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Vol. XXVIII. 



SEPT. 15, 1900. 



No. 18. 



A POOR HONEY YEAR in Germany is report- 

 ed in Gravenhorst's Bienenzeitung. 



Harry Lathrop, p. 685, makes an inter- 

 esting statement when he says, " I have fewer 

 and fewer swarms." Now, Harry please rise 

 and tell us why. [Yes, yes, Harry ! tell us 

 the secret. — Ed] 



That sulphur fumes will kill worms but 

 not the eggs of wax-moths has been orthodox 

 teaching heretofore. Now J. A. Golden, p. 

 682, says they will kill egtjs. How is it? 

 [I do not know. Will Mr. Golden or some 

 one else who does know please inform us ? — 

 Ed] 



When I take a laying queen from a nu- 

 cleus I give at the same time a virgin or a 

 queen-cell in a cage (and, by the way, I use a 

 better cage than the Miller cage), and confi- 

 dently expect it to be received all right. But 

 I wouldn't expect it if I didn't use the paste- 

 board method. [Now look here. Your Miller 

 introducing-cage we have illustrated and de- 

 scribed for years is well nigh perfection itself. 

 I do not believe you have a better one. If 

 you have, trot it out. — Ed.] 



The season is well along, but no word has 

 yet been seen from Messrs. Brice, Taylor, W. 

 Z. Hutchinson, et at., saying that a case has 

 been seen this summer in which the bees have 

 of choice selected a too old larva for rearing a 

 queen Here's a simple thing that any one 

 can try : Take away a queen ; then watch 

 whether the first queen-cells started contain 

 small or large larvae. Either give a proof that 

 queenless bees are in such haste for a queen 

 that they choose to their hurt, or else abandon 

 the belief as a false tradition of the dead past. 



Is it not much more important to have 

 bees with long tongues than to have red clo- 

 ver with short tubes? If a perfect success can 

 be made with the clover, it will be of no use 

 to me unless I can get farmers about me to 

 sow the right kind of seed — a thing somewhat 



difficult. But if the long tongues are reached, 

 I have the thing in my own hands, and am 

 master of the situation. [Yes, long-tongued 

 bees are much more to be desired than short- 

 corolla-tubed clover for just the very reason 

 you mention, and that is where we should 

 concentrate our efforts as bee-keepers. — Ed.] 



The pasteboard method of introducing 

 is a big thing — a big thing. But some have 

 failed with it. I know of two cases in which 

 the bees didn't gnaw the pasteboard. I don't 

 know how the thing was managed ; possibly 

 too few bees in the hive, or the cage in some 

 way too far from them. [There is a right 

 way and a wrong way to use the pasteboard. 

 It should be perforated with small holes di- 

 rectly over the candy, or else it should be so 

 narrow that the candy is exposed directly to 

 the bees at its edges. If too thick or too 

 wide without perforations, I should expect 

 trouble ; but the way we use the pasteboard 

 we lose less than one per cent of the queens 

 introduced — a good deal less than one per 

 cent, says Mr. Wardell. — Ed.] 



It seems that the queen has nothing di- 

 rectly to do with swarming. (She may have 

 every thing to do with it indirectly. ) Here 

 is something that points in that direction. 

 When a swarm is issuing from a hive, if part 

 of the bees issue from some opening not used 

 as the regular entrance, the proportion of 

 queens issuing through such opening is much 

 greater than the proportion of worker bees. 

 Formerly I kept a "4^-inch ventilating-space 

 at the back of my hives. It was never used 

 as regular entrance, but at swarming perhaps 

 a twentieth of the swarm came out there, and 

 perhaps a fourth of the queens. A strong 

 proof that the queen does not directly incite 

 swarming was a case in which a swarm issued 

 with no queen present, she having been quiet- 

 ly removed a short time before the swarming. 



E. E. Hasty's article, p. 681, is valuable. 

 Perhaps its chief value lies in showing us the 

 difficulty of developing red clover to fit our 

 bees, and making us more intent on solving 

 the more hopeful problem of stretching the 

 bees' tongues. [I have been thinking of this 

 matter since I prepared the footnote to Mr. 

 Hasty's article ; and the query that now 



