MAY 1, 1916 



Dr. C. C. Miller 



STRAY STRAWS I M-^-go-'" 



Prof. Baldwin, I like - your 

 looks, p. 300. Come on in. 



Advice is given, p. 301, to put 

 tlie queen below the excluder when 

 transferring. All right; but it 

 needs watching unless a brood is 

 put with the queen. I knew a man 

 to lose his best queen by leaving her below 

 an excluder with no brood. Two cold days 

 came; the bees de.serted the queen and left 

 her to perish. The man was no greenhorn 

 either, for I'd been keeping bees some 50 

 years. 



The water method of transferring, p. 

 302. " While the two hive-bodies are held 

 in contact, very slowly lower the box hive 

 into the water until the bees have been 

 forced off the old combs." That will take 

 some time; and won't it be pretty hard on 

 the arms? Wouldn't it be just as well to 

 put the hive in the dry tub, and then " very 

 slowly " pour in water? 



R. F. HOLTERMANN, you Say, p. 310, " I 

 clip the wings on both sid&s." I wonder 

 why. It's less trouble to clip only one side, 

 and it's handy to have a wing to catch the 

 queen by. The only thing I can think of 

 in favor of clipping both sides is that you 

 can more surely disting-uish the clipping 

 when you get a fleeting glimpse of the 

 queen, and I'm not sure of that. Please 

 tell why. [Clipping a queen on both sides 

 would make her more conspicuous, perhaps, 

 but it would be rather difficult to pick her 

 up when it is desired to transfer her to 

 another colony. But after all, does not the 

 one-side clipping make the queen conspicu- 

 ous enough? She certainly cannot fly, and 

 it is up to Holtermann to explain the 

 reason why. — Ed.] 



Now comes Penn G. Snyder, and says: 

 " Sugar 21/2 -\- 1 water equals 31/2 bulk 

 (your figure). Honey, 3V2 bulk, holds 1-5 

 water, or 2.8 sugar and .7 water. So your 

 recipe, 21/^ sugar to 1 water will contain 

 more water than the same bulk of honey." 

 Your arithmetic is off color a bit, friend 

 Snyder, in the present case ; for if you add 

 a pint of water to 21/2 pints of sugar you 

 will find in your vessel, not 3y2, but some- 

 where about 2V2 pints. So in the present 

 case 2]/^ plus 1 e<juaLs 2^2- I'^t if you say 

 " Aveight " instead of " bulk " you've got 

 me. and I acknowledge the corn. 



" A pint's a pound the world around " is 

 true of dry sugai' and a good many other 

 things, but not of honey nor of any mixture 



of sugar and water. I took 8 parts (by 

 bulk) of sugar, and as 1 added water to it, 

 little by little, it gradually shrank in bulk 

 — the more water added the less the mixture 

 — until I had added one part water, and 

 there were then 5 parts of the combined 

 sugar and water. That was the limit of the 

 shrinkage. After that each part of water 

 added made one part more of the mixture. 



When I said I had found in sealed queen- 

 cells gn^-ubs not half grown, it did not occur 

 to me that I was butting my head against 

 orthodox teachings. Now comes that het- 

 erodox chap, Arthur C. Miller, and says: 

 " Don't you know that all the orthodox 

 teaching is that the queen-grubs do receive 

 and must receive a constant and abundant 

 supply of the same rich food as is given to 

 worker-grubs during their first three days ?" 

 Well, it's the bees that are heterodox, and 

 neither of us Millers. I told only what I 

 saw. Arthur C. goes on to say, " The fact 

 is, the little sealed-up grub is as well or 

 better off than her unsealed sister," and 

 explains that it's the enzymes that keep the 

 baby's mess from going stale, even if it gets 

 nothing fresh for two or three days. 



Dr. N. E. McIndoo, one of Dr. Phillips' 

 fellow-conspirators at Wasliington, it will 

 be remembered, not long ago gave as the 

 result of his investigations that tire smell- 

 organs of the bee were to be found almost 

 anywhere except in the antennae, where we 

 liad been taught they were. He lias not by 

 any means given up his upsetting investiga- 

 tions. In his latest work, while saying that 

 he has found some organs of smell in the 

 antennse, he ruthlessly shatters all our ideas 

 about the delicate and discriminating taste 

 of the bee by saying and proving — that it 

 has no taste at all — only smell. It ha]ipen- 

 ed that, soon after reading his work, I saAv 

 a dog after a rabbit. The rabbit was not 

 in sight, but the dog at a full trot was 

 following- the trail by the scent. The rab- 

 bit had gone over the ground at a lively 

 gait ; and if you or I had held our noses to 

 the ground perfectly still, it is not likely 

 we should have discovered any odor of the 

 rabbit by the most careful sniffing; yet that 

 dog kept track of it while on the run. Now, 

 ]i()W much stronger is that dog's sense of 

 smell than ours? Probably a hundred times 

 as great. If so, is it at all impossible that 

 the bee may go the dog a hundred better? 

 So it doesn't look at all imjxKSsible that a 

 bee may meui a basswood tree or a field of 

 clover two miles or inoie awav. 



