June 1. 1911 



343 



3. Is It good policy to save supersedure cells? or 

 will they transmit supersedure in the young queens? 



4. Is it necessary to cage a virgin for a day or so 

 before introducing her to a nucleus of young bees? 



5. Why is it, that, after bringing the virgin queens 

 from larvae to mating time, so many are lost or not 

 accepted? 



Heber, Cal., April :%. P. .S. Martin. 



[Dr. Miller, to whom this letter was written, re- 

 plies:] 



1. That's all nonsense about there being any na- 

 vel cord or any sort of attachment to break loose. 

 All conditions being right, a queen from a grafted 

 cell may be as good as any. 



2. Yes, any location is all right where the cells are 

 well covered with bees. 



3. Supersedure cells are as good as any. 1 fear 

 you have some wrong idea about supersedure when 

 you talk about its being transmitted. Please re- 

 member that every queen, in the natural course of 

 events, is superseded. If you could have bees that 

 would supersede their queens always without any 

 swarming you would have a bonanza. 



4. If the nucleus has not been queenless for a day 

 or so, and if the virgin is several days old, it re- 

 quires care. The older the virgin, the more diffi- 

 cult to Introduce. A virgin just out of the cell will 

 be accepted anywhere, even in a hive with a laying 

 queen; but in the latter case she will likely be 

 killed as soon as she becomes old enough to put on 

 airs. 



5. I don't know — are they? I don't think I lose 

 one in ten. Possibly bad weather may have some- 

 thing to do with it, and in some places there are 

 predatory insects or birds that snap up the virgins 

 on their wedding-flight. 



Queen Larrae Susceptible to Foul Brood. 



Before me lies Circular 79, issued by the I'nited 

 States Department of Agriculture, the title of which 

 is, "The Brood Diseases of Bees," its author being 

 E. F. Phillip.s, Ph. D. In this circular, p. 2, he says, 

 referring to American foul brood, "This disease 

 seldom attacks drone or queen larva-." My experi- 

 ence this past summer in my own apiary leads me 

 to question the reliability of this statement. What 

 colonies I owned last spring were hybrids. 1 deter- 

 mined to Italianize my entire stock before winter. 

 To get ijure stock 1 ordered six two-frame nuclei 

 with a pure tested queen in each. These, as 1 stated 

 in a former article, developed American foul brood, 

 which, because of my ignorance of the di.sease, was 

 soon spread throughout my whole apiary, only a 

 few colonies remaining free from the disease. Some 

 queen-cells I secured from one of my neighbors 

 were grafted into some combs in one of my colonies 

 which I had divided. I expected them to hatch out 

 in due time. When 1 examined them I found only 

 one left, and that larva was as putrid as any of the 

 brood I had in the same stage of the disease. Later 

 I made some two-frame baby hives, and gave them 

 bees and frames with eggs from my pure Italian 

 stock, and in not a single instance did they succeed 

 in rearing a queen. They all died soon after the 

 cells were capped over. My experience is that 

 queen larvae are as susceptible to the disease as the 

 brood larvae. 1 should like to hear from others on 

 this subject. 



Ashton, 111., Jan. 13. Rev. G. A. Walter. 



I 



The Yew-tree as a Honey-plant. 



I know a territory about fifty miles distant where 

 woods have grown all around the town. There are 

 hundreds of acres of the yew-tree, commonly called 

 the " tree of paradi.se " or " tree of heaven." 1 have 

 seen these trees in small clumps about farmhouses, 

 and have been told that they produce an abun- 

 dance of nectar, but that they have a very peculiar 

 strong smell, which, if retained by the honey, may 

 render it unprofitable. I'failtoflnd any mention 

 of this tree In the ABC and X Y Z, nor in other 

 bee-books to which I have referred. The poplar, or 

 tulip, which I know to be an excellent .source of 

 nectar, is also plentiful in the neighborhood. 



Kewanee, Mo. K. T. .Joyce. 



[While the yew-tree may yield honey in your lo- 

 cality, it is not generally recognized as a nectar- 

 bearing tree in most localities, If we are correct. 

