JANUARY 1, 1914 



33 



Besides givinfj me a profit of $2.29 per hen they 

 performed valuable service by banishing the wood 

 ants from the bees. When I first put my bees in 

 this place these ants vi'ere very numerous, and 

 swarmed all over the hives. I went for a shovel 

 and sousht out their beds, dug them up to start the 

 chickens scratching, and they did the rest. By 

 scratching up their beds and eating their eggs the 

 ants decided it was too warm a place and moved 

 out. 



Bees and cliickens lived peaceably together all 

 summer. One pullet learned to eat drones, and 

 would catch them at every opportunity; but I never 

 saw her catch a worker. 



Ogden, Utah, Nov. 28. Joseph H. Peterson. 



An Enthusiast in Florida 



This is our sixth winter in the State, and our 

 fourth one here. One winter was spent on the east 

 coast and one at Winterhaven. We have a home 

 here. We like it very much. I have been a Meth- 

 odist minister for over fifty-three years. I shall soon 

 be 76 years old. I am fond of fishing, bee culture, 

 and chicken-raising. I bought three stocks of bees 

 last spring; transferred and Italianized them, and 

 out of the three I made seven. I lost about half of 

 the queens by the king-birds. The bees are all in 

 hives of ten frames. I started north July 3, getting 

 back again Nov. 6. There were two hives in fair 

 condition. The other five were nuclei. I put supers 

 on si.x of the hives. The bottoms of the hives were 

 all well filled. The supers on the two best were well 

 filled — 32 sections from one, and 31 from the other. 

 Another had 17 sections, another 16, and the last 

 had 4 — 100 sections, 4 x 5. All had very good honey. 

 I do not think my bees will be idle more than two 

 months in the j ear. James G. Tetu. 



Tarpon Spring, Fla., Nov. 24. 



A Bunch of Questions 



I have 18 stands of bees, and am going to buy 30 

 stands in the spring. Part of them are in crooked 

 combs, but in L. frames and dovetailed hives, so the 

 ones in crooked combs I shall have to transfer to 

 straight combs. This is a fair locality. Please an- 

 swer the following questions : 



Nn. 1. What kinds of Italians are the best — the 

 golden or leather-colored ? Are they the stock you 

 look to for your surplus honey ? 



2. Do you practice spring feeding to stimulate 

 brood-rearing when the colonies to be fed have plenty 

 of honey ? What proportion do you use of water 

 and sugar? and is there any preference in favor of 

 beet or cane sugar? 



3. What kind of feeder do you use for this pur- 

 pose ? I have chosen the Boardman entrance f eedBr. 

 Is there any danger of starting robbing where the 

 feeders are kept clean and no syrup is besmeared on 

 the outside to entice the bees. 



4. What time in the spring should I transfer my 

 bees? My plan is to wait until the weather gets warm 

 and quite settled, and then drive the bees and queen 

 into a new hive, put a queen-excluder on top of the 

 old hive, and let it remain for 21 days; then drive 

 the rest of the bees into the new hive. 



5. In three weeks I want to divide the new hive 

 and introduce a new queen of the best stock. Is 

 that the right time? 



6. When you divide your bees in the spring, say 

 a ten-frame hive, how many stands do you usually 

 make from a strong or average stand, considering 

 the honey crop more than increase ? How long should 

 the queenless part be without a queen ? Do you put 

 wire cloth over the entrance for two or three days ? 

 This last part would consume lots of time for an 

 outyard four or five miles distant. Is the above way 



a practical plan, or is stuffing the entrance full of 

 grass a better way ? 



7. In buying queens with V2 lb. or 1 lb. of bees, 

 is there any advantage in buying the bees to be only 

 a sort of pad to the queen to prevent injury to her? 

 Should the bees be introduced along with the queen 

 to my queenless colonies? 



8. Do you practice pinching queen-cells through 

 the swarming season to prevent swarming? I am 

 going to run ten-frame hives for comb honey, and 

 eight-frame for extracting. Do you use full sheets 

 of thin foundation for sections? Is there any real 

 gain by it? Do you use bee-escapes for releasing 

 the bees from the supers ? 



9. In raising a few queens to restock with, will 

 the bees make a queen-cell out of a regular-sized 

 honey or worker cell ? In Bulletin 49, by the De- 

 partment of Agriculture, Albany, N. Y., the instruc- 

 tions are to take a frame that has had brood in it 

 once or twice; cut two rows of cells, and leave one. 

 Then let the frame be cared for by a queenless colo- 

 ny ; but it does not state whether it is to be drone- 

 cells or not. Would not the regular cells be too small 

 for queen-cells ? 



10. What kind of wire cloth should I use to make 

 cages for cagini; queens? Can I get it of the reg- 

 ular dealers '! 



Belle Fourche, S. D., Nov. 30. W^. A. LOSH. 



[1. As a general thing we prefer the original 

 strain of Italians — the leather-colored ones. There 

 are some fine strains of goldens ; but most breeders 

 of them have apparently overlooked the business 

 qualities, and breed for color only. This is the rea- 

 son why so many of the goldens are inferio) . 



2. The practice among our best producers is to 

 feed literally in the fall, and to avoid spring feeding 

 as much as possible. Still, there are times when stim- 

 ulative feeding in the spring can be practiced to ad- 

 vantage. But very often a beginner does more harm 

 than good. For stimulative feeding we use equal 

 parts of sugar and water well stirred together. For 

 fall or winter feeding, we use two parts of sugar to 

 one of water. 



There is no preference between the two sugars ; in 

 fact, there is no possible way of detecting the differ- 

 ence, even by the best chemists. 



3. Of all the feeders on the market we prefer the 

 Boardman. It is excellent for stimulating, and does 

 well in early fall in feeding up for winter. It is not, 

 however, suitable for late feeding. Where one de- 

 sires to give a colony its full supply of stores at one 

 or two feeds it is too small. In this case the Miller 

 feeder is Leiter. 



The Boardman will not cause robbing if one will 

 use ordinary precaution. The outside of the cans 

 and the feeder blocks must be cleaned of any daub 

 of syrup, and the colony must be strong enough to 

 put up a fair defense at its entrance. In feeding 

 weak nuclei an inside feeder, or, better still, slabs 

 of candy are Letter. 



4. The best time to transfer in the Northern States 

 is in the spring during fruit-bloom; but the work 

 may be done at any time of the year providing there 

 is no danger of robbing. If practiced during the 

 clover flow it will cause more or less of an interrup- 

 tion with the colony ; and if the season has been on 

 for any length of time it means the cutting up of 

 combs that are heavy with honey. By transferring 

 in the spring during fruit-bloom it avoids this. 



Your plan of procedure as outlined is not quite 

 cl:ar to us. It we understand you correctly you mean 

 that you drive the bees with their queen into a new 

 hive on empty combs or frames of foundation. We 

 infer that the old hive is left on the old stand, and 

 that the new hive with its bees and queen is put on 

 top of the old stand, with perforated zinc between. 

 If this is your plan you will be doing an unneces- 

 sary lot of work. Better by far remove the old hive 

 from its stand a few feet. Put the new hive on the 



