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Publishedby-THEAl nOO"f Co. 



Si£°ptRVEAR. 'Xs Medina-Ohio- 



Vol XXXII. 



DEC. I, J 904. 



No. 23 



To SCRAPE bees thoroughly is not such a 

 very big job, says H. H. Hyde, p. 1068, for 

 one man can easily clean from 25 to 50 colo- 

 nies a day. I wish my good Texan friend 

 would tell us how much of the bee he scrapes. 

 If he means just the hind legs, he'd have a 

 busy time getting through with 50 colonies 

 in a day; but if the bees are scraped all over, 

 even 25 colonies would be too many. 



Illinois bee-keepers, at their State con- 

 vention, voted unanimously that they want- 

 ed their bees taxed. They wisely argued 

 that they couldn't expect favors from the 

 State legislature for the benefit of some- 

 thing that wasn't taxable property. I think 

 there's a better argument even than that- 

 common honesty. We expect the law to 

 protect property in bees as well as in horses; 

 why not tax one as well as the other? [Bees 

 are taxed in this State, and I do not know 

 why they should not be taxed the same as 

 any other property, and be recognized in law 

 as such. —Ed.] 



Ye editor wants to know, page 1056, 

 "whether honey does contain food elements 

 that the bees really need, not found in the 

 sugar syrup." I think that the authorities 

 agree in general with Reidenbach's state- 

 ment that honey contains from one to three 

 per cent of nitrogenous matter, while sugar 

 contains only a trace. But the question 

 might still be raised whether bees can not 

 get along very well with sugar if they have 

 plenty of pollen available. [In the quotation 

 referred to I did not quite convey the mean- 

 ing I had in mind. If you put the word 

 necessary before the word food it will clear 

 up the statement. Of course, I knew that 

 honey contained other food elements than 

 those found in sugar syrup; but the question 

 was whether those other elements were nec- 



essary. I am inclined to think they are not, 

 for reports for many years back have shown 

 that sugar syrup was preferable to honey, 

 as a rule. —Ed.] 



"That ' hermetically sealed ' cover must 

 be pried ever so carefully if one would avoid 

 that fatal snap as it leaves the hive," says 

 R. Wueste, p. 1069. What sort of climate 

 have you in California, anyhow, friend 

 Wueste, that makes it cold enough Jfor pro- 

 polis to snap? Up here it snaps only when 

 it's too cold to work with bees. Neither do 

 the bees on the cover offer fight. Just 

 dump the end of the cover on the ground in 

 front of the hive, and the bees scud for the 

 entrance. 



Leipz. Bztg. says that this year's honey 

 is darker than the honey of other years, 

 the cause being the excessively dry weather 

 that ruled for months. Does dry weather 

 make honey darker here? I think L. L. An- 

 drews says that in his part of California alfal- 

 fa honey is amber. Why dark there and so 

 very light in Colorado? Weather, soil, or 

 what? [I have noticed that, in dry years, 

 comb honey jooks more water-soaked. I 

 presume it is owing to the fact that honey, 

 when it does come in, comes very slowly, 

 and the bees are a long while in sealing it. 

 I do not know whether dry seasons affect 

 the color of extracted honey or not. We 

 should be pleased to have reports. — Ed.] 



Wm. M. Whitney, p. 1070, quotes me as 

 saying that bee-keeping would never become 

 as reliable as other agricultural pursuits till 

 the bee-keeper could have some legal rights 

 in the case; and then he says the time will 

 never come when a bee-keeper will have 

 legal protection as an exclusive occupant of 

 a given territory. Well, then, the pursuit 

 will never become very stable and reliable, 

 will it, friend Whitney? You then proceed 

 to say, "no sane person would contend for 

 a moment that an owner would not have a 

 right to cut his basswood timber," alfalfa, 

 etc. Of course not; who ever thought of 

 such a thing? But what has that to do with 

 the case? The question is, don't you think 

 you would feel you were in a more stable 

 business if you could be sure that no other 