 Our ABC and X Y Z of Bee Culture, with few ex- 

 ceptions, attempts to take account of only those 

 plants or trees that yield honey in commercial 

 quantities. The exceptions refer to certain plants 

 that are remarkable either for theii beauty or for 



their novelty. If any one can give us information 

 showing that the yew-tree, or tree of paradise, 

 yields honey in commercial quantities, we shall be 

 glad to give it recognition in our A BC book. — Kd.] 



Do Bees Draw Out the Foundation, or Build the 

 Cells on it? 



Is it true that bees take a sheet of foundation and 

 draw it out into cells without the use of additional 

 wax? or do they use the foundation for a guide, and, 

 by the use of additional wax, build thereon the 

 cells? 



AN ABNORMAL CLUSTER OF BEES. 



The other day 1 discovered a great number of 

 bees busy building queen-cells in a hive whose col- 

 ony died early this spring. 1 looked over every 

 frame carefully, but could find no sign of either a 

 queen nor of any larva"; consequently I decided to 

 take a frame of brood from another hive so as to 

 give an opportunity for getting a queen. This I 

 did, and to-day 1 see that the bees have a queen- 

 cell in preparation on the brood-frame. In the first 

 place, did I do right in giving the bees the brood ? 

 Next, where could those bees have come from with- 

 out a queen? Could it be that, liecause I changed 

 the position of the four otiier hh es. some bees lost 

 their bearings and all (•lul)bed together in that old 

 hive? 



Poughkeepsie, N. Y., April 27. R. E. Holland. 



[Bees draw out started cells of the foundation, 

 and also build on with wax of their own making to 

 bring the comb to the proper thickness. It de- 

 pends upon the weight of foundation used as to 

 how far they can draw out the cells started. We 

 are not sure that we can do more than approxi- 

 mate this distance; but we feel certain that they 

 draw out the foundation so that the cells are irom 

 YitoVi inch in depth. 



It might be that a small after-swarm with a vir- 

 gin queen found this hive and entered it. Then, 

 later, as the virgin queen went out to fly, if she 

 missed her hive it would leave the bees in just the 

 condition you found them. It is a little early for 

 much swarming, and hence we do not know tliat 

 this is the right explanation. If .vou changed the 

 location of your four other c(jlonies during a time 

 of the year when bees were flying, and left this one 

 colony near where the other colonies had been 

 standing, then it is ijrobable, as you say, that the 

 bees that were lost In trying to find their old hive 

 all went into this one hive and clubbed together to 

 make up the abnormal colony without a queen. 

 However, in either case you did just right in giving 

 a frame of brood. A ripe queen-cell would have 

 been even better if you had had one.— Kd.] 



Comb Honey Produced in Thin Sections Without 

 Separators. 



Some time ago J read an article by W. K. Morri- 

 son on the use of special sections in which bees 

 would begin work sooner than in other kinds. I 

 took Wi. X Wi. X V/f. two-beeway sections and worked 

 them over, making them four-beeway — 15i at the 

 wide part and one inch at the narrow part. I filled 

 an eight-frame T-super, and the bees went right to 

 work. All the sections except two rows on the out- 

 sides were filled straight, even though I used no 

 separators. The inner sides of the second rows of 

 sections were all right, but the outer sides were 

 bulged out half way into the outside rows, and the 

 room left in the two outside rows was built in ac- 

 cording to bee nature. Can you give us a few 

 pointers on the xise of such sections? I believe I 

 should have had more honey if I had had more of 

 these sections: but why were part of them so nicely 

 built and the rest not? 



Paola, Kan., April 7. .1. A. Shelhammer. 



[Quite a number of bee-keepers are successful in 

 getting comb honey built straight and even, with- 

 out separators; but the majority have found that 

 separators are needed in the long run. It takes 

 good strong colonies, a quick honey-flow, and ideal 

 conditions all around to produce comb honey, and 

 these conditions must be well nigh perfect before 

 comb honey can be produced right along without 

 separators. We are not saying that those who suc- 

 ceed in producing good honey without separators 

 are making a mistake; but we do insist that, in the 

 majority of instances, the plan is not entirely suc- 

 cessUil. — Kd.J 



