1911 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



171 



have lost heavily already, and they say the 

 shaking plan did not save them, but cost 

 them lots of money. 



Mr. J. T. Greene told us at the Ontario 

 Co. meeting that he expended $750 a year 

 ago on Italian queens.and comb foundation. 

 The disease, however, reappeared in the 

 shaken swarms, and he is pursuing different 

 methods with better results, but finds it ab- 

 solutely necessary to use young Italian 

 queens in connection with his treatment. 

 Only such combs are destroyed as are very 

 badly afTected; the rest are placed in upper 

 stories over excluders, queens left below. 

 After ten days the brood-combs are return- 

 ed. By that time the combs have been 

 cleaned out. It will generally become nec- 

 essary, when foul brood makes its appear- 

 ance, to reduce the colonies in numbers, 

 uniting two or more till a good force of bees 

 is at hand in every hive. Following this 

 method of treatment he succeeded this past 

 season, so that he could sell $2000 worth of 

 honey, with his bees much improved, 

 though not entirely cured. Mr. Greene is 

 preparing to rear his own queens next sea- 

 son, although he says that queens can not 

 be reared in colonies aflfected with European 

 foul brood; but queens reared in foul-brood- 

 afifected vicinities may be better — the theo- 

 ry being that the bees become more and 

 more immune, only those surviving that 

 are most disease-resisting. 



WINTERING IN SINGLE-WALLED HIVES. 



The subject of wintering has also not en- 

 tirely lost its interest among the bee-keep- 

 ing fraternity. There were several at the 

 New York State meeting, as well as at the 

 Ontario Co. meeting, who had come to the 

 conclusion that chafl hives are not needed 

 for outdoor wintering — in fact, they preferred 

 the single- walled hive with a good packing 

 of forest leaves on top of the brood-chamber, 

 and no sealed cover. Mr. H. L. Case went 

 so far as to say that he would give more 

 for a colony in a single-walled hive thus 

 prepared than for one in his large cumber- 

 some Quinby hives, other things beiiig 

 equal. Dr. Schamu was & second to him. 

 However, there was some opposition. Mr. 

 Howe came out strongly on the other side, 

 claiming that, in his northern clime, bees 

 could not be wintered out of doors by any 

 method with any degree of safety. Some 

 years they might winter, and some they 

 would not. 



I once visited Mr. Howe's bee-cellar after 

 the bees had been in it several months. It 

 was in March, and the bees were very quiet, 

 the hives clean. We "poked" around 

 among the hives for a half-hour without the 

 bees becoming in the least disturbed. We 

 even turned some hives up to observe the 

 color of the bees, etc. Mr. Howe's bee-cel- 

 lar is under his dwelling; has a cement 

 floor, ventilation through a tube vipward; 

 no special provision is made for the incom- 

 ing of fresh air. There were 275 colonies 

 stored in it; passageways were left between 

 the rows of tiered-up hives. Most hives 

 were painted, but some were not. The fact 



that the large stock of new hives was paint- 

 ed or being painted shows that he considers 

 it best to paint. The bees have usually 

 wintered well in this cellar. 



OBTAINING A LARGE NUMBER OF QUEEN- 

 CELLS CHEAPLY. 



We seldom hold a bee-keepers' meeting 

 when the subject of queen-rearing does not 

 receive its share of attention. Mr. Case gave 

 his rather novel plan of having quantities of 

 fine queen-cells built. It was given a year 

 ago as well as this year at the Ontario Co., 

 N. Y., meeting. The plan is this: A nice 

 clean comb is given to the breeding colony. 

 Four days later the comb, then full of eggs 

 and larvse, is prepared in a warm room as 

 follows: With a knife incisions are made 

 with the rows of cells, to the midribs, all 

 ov^er the comb. Then with a chisel every 

 other strip is removed, leaving the rows of 

 cells separated. In every row thus left, ev- 

 ery other cell is destroyed with a match. 

 Thus prepared, the comb is given to a queen- 

 less and broodless colony above the top-bars 

 of frames horizontally supported with space 

 enough to allow for the queen-cells to be 

 built. The bees take very kindly to such 

 an arrangement, he says, and build a great 

 many fine cells (he has had 75 built on one 

 comb at one time) . It beats the larva-trans- 

 fer method "all hollow." The writer of 

 this believes the above a very good plan 

 where one needs many cells at a time. Dr. 

 Phillips, of Washington, gave very much 

 the same method of producing queen-cells, 

 at our State meeting in Geneva, Dec. 12, 

 1910. 



A QUICK WAY OF FINDING QUEENS. 



Having so many cells to dispose of, it will 

 be necessary to find many queens, and a 

 quick systematic method for finding them 

 will be welcome, particularly with black 

 and brown bees. The Hannemann method 

 of running the bees through a sieve recom- 

 mends itself. Mr. H. L. Case and the in- 

 spectors in our State employ it. They 

 shake the bees off their combs into a box 

 with a perforated queen-excluding metal 

 bottom reaching partly up the sides. The 

 box (or sieve) is placed in front of the hive 

 entrance. The one I have used stands on 

 short wire legs. The bees, when dislodged 

 from their combs, climb hastily through the 

 perforations and back into their hives. The 

 drones with the queen are left behind. Mr. 

 Case says he finds a queen every five min- 

 utes with this arrangement. I would say I 

 have also used an entrance-guard for the 

 same purpose, but the bees are then a good 

 while longer getting back into their hive 

 than they are with this sieve. 



Naples, N. Y., Jan. 13. 



Odor of Tobacco from the Cigar box Killed the 

 Bees. 



Referring to the bees in the cigar-box, p. 52, Jan. 

 15, surely the odor of tobacco killed the bees. I had 

 the same experience. Don't go hunting bees with 

 a cigar-box either. 



Rolfe, Pa. J. Wheeler. 



