 started with S-frame hives, u.sing one story, and now 

 have 300 of our 500 colonies in 8-frame hives, but we 

 have just that many more than we want. Still we 

 make large hives out of them by giving the queen ac- 

 cess to two or more stories, according to the number 

 she can occupj', And, too, we run two-thirds of the 

 bees in each apiary for comb honey during our first 

 flow. This manipulation I have several times before 

 explained, notably for last May and June. 



While it is a fact that it takes more honey to run 

 large colonies, it is also a fact that they will .store much 

 more surplus, very much more, than small colonies, 

 evennnich more than proportion to the number of bees. 



I have Spoken of " Draper barns." It might 

 be well to state to some of our later readers 

 that these are nothing but ten-frame hives 2^s 

 inches deeper than the regular standard Lang- 

 strotli. These hives, also designated as "Jum- 

 bos," with deep frames, make very little con- 

 fusion in the apiary, because they use the 

 same bottom-boards, same covers, same sec- 

 t'0"s, a"d same s°ct'on holders, that r.r2 used 



