JANUARY 15, 1914 



4S 



Stray Straws 



Dr. C. C. Miller, Marengo, 111. 



J. E. Hand, thanks for sounding a needed 

 warning note as to feeding sugar, p. 858. 

 Besides the reasons you give against it, 

 there is, 1 think, another. In honey there 

 are elements not found in sugar (iron, etc.), 

 and these may be of great importance to the 

 health of bees, even though small in quan- 

 tity. 



Replying to Thos. P. Bowles, I would say 

 that it is as well to have the same number 

 of sections ready in advance when prospects 

 are poor as when they are good. After a 

 severe drouth, all clover apparently killed, 

 I've had (|uite a crop; although little or 

 nothing may be expected next year from 

 plants starting from seed next spring. But 

 honey may come from unexpected sources. 

 At any rate, foundation in sections will 

 keep all right till the first good year that 

 comes. 



Robert Hudson asks if Caucasians look 

 like liybrids. They look more like blacks — 

 so much so that sometimes an expert may be 

 fooled. There are, however, yellow Cau- 

 casians that look more like Italians. [Cau- 

 casians look so much like blacks that we do 

 not believe that even experts can tell the 

 difference. Sometimes it is very difficult 

 to distinguish the difference between Carni- 

 olans and blacks, although the former have 

 more of a bluish-black appearance than a 

 grayish black. — Ed.] 



John Phin, recognized authority on agriculture, 

 died of pneumonia at St. Joseph's Hospital in Pater- 

 son, N. J. He was 85 years old. It was as a micro- 

 scopist that he became prominent after retirement 

 from teaching twenty years ago. He wrote more 

 than 200 books on scientific and other subjects. — 

 Chicago Daily, Jan. 1, 1914. 



Another good friend gone. He kept 

 abreast of the times in matters apicultural 

 to the last, and not long ago wrote me that 

 he still kept one colony of bees. [We also 

 have been having some delightful correspon- 

 dence with Mr. John Phin. We first made 

 his acquaintance when we were studying the 

 microscope nearly 40 years ago. We read 

 with delight his book on the subject, and 

 his journal on microscopy, published at the 

 time. We had lost track of him until a re- 

 cent letter showed that he still maintained 

 his interest in bees. Perhaps some of our 

 older readers will remember that some years 

 ago he got out a dictionary of beekeeping 

 terms. — Ed.] 



" Mr. Pritchard believes that hard candy 

 is the best material to feed in an emergency 

 during cold weather," p. 29. No doubt that's 

 right ; and with emphasis on the " emergen- 



cy," the emergency being when good honey 

 can not be obtained ; for I don't believe 

 that sugar candy is ever as good for man or 

 bee as the best honey. [That depends. We 

 have put some colonies on dry combs, and 

 all they have is dry candy. The candy is 

 the thing that induces brood-rearing, and 

 perhaps you would not use it for that rea- 

 son. What we are after is a large force of 

 bees early in the spring. Sealed honey or 

 sealed stores of any kind do not invite 

 brood-rearing. Indeed, it is our opinion 

 that colonies will go into a state of hiber- 

 nation on sealed stores more readily than on 

 any other kind of feed that can be given. — 

 Ed.] 



1 don't know that I've ever taken much 

 part in the controversy about bees moving 

 eggs, but it never seemed reasonable to me 

 that bees would do such a thing. To be sure, 

 eggs have been reported where no queen 

 could reach; but there was no accompany- 

 ing affidavit that no laying worker was in 

 the hive. Queen-cells were also found in 

 such places, but I don't remember that any 

 one ever reported that a good queen came 

 from such cells. If the thing had been fol- 

 lowed up I should have expected a dead 

 drone to have been found in the cell. 



But, June 6, No. 49 swarmed. The queen 

 was caged, and the cage stuck in the en- 

 trance. Ten days later, when cells were 

 killed and the queen freed, on one of the 

 combs was found a spot perhaps two inches 

 square rather compactly filled with young 

 brood and eggs. Somewhat curiously, pre- 

 cisely the same thing occuiTed with No. 14, 

 and with the same dates, only in No. 14 

 three queen-cells were started with very 

 young larvas. Here was my chance to see 

 what would come from the brood in that 

 comb, and especially from those queen-cells. 

 I put; the comb in an upper story over an 

 excluder, and some time after the cells were 

 sealed I tore one of them open. The inmate 

 didn't look like a drone. I put the other 

 two in a nursery, and in due time put the 

 resulting queens — for any thing I could see 

 they looked like any other queens — into 

 nuclei, and when they were laying they were 

 introduced into Nos. 6 and 27, and, so far 

 as I know, they are doing duty as faithful 

 sovereigns in those two colonies to-day. Now, 

 will some obliging friend with a better stock 

 of argument than I possess please come to 

 my aid and help to explain how all this 

 happened without admitting that the bees 

 carried eggs dropped by the queen while in 

 the cage? 



