FEBRUARY 1, 1916 



Dr. C. C. Miller 



STRAY STRAWS ^^^^^^^^ 



I AM quoted in Bienen-Vater, p. 

 180, as saying in Gleanings that 

 there is no buckwheat in America. 

 That was heather (Heide), friend 

 Richter, I was talking about. 

 Plenty of buckwheat here. 



Grace Allen, p. 6, I don't believe a 

 pound of two-to-one syrup equals a pound 

 of honey for wintering. About 1.07 pounds 

 comes nearer to it; but a little extra must 

 be added to pay for evaporating out the 

 extra water. Make syrup 2^/2 to 1, and 

 there will be no extra water. 



RiETSCHE foundation-presses are used by 

 the thousand in Europe, beekeepers mak- 

 ing their own foundation. But it's expen- 

 sive business. Franz Richter once told 

 about a beautiful lot, faultlessly made, but 

 it took 2 2/3 times as much wax as for the 

 same number of sheets of Weed foundation. 



To get a label to stay en a five-pound 

 pail is not easy. A good thing is to have 

 the paper long enough to reach around the 

 pail and lap over, with the label printed 

 twice upon it. [If you get the right kind 

 of prepared paste the label will adhere to 

 tin. We have no trouble of that kind ; but 

 it is not an easy thing to make up a paste 

 that will do it. — Ed.] 



Swiss beekeepers claim a near approach 

 to non-swarming bees (black bees), and 

 reports seem to warrant the claim. Of 29.3 

 reporting for the past season, 203 have had 

 no swarm, 74 few, and 16 many swarms. 

 Nor is this different from reports for a 

 number of years past. — ScJiweis. Bztg., 424:. 

 I believe non-swarming bees are just as 

 possible as non-sitting hens. 



According to Leipziger Bienenzeitimg, 

 p. 173, I tried for years to secure larger 

 bees by having them reared in drone-cells. 

 No, Pastor Fleisehmann, I never tried the 

 experiment. But I did get bees from Flor- 

 ida so large that their worker-cells were as 

 large as ordinary drone-cells. How they 

 were secured I don't know. And I don't 

 know whether they were worth more than 

 bees of usual size. 



C. JuNGFLEiscH reports, L'Apiculteur, 

 75, that he made a super from the boards 

 of an old hive. It was well glued inside, 

 and he planed and painted it outside. Blis- 

 ters formed under the paint; and on trying 

 to flatten them with his fingers lie found 

 they were filled with water. He reluctantly 

 concluded it was better in summer to have 



supers without paint, and still more impor- 

 tant for hives in winter. 



That diagram, p. 1010. Please don't fail 

 to note that item of "undetermined matter," 

 3.68 per cent, or one in every 27 parts. 

 Those things—iron, phosphoric acid, etc., 

 are not found in sugar, and so they give to 

 honey a value as food that is not found in 

 sugar. Indeed, in some eases they make 

 honey an invaluable medicine. Some day 

 cane sugar will be considered a rather poor 

 substitute for honey as an article of food 

 for the human family — also for the bee 

 family. 



" Two men with a rope can carry bees in 

 so that they will hardly know that they 

 have been moved," p. 1015. Two men did 

 better than that here, Dec. 4. With never 

 a veil or a glove, each one picked up a hive, 

 hugged it to his bosom, took it into cellar 

 and set it in place, doing the job in just 

 half the time they could have done it with 

 a rope. But they were eight-frame hives; 

 and if Doolittle says I'd be better off with 

 larger hives, I'm not going to have any 

 argument with him. 



Jung-Klaus, the brilliant Sammal Korb 

 man, quotes in Deutsche Imker, p. 184, a 

 paragraph about my enthusiasm and record 

 crop and then says that if it is true that 100 

 kilograms average per colony of comb hon- 

 ey is possible only in America, and there 

 only by taking away all honey at the time 

 of harvest, and then systematically feeding 

 back — sugar. Guess again, friend Jung- 

 Klaus. No man in Europe is more bitterly 

 opposed than I am to sugar-feeding — have 

 not fed a grain for years. Besides, as it 

 was all comb honey you can see I could take 

 it only from the supers, leaving the stores 

 in the brood-chamber untouched. He fur- 

 ther thinks that all my enthusiasm is for the 

 '' almighty dollar," and that a genuine bee- 

 enthusiast will suffer ten years of failure 

 and still carry in his heart enthusiasm for 

 the little bee. True enough; but does it 

 follow that success would kill such a man's 

 enthusiasm? Even if that be true, I've had 

 difficulties enough to keep my enthusiasm 

 alive. At the end of my first eleven years 

 of beekeeping, after having first and last 

 bouglit quite a number of colonies, at one 

 time having had 50 colonies, all I had to 

 show for my eleven years of effort was two 

 colonies! and I've had plenty of failures 

 since (hen. Don't you think, Jung-Klaus, 

 you can afford to credit me with a little 

 enthusiasm? Just a little, please, 



