1904 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



341 



than I can stand, I would not mind making' 

 a trial. 



I should like to find something- that would 

 bring good returns with time, as I have al- 

 most no moae}-, and should like to find some- 

 thing that I could live on that would require 

 no physic il labor on my part, as I am not 

 strong. I live in the city, close up to neigh- 

 bors who are cranky about poultry, etc., so 

 no one in the neighborhood could do any 

 thing with that. 



Miss M. F. Michener. 



Burlington, la., Feb. 29. 



[From a commercial point of view, the 

 stingless bees are of almost no importance, 

 at least at the present time. There are 

 several varieties, or, perhaps, more proper- 

 ly speaking, species, in the West Indies, in 

 Mexico, Central America, and the South 

 American countries. Some of these bees 

 will store as much as half a gallon of honey 

 in a log; but the great majority of them, if 

 I am correct, work from hand to mouth, just 

 about as the native human beings exist in 

 the same localities. 



We once had a colony of stingless bees 

 imported from Mexico. Our climate did 

 not seem to agree with them, and they soon 

 dwindled awa}'. 



While the stingless bees, as their name 

 indicates, have no stings, yet they can bite 

 pretty viciously. One variety is said to be 

 able to "bite so tremendously" that the 

 averag-e person unfamiliar with the sting 

 of the reg-ular honey-bee supposes he has 

 actually been stung. 



You would not find the difficulty from 

 stings of the regular honey-bees so serious 

 as 3'ou imagine. Get some practical bee- 

 keeper to show you how to open a hive with 

 a good smoker. Mrs. L. C. Axtell, of Rose- 

 ville. 111., has been an invalid for years, 

 yet she manages to do a larg-e amount of 

 work among her bees, and she makes them 

 pay. — Ed.] 



FEEDING back; WHY NECESSARY TO THIN 

 DOWN THE HONEY AS FED; UNCAP- 

 PING- KNIVES; SHOULD THEY 

 BE USED HOT OR COLD? 



Why is it advised to thin down honey with 

 warm water to about the consistenc3' of raw 

 nectar when one wishes to feed back for the 

 purpose of finishing up sections at the end 

 of the season? W^e have fed back thousands 

 of pounds of extracted hoaej-, and never 

 yet had to thin it doA^n to obtain the results 

 sought. If you feed back such thin feed you 

 certainly have to feed back a greater bulk, 

 and we find it causes the queen to la}', and 

 there is a large amount of brood raised that 

 is of no use to the colony — at least, such is 

 the result in this southern country. Such 

 thin stuff causes the bees to do more work, 

 and they will not finish the sections as soon 

 as they would if they were given thick hon- 

 ey, and the thicker the better. 



The question as to which is better, a 

 warm or a cold knife for uncapping, per- 

 haps if the honey is thin a cold knife will 



answer very well; but if the honey is thick, 

 then a hot knife is the best. We now con- 

 sider a wartn knife but little if any better 

 than a cold one. Our practice is to have a 

 suitable pan set on a coaloil stove, and 

 filled with water kept near the boiling- 

 point. Each uncapper has two knives, one 

 of which is in the water all of the time. 

 We never uncap more than one comb with- 

 out changing knives, thus keeping the knife 

 always hot. We hardly think a man could 

 stand it to pull a cold knife all day over 

 combs filled with thick honey. Our best 

 day's extracting was 19 barrels of 32 gal- 

 lons each; and after long experience we 

 have arrived at the conclusion that for us 

 we want no cold knives. We notice one 

 person says, sharpen the honey knives with 

 difile, making a saw edge on the knife. 

 Will not such a knife tear the comb? We 

 know that a very small nick in the edge of 

 a honey-knife always makes us trouble, 

 and we try to have the edge on our knives 

 as keen as a razor; but we find there is not 

 more than one knife out of three that will 

 take such an edge; however, everybody to 

 his notion. We tell only what is most suit- 

 able for us under present conditions. We 

 might change our mind if we were in a 

 different locality. M. W. Shepherd. 



Marchant, Fla. 



[The question-marks put out by our cor- 

 respondent deserve our careful attention. I 

 should like to see these questions more fully 

 discussed. Since writing the f^^regoing I 

 have had a talk with Mr. N. E. France, 

 General Manager of the National Bee- 

 keepers' Association, and he seemed to 

 agree with every point made by our corres- 

 pondent.— Ed.] 



EXTRACTING-FRAMES; WHAT SHOULD BE 

 THEIR DEPTH? PERFORATED ZINC AND 

 WIRES NUISANCES. 



On page 25 you are "just shouting" 

 when you say the extremely shallow frames 

 are "too much of a good thing." Two of 

 them are too deep for a comb honey hive (I 

 will say in this locality), and one's on the 

 other extreme, only very much worse, mak- 

 ing it necessary to use that other nuisance, 

 the queen-excluder. Really, I don't see 

 what they were gotten up for. The 7>2- 

 inch-deep frame is the frame to use in a 

 comb-honey hive. It is the only frame I 

 can get filled with brood clear up to the 

 top-bar without danger of the queen going 

 into the sections, and also pollen. No ex- 

 cluding zinc is needed. Full sheets of 

 foundation in these frames make perfect 

 combs without wiring. Go any deeper than 

 this and you must wire. Then comes the 

 trouble from getting the wire too tight or 

 too slack, foundation buckling, elongated 

 cells stretched out of shape so the queen 

 lays drone eggs in them. I know this does 

 not always happen, but does very often, as 

 we can see from the complaints that appear 

 in the various bee- papers. 



On these hives I use a super of combs 5 



