846 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Nov. I. 



the bees build them after extracting the hon- 

 ey, and then feed the honey back, you might 

 be able to get possibly five pounds of wax. 

 Never having had any experience we could 

 give you only a poor guess. — Ed.] 



DISGUSTING TERMS. 



Mr. Root: — Will you allow me to enter a 

 kind and gentle protest against the practice of 

 using disgusting terms in connection with 

 honey, such as " bug- juice " for honey-dew, 

 and " gob " for beeswax in comb honey, page 

 797 ? Let us leave that for other people. They 

 will do enough of it. 



Did you ever try just a little honey on baked 

 sweet potatoes ? Mix the honey with the 

 mashed potato, and spread a little butter in, 

 and try it. S. T. Pettit. 



Aylmer West, Ont., Can. 



[Ever since Prof. Cook protested against the 

 word "bug-juice," some seven or eight years 

 ago, I have made an effort to keep it out of 

 our columns. If it has crept in it was through 

 an over.--ight. As to the word "gob," that 

 term originated with our unusually esthetic 

 friend W. Z. Hutchinson. I should be will- 

 ing to accept some other term, but I do not 

 know of any other that conveys the same idea 

 so well. — Ed] 



THE PLURALITY OF LAYING WORKERS IN A 

 HIVE. • 



Dear Sir :— On page 761 Dr. Miller has a 

 " Stray Straw " on laying workers. In July 

 I had a colony of bees become queenless. I 

 notictd that the eggs laid had an unusual ap- 

 pearance, and, not being able to find the 

 queen, I suspected laying workers. In the 

 hive were starters of foundation 8x2 inches, 

 and in one of these were the eggs. With a 

 pin I crushed or removed all the eggs from 

 the comb and replaced it in the hive. In 

 about twenty minutes I examined it and found 

 about half a dozen workers busily depositing 

 eggs. I pinched all I found doing so, and re- 

 placed with the same result. In this way any 

 one may assure himself that the majority of 

 the bees become laying workers. 



Brentwood, Ont., Oct. 8. M. Johnstone. 



BEES' TONGUES, AND HOW THEY SHOULD BE 

 MEASURED. 



Referring to your recent experiments on the 

 measuremen's of bees' tongues, may I call 

 your attention to one phase of the question 

 which seems to me bears quite as important a 

 relation to the subject as the mere length of 

 the tongue? and this is, the shape of the bee's 

 head. I have put under a powerful magnifier 

 a number of different bees of various strain'^, 

 and find that there is quite a decided differ- 

 ence in the shape of the heads. Some of them 

 are short and quite round, when looked at full 

 in the face ; others are longer and more point- 

 ed at the jaw. I think this should be taken 

 into consideration when we are trying to de- 

 velop a strain which will feed on the red 

 clover. 



I call your attention to this now that you 

 may, if you so desire, make examinations this 



fall before the season closes. I am at present 

 engaged in making some careful measure- 

 ments of heads of different strains, but can 

 give you no figures, because I find my imple- 

 ments are not delicate enough, and I am mak- 

 ing some others. Arthur C. Miller. 



Providence, R. I., Sept. 28. 



[If you will refer to the answer to J. H. Ger- 

 brachi, in this issue, p. 844, you will see that 

 we have taken this matter into consideration ; 

 that is to say, we do not measure the length of 

 the tongue, but the distance that the tongue 

 will stick out from the mouth of the bee. — 

 Ed.] 



C. A. A., Pa. — It is usually not advisable to 

 take combs of stores out of hives at this time of 

 the year. If the colony is a strong one they 

 will need all they have. If they should have 

 at least 25 or 30 lbs. of sealed stores, which 

 would mean 5 or 6 combs of capped honey or ' 

 syrup, then you could, perhaps, take away the 

 overplus. 



E. IV. L., Mass. — We can not explain why 

 your bees are carrying out the white young 

 dead bees. It may be that you have pickled 

 brood or black brood in your hive ; or it may 

 be the brood has been chilled or at some time 

 overheated ; or it is possible, again, that the 

 bees have at some time gathered some poison- 

 ous mixture. 



J. H. G., Mich. — If the hive has been 

 queenless for a very great length of time, it is 

 often very hard to introduce a laying queen. 

 We would advise giving them queen cells or a 

 recently hatched virgin. In any case, give 

 them a frame of brood or unsealed larvae and 

 see whether they build cells. If so, you may 

 rest assured that they are queenless. 



P. G. S., Pa. — There would be no difficulty 

 at all about your raising queens under latitude 

 40, or in the vicinity of Philadelphia. It is 

 difficult, however, to rear queens in August 

 and September anywhere in the United States, 

 and sometimes even experts are foiled in their 

 attempts. Beginners, as a rule, will get bet- 

 ter queens during the early summer months 

 when honey is coming in. I would not, as a 

 rule, recommence raising queens in August and 

 September. 



_/. S., N. V. — There is no objection to leav- 

 ing the two extra frames of honey in the 

 brood nest if you have them ; but if the other 

 six combs were well filled with honey, and the 

 bees could be accommodated on the six, I 

 would take out the two combs not needed, 

 even if they were filled with honey, set them 

 aside, and then next spring give them to the 

 colony that might be running short of stores, 

 whether it be the one under consideration or 

 some other one. In any case, when the frame 

 contains brood it should be left in the hive 

 till the brood hatches. 



