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$i££ PER Year'^'N® "Medina- Ohio- 



Vol. XXVIII. 



AUG. I, I goo. 



No. 15. 



Strawberries seem to last longer than 

 years ago. This year the first picking was 

 June 4, and the last July 11 — 38 days. [Just 

 so here. — Ed.] 



Uncle Lisha, a man -who has experiment- 

 ed so carefully as you have. with queen-cell 

 cups has surely tried transferring cocoons. 

 Please tell us about it. 



To SECURE the best results in queen rearing, 

 a colony must be strong enough to swarm, and 

 honey must be coming in every day, either 

 from the fields or by feeding. That's not orig- 

 in-il. Uncle Lisha said it (p. 572), but it's 

 worth repeating. [Just so. You can not give 

 that point too much prominence. — Ed.] 



To FIND A ouEEN, separating combs so bees 

 make a lost call, as on p. 575, works in this 

 locality, but it takes a good many minutes. 

 B'lt I never tried the kind W. W. Case gives, 

 to open the hive rather roughly, and I suspect 

 that would hasten matters. You may be sure, 

 Mr. Editor, it will give you more than an ink- 

 ling in every case, if you wait long enough. 



I SEE YOUR POINT, Mr. Editor, on p. 559, 

 and it's a good one. Yes, if the bees prefer- 

 red young larvse, why didn't they start more 

 of them at first, before they got so old ? I 

 don't know. That shows bad management, 

 but it doesn't really prove that they preferred 

 older lar\ae, for the stubborn fact remains that 

 they do not use too old lar\ae if younger are 

 present. 



I HAVE A "clod" ready to throw at you, 

 Cl;alon Fowls, if you don't show some good 

 reason for imagining that selling candied hon- 

 ey " will mean lower prices for us all." Did 

 C. F. Muth sell candied honey for less ? If 

 you had a monopoly of the liquid trade, 

 would it lower your prices? [That is right, 

 doctor. While you are about it, throw a clod 

 at him for me. I had about used up all my 

 clods, and was just getting ready to retreat. — 

 Ed ] 



Surely that was a very exceptional case of 

 Mr. Swift that Bro. Doolittle mentions, where 

 the bees of a swarm entered "half a dozen 

 hives all at once, and nearly all of them were 

 killed." I never knew of such a case before. 

 I've often had a swarm enter a wrong hive, 

 but not several, and the swarm was .always 

 kindly received. Of course, this does not re- 

 fer to starvation swarms in spring, which may 

 be killed. 



My experience does not tally with that 

 of Bro. D.olittle about swarms with clipped 

 queens entering wrong hives (p. 570). My 

 hives stand in pairs, or groups of four, with 2 

 to 4 inches between hives ; and when a re- 

 turning swarm enters a wrong hive, 49 times 

 out of 50 it is not the adjoining hive, but one 

 20 or 100 feet distant. I think generally, if 

 not invariably, it is a hive where a swarm has 

 returned a short time before, the noise they 

 make attracting the later swarm. 



Chalon Fowls, it seems true that the larg- 

 er part of C. F. Muth's honey was sold to 

 manufacturers, but it doesn't clearly appear 

 whether they took it solid or liquid ; neither 

 does it clearly appear from Fred's letter how 

 nmch table honey was sold in the liquid form. 

 I was wrong as to the actual amount of gran- 

 ulated honey sold, for Mr. Muth clearly car- 

 ried the idea that the bulk of his customers 

 demanded candied honey ; but I suppose he 

 meant the direct consumers, and not the gro- 

 cers. He always argued that consumers could 

 and should be educated to take granulated 

 honey. 



The idea that bees build downward faster 

 than sidewise is a good argument in favor of 

 tall sections ; but objectors may argue that, 

 with square sections, that is just what is want- 

 ed, so that the bees will get ahead with their 

 downward building, and fasten to the bottom 

 while they are fillingf out to the sides. But 

 bottom starters are the thing to secure that. 

 [I do not quite understand your point. Is it 

 not true that bees slmw a preference for build- 

 ing a long deep comb rather than a square 

 one? and is it not true that they build on the 

 bottom of the comb with more readiness than 

 they would keep on building to fill out the 

 corners of a square section? — Ed.] 



