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 • AND Honey- 



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$i£^PER\tAR ^§ "Medina-Ohio- 



Vol. XXXII. 



OCT. 15. 1904. 



No 20 





More women than usual at the St. Louis 

 convention. Good thing. [Yes, the more 

 the merrier. — Ed.] 



Sainfoin is having quite a boom in Cana- 

 da, according to reports in Canadian Bee 

 Journal. At the experimental farm, more 

 bees were counted on the sainfoin plots than 

 on any of the plots of other clovers. 



S. E. Miller, in Progressive, quotes a 

 Straw which he challenges, to the effect 

 that ' ' the queen lays only worker-eggs the 

 first year of her life." Bro. Miller, look 

 again at p. 792 and you'll see that, instead of 

 a Straw, that's one of Stenog's pickings 

 that he picked from a German journal. 

 You're right that the statement is a little 

 off; at least, if you call it the rule, it's a 

 rule with many exceptions. 



T. K. Massie says in Rural Bee-keeper: 

 "Our experience is that, when a second 

 swarm issues, every virgin queen which is 

 old enough to fly at the time the swarm is- 

 sues will go out with the swarm." Not if 

 there's to be a third swarm, Bro. Massie. 

 I wonder just how it is when there's to be 

 no more swarming. Perhaps somewhat 

 mixed; sometimes going with the swarm, 

 and sometimes remaining for a nice little 

 battle in the hive. 



J. A. Green wants to know my views as 

 to overstocking and bee-keepers' rights. If 

 he will read p. 928, first column, he will find 

 my views pretty clearly expressed; and if he 

 desires further expression upon any point I 

 will gladly accommodate him. One thing 

 is certain: If bee-keeping ever becomes as 

 stable and reliable a pursuit as other lines 

 of agricultural industry it will be when a 

 man can feel just as sure of the pasturage 



for his bees as he does of the pasturage 

 for his cattle; and that time will never come 

 till he has some legal rights in the case. 



Somewhat startling is the statement 

 made by Mr. Doolittle, p. 925, that 9 Gallup 

 frames, the equivalent of 6f Langstroths, 

 are enough to ' ' entertain the best queen to 

 her full capacity as to egg-laying." Allow- 

 ing I of a frame for pollen and honey, and 

 counting that the remaining 6 frames will be 

 entirely occupied by the queen, that figures 

 up only a little more than 2000 eggs as the 

 queen's daily stint. Yet isn't it Mr. Doo- 

 little who tells us that a queen goes as high 

 as 5000 eggs in a day? 



I inclose a sample of the new foundation, 

 called Columbus foundation, that is now 

 having quite a boom in Germany. As you 

 will see, it has a metal base, that is, a thin 

 sheet of metal is in the center of the septum. 

 The mate to this sample I put in the center 

 of a, brood-frame. It was drawn out and oc- 

 cupied by the queen with reasonable prompt- 

 ness, all but a little at the edge, where the 

 bees dug the wax off the metal. At this 

 date, Oct. 3, quite a bit more of the metal 

 has been bared, and I suspect they will never 

 again put wax on it. Possibly such a thing 

 would not occur if a frame were entirely 

 filled with it so that the bees could not have 

 any bare edge to start upon. 



[This kind of foundation is very much 

 like what my father made along in the ear- 

 ly 70's. He found that the bees, just as 

 you say, would gnaw the wax from the met- 

 al, and then leave it bare. It was a con- 

 ductor of heat and cold to an extent that, 

 in cool weather, the bees seemed disposed to 

 cluster on something that was warmer. 

 The bees would draw it out into comb, a 

 good portion of it; but when the metal was 

 once bared it would stay so. But, outside 

 of this, such foundation must necessarily be 

 very expensive. There is no likelihood that 

 it will ever be on the market any great 

 length of time. —Ed.] 



Trouble in the Miller family. S. E. Mil- 

 ler, editorial writer for Progressive Bee-keep- 

 er, refers to a recent Straw quoting the ad- 



