272 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Mar. 15 



we managed to keep them alive till cjld 

 weather set in. Our bees did not show a 

 disposition to bite, probably because the 

 colony was too weak when it reached here, 

 and never fully recovered itself. But in 

 Central America there ar," s^me varieties or 

 species that bite so furiously and severely 

 that the natives themselves insist that the 

 bees sting-. — Ed.] 



Sorry to learn that a paper package of 

 honey ceases a life of usefulness at the next 

 coming of warm weather, p. 219. A pretty 

 heavy blow that at the paper- package bus- 

 iness. [Perhaps I made the statement a 

 little too strong My purpose was to ivarn 

 bee-keepers to be on the safe side; f jr it 

 would be most unfortunate at this stage of 

 proceedings to make a serious mistake and 

 kill out entirely a new method of selling 

 honey that now has a premise of a large 

 future. I know this— that all candied hon- 

 ey, at the approach of warm weather, is li- 

 able to soften. Last summer I looked at 

 our own package in paper. It had soften- 

 ed down like warm mush. The honey was 

 oozing through the paper, and it al- 

 ready stuck to the shelf. When it was re- 

 ceived from Mr. Aikin it was as hard and 

 dry as a brick. I then looked into some 

 jars of candied honey that were hermetical- 

 ly sealed, and found that they were also 

 soft, but not so soft as the packages in pa- 

 per. I simply wished to sound a note of 

 warning so that those who are putting up 

 honey in this form will be on their guard. 

 It may be that some honevs would not soft- 

 en up sufficiently to make trouble; but in 

 any case let us err on the safe side. It 

 would be good policy for all the bee-keep- 

 ers who put up honey in this form to say to 

 the retailer that they will take off his hands 

 all that is left unsold by June, we will 

 say, and will substitute an equal value of 

 honey in some other form if so desired. 

 The coming season will give us some posi- 

 tive information along these lines; f ir hun- 

 dreds and hundreds of bee-keepers are put- 

 ting up honey in this new form, and, 

 strangely enough, consumers are taking to 

 it very kindly. The very novelty of it at- 

 tracts attention. They see it on the gro- 

 cery shelves, ask questions about it, have a 

 curiosity to try it; they like it; order more; 

 and the beauty of it all is that, when our 

 bottled liquid honey does candy, these very 

 consumers will not be crying back, " Adul- 

 teration! "—Ed.] 



You're right, Mr. Editor, in thinking 

 that the preference "in this locality " for 

 covers just wide enough meant my own 

 opinion; and until I read p. 175 I didn't 

 know that others differed. My covers are 

 /«5^ wide enough except seme zinc ones that 

 are made wider by a cleat on each side, 

 which cleat, instead of being an actual 

 benefit, is a damage, and 1 have pulled 

 most of them off. I don't know of any rea- 

 son why a cover other than a telescope 

 should be any more than just wide enough. 

 Do you? [Yes and no. Our customers say 



that a cover that projects over the side of 

 the hive allows the water to drop off with- 

 out seeping back into the crack between the 

 cover and the top ed^^e of the side of the 

 hive. But if the cover is propolized down, 

 as it is in a great majority of cases, then 

 the water can not seep through to do any 

 damage; and, besides, propolis is as good 

 as paint as a wood-preservative. We first 

 mide the covers just wide enough to span 

 the width of the hive; but the trade would 

 have none of that. They must be wid^r, or 

 it would go to the people who make wider 

 covers. — Ed ] 



Gkrstung, editor of Bienenzucht, depre- 

 cates the idea of removing a queen in the 

 honey harvest for the sake of treeing more 

 bees to go afield. He thinks it has the op- 

 posite effect, ac'ually delaying field work 

 until their f iir share of nursework is done. 

 Admitting the advantage of shrinking the 

 brood-nest when the f rthcoming bees will 

 have no more to do, he thinks the advantage 

 more than offset by the decline of activity 

 when the bees have no young brood, and by 

 the lack of August-i eared bees the follow- 

 ing spring. His plan — which, after all, 

 leaves the colony queenless, although not 

 without the stimulating influence of unseal- 

 ed brood — is this: Three or four weeks be- 

 fore the presumable end of the harvest, take 

 a frame of brood with the queen and ad- 

 hering bees, and make a nucleus. Ten days 

 later, destroy queen cells and exchange a 

 frame of sealed brood for a frame of young 

 brood from the nucleus. A f^;w hours be- 

 fore this exchange, kill the queen if it is de- 

 sired to replace her, and give the nucleus 

 a queen cell when exchanging brood. If 

 the harvest holds, repeat the exchange of 

 brood ten days later. When the supposed 

 highest point of the harvest is reached, re- 

 turn the old queen, or the young queen in 

 her place. 1 have practiced with satisfac- 

 tion a somewhat similar plan, with two 

 points of difference: The queen is removed 

 as soon as and not till preparations for 

 swarming are found, and the colony is not 

 left quetnless more than ten days. 



You SAY, Mr. Editor, p. 219, that " pro- 

 polizing at the points of contact between 

 Hoffman frames in most localities is not a 

 serious objection." You don't quite get my 

 point. You called my attention to the met- 

 al frame hanger that would help against 

 the trouble of propolis with the Hoffman. 

 My point was that, whether little or much 

 trouble from propolis, the frame hanger 

 didn't touch the most troublesome part. In 

 a locality where propolizing the Hoffman 

 "is not a serious objection," there would 

 be no need of the frame hanger. In a gluy 

 region the gluing between end- bars is ten 

 times as bad as the gluing on the rabbet, 

 and the metal hanger would leave nine- 

 tenths of the trouble untouched, so the 

 hanger wouldn't be worth while in either 

 case. See? [And j)o« do not quite get my 

 point either. I will admit that propolizing 

 between the lines of contact of the Individ- 



