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Vol. XXVIII. 



AUG. 15, 1900. 



No. 16. 



On to Chicago, Aug. 28 ! 



The great pains C. Russel seems to take 

 to rear good queens, p. 611, deserves commen- 

 dation. The day may come when every intel- 

 ligent producer of honey will find he can not 

 afford to rear queens without taking just such 

 care. 



I'VE TRIED Somerfield's plan of penning in 

 nuclei with leaves to make them stav. More 

 dead bees than desirable sometimes ; still, I 

 like the plan. It seems to work very well to 

 free them in 24 hours ; but a go xl feature 

 of the plan is that, if you forget to free them, 

 they will free themselves. 



You ARE RIGHT, Mr. Editor, in thinking 

 my way of wetting sections will not work 

 with any thing but square sections, unless 

 they are packed exactly right. But I thifik it 

 would still be a gain to use my way, after re- 

 packing straight. You say, "I should think 

 there would be some grooves of some sections 

 that you would miss." Well, you would think 

 wrong. The boiling water runs clear through, 

 and I never knew a groove to be missed. 



That man in the picture, p. 610, ought to 

 know better than to try to extract honey when 

 it's so cool he can wear a coat. [In taking 

 the picture to which you refer, I forgot to tell 

 the man to take off his coat and assume the 

 attitude of hard work. There is a fine art in 

 posing a subject, and the more I study ama- 

 teur photography the more I see how I some- 

 times miss it. The average subject seems to 

 think he must look at the camera. — Ed.] 



After trying the Jones plan of clipping 

 for a time (holding the queen by the legs), I 

 have fallen back into my old plan as easier 

 because of long practice in it. And that old 

 plan is precisely the one given by the editor, 

 p. 606. [Very much depends on what we are 

 used to; but I think the average beginner — 

 yes, the average bee-keeper — with his clumsy 

 and perhaps nervous fingers will do less harm 



to the queen to hold her by the shoulders dur- 

 ing the act of clipping than if he held her by 

 the legs, which are liable to be pulled loose. — 

 Ed ] 



Instead of running honey directly from 

 the extractor, it is becoming more and more 

 the practice to run it into square tin cans, p. 

 621. Is it not still better practice to run it 

 first into tanks? [I think you must misun- 

 derstand me. I did not mean to convey the 

 impression that it was getting to be more and 

 more the practice to run honey directly from 

 the extractor into the square cans, but that it 

 was getting to be more and more the practice 

 to use square cans instead of barrels for mar- 

 keting and shipping. — Ed.] 



" Never allow horses to enter the apiary, 

 for the bees will rush at them and sometimes 

 sting them to death, even at night," is advice 

 given p. 603. Safe advice. But it's only fair 

 to say that at my Wilson apiary for years no 

 serious consequence has followed allowing teij 

 or more horses and twice as many cows to be 

 within 8 feet of the hives, with only a wire 

 fence between, and sometimes the horses are 

 right in the apiary. When one gets stung, it 

 races away, rubs against a tree, then comes 

 back again Yet I know of a colt being stung 

 to death on a farm where only two or three 

 colonies of bees were kept. 



The editor tells, p. 620, about hiving a 

 stubborn swarm five times, and upon putting 

 them in a new loc ition with brood they stayed. 

 The question is : Did they stay because of the 

 new location, or because of the brood ? [I 

 should have explained that, when I hived this 

 swarm five times, it was during my early ex- 

 perience with bees, for I should now know 

 that, if it came off the second time, it would 

 be advisable to hive it somewhere else. Re- 

 ferring to your question, I do not know that I 

 can say definitely that either the brood or 

 change of location induced the bees to stay at 

 home ; but I should assume that both had an 

 influence, although it is probable that the lat- 

 ter had more to do with it. — Ed ] 



"We have had queens get the crarnps 

 many and many a time, especially in caging 

 for mailing," says the editor in reply to my 



