428 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



May 1 



you now add insult to injury by firing- more 

 questions at me on this subject? No; I'll 

 be like the woman who was "of the same 

 opinion still." — Ed.] 



G. J. YoDER makes a profitable business 

 "in cutting 45 2-lb. blocks and 18 j^-lb. out 

 of a 60 pound can, leaving 4 pounds of odds 

 and ends, p. 394. That makes 103 pounds 

 from the 60-pound can. Didn't those wick- 

 ed types make it 45 2-lb. where it shculd 

 bave been 45 1-lb? [You are right, doctor. 

 The copy at first read "forty five lb. 

 blocks." As that amount was either 45 or 

 200 as the reader might make it, it was 

 changed to " 45 1-lb. blocks. " The compos- 

 itor took the 1 for a 2, and on reading the 

 copy to the proof reader the mistake was pos- 

 sibly repeated by the same person. — Ed.] 



A Straw, page 375, tells of removed bees 

 staying where put after special treatment 

 and a captivity of two hours, and you say, 

 Mr. Editor, that bees will not stay put un- 

 less confined at least three days But you 

 ignore the treatment he gave them. Are 

 you sure bees so treated need three days 

 confinement? Others report that pounding 

 on the hives and frightening the bees with 

 smoke while imprisoned will make them 

 stay after a few hours of confinement. Are 

 you sure your bees so treated would need 

 3 days? [No, I am not quite sure; but I 

 think many of them would go back if re- 

 leased in less than three days, even if they 

 had been bumped and pounded as pre- 

 scribed in the treatment above referred to. 

 But we will test that matter (or I hope to) 

 a little more carefully this summer. — Ed.] 



"How Americans rear artificial queens " 

 is the heading of an item in Deutsche lin- 

 ker. "Americans frequently use wooden 

 queen cells (!)," and then is told how R. 

 Rowsome had queens artificially fertilized 

 in a carboy. " Jung-Klaus " dismisses the 

 affair then as a foolish joke. The Germans 

 are inclined to consider any thing done in 

 America as not to be taken seriously, and 

 the Americans return the compliment by 

 complacently concluding thej' have nothing 

 to learn from Germany. All of which is 

 the foolishness of ignorance on both sides. 

 [Americans have nerer accepted the theory 

 that queens could be fertilized in a carboy; 

 indeed, they are just as skeptical on that 

 point as the Germans; but in the matter of 

 wooden queen- cells, our friends of Teu- 

 tonic extraction may have much to learn 

 yet. They should not forget how they have 

 clung to the old Dzierzon hive, and how 

 gradually, now, some of the most progres- 

 sive of them are working over to the Lang- 

 stroth-Dadant principle. — Ed.] 



The advice to begin with bees on a small 

 scale, increasing numbers with experience, 

 is excellent, but isn't it c arrying it a little 

 too far to say broadly that we must go no 

 faster than the bees will pay the way? We 

 don't always do that with other things; 

 why with bees? I know it would have been 

 bad for me if I had followed that rule. 

 (Very likely; but when one is giving ad- 



vice sometimes he is obliged to overdo it, in 

 order that his pupils may not commit the 

 folly of going too far. Tt is human nature, 

 when one is all fired up with enthusiasm, 

 such as one gets with an ordinary case of 

 bee-fever, to plunge in debt too deeply. 

 But say, doctor, I was expecting you to as- 

 sail my article on this general subject of 

 "keeping more bees" in several places. 

 Anticipating that you or somebody else 

 would, I prepared it with unusual care. 

 Now, honor bright, doctor, it is highly im- 

 portant to I now, in the case of the extract- 

 ed- honey bee-keeper of fair executive abili- 

 ty, whether he could realize in a series of 

 years the averages that I have mentioned if 

 he attempted to run a thousand colonies. 

 And while 3'ou are about it will you solve 

 another little riddle? If such possibilities 

 can be reached, how are you and I to know 

 whether we are the chaps who are capable 

 of running a thousand colonies? — Ed.] 



A German bee journal, advising against 

 too small entrances in winter, gives 1 centi- 

 meter high and 8 wide (scant Yz inch high 

 and 3 '4 wide) as the right thing. How 

 would that do in Medina? [I am inclined 

 to think this is about right. For the last 

 four or five j'ears we have been testing en- 

 trances of various sizes — some '/% deep by the 

 width of the hive; some '/% deep by 8 inches; 

 some;^s by 8; and still others ^^ by 6. Experi- 

 ence has shown — and that experience is con- 

 firmed by reports that have come in — that 

 the two first mentioned sizes were altogeth- 

 er too much of a good thing. The colonies 

 either died outright, or were so weak as to 

 be practically good for nothing for the 

 whole season. The colonies with entrance 

 y% by 8 generally wintered well, while those 

 with a little smaller entrance seemed to 

 have a little bit the advantage. The small- 

 er the entrance up to a certain point during 

 very cold weather, the better for the outdoor 

 bees, providing, however, the passageway 

 is kept entirely free from dead bees. We 

 occasionally get reports of how bees have 

 wintered in a box hive with the bottom left 

 open; but these are the exceptions that prove 

 the rule. I am firmly convinced, from all 

 reports and our own experience, that a very 

 limited entrance, kept open by one or two 

 cleanings during midwinter, is better than 

 a wide one; but when it comes to indoor 

 wintering, of course the larger the entrance 

 the better. Seme of our indoor colonies at 

 one of the outyards had the usual narrow 

 entrance. The dead bees were not cleaned 

 oui — result, all the bees in the hive dead 

 and moldy. — Ed.] 



Bees by the pound fell out of fashion 

 in this country some years ago. Not so ev- 

 erywhere. In a single number of Leip- 

 ziger Bztg. I counted 26 ad's of bees for 

 sale by the pound. [Selling bees by the 

 pound would be perfectly feasible in a coun- 

 try like Germany; but in a country like 

 ours, 14 times as large as the German Em- 

 pire, it is not feasible. We ti ied it once 

 and had to give it up, because of the great 



