SEPTEMBER 1. 1916 



777 



Dr. C. C. Miller 



STRAY STRAWS ^^^^^^^^^^^^ 



M. H. Hunt Avrites : " On page 

 427, Gleanings, June 1, you say 

 it is unfortunate that raising the 

 brood to stop swarming cannot be 

 worked with comb honey. I have 

 done it for 20 years with comb 

 honey, using a ventilated bee-es- 

 cape board on top of the sections. The ven- 

 tilation allows the heat to pass up, and the 

 brood hatches and passes down." 



" It is no us^," says a British authority, 

 " trying to prevent drone-rearing by cutting 

 out drone brood, as the bees will only build 

 drone comb again." It is true, the bees will 

 again build drone comb, but is there not 

 still some use in it? For if drone comb be 

 cut out at ]'?ast once evei-y three weelis, no 

 drones will ^ver come to maturity, and we 

 save all they would eat. Of course, the 

 better thing is to plug the holes with worker 

 comb or worker foundation. 



Wesley Foster^ you say, p. 652, you 

 don't like honey in your hot drink. I don't 

 like it as well as sugar, either, at least most 

 honey. But just to please me I wish you'd 

 use honey anyhow. I'd like to have you 

 live longer. Pick around and try to find 

 some honey less objectionable to your taste. 

 Some honey I can't endure in hot drink. 

 For a time I bought Colorado alfalfa, as 

 having mildest flavor; but the last I got 

 was too strong, and white-clover honey is 

 now my staple. 



I WANTED eggs and larvae in soft new 

 comb, for queen-cells, from No. 67. July 

 17 I gave it an empty frame, not a starter 

 of any kind in it. July 25 I found worker 

 and drone comb built in it, some honey, and 

 a good many worker-cells just started, but 

 not a larva nor an egg in the frame. I left 

 it so, at the same time giving an old black 

 brood-comb, containing no brood of any 

 kind. Aug. 2 I found the new comb as 

 before, plenty of cells that looked as if they 

 might be inviting to the queen, and not a 

 larva or egg in the frame, while the black 

 comb was well occupied with eggs and lar- 

 vae. Now, some of you people — nice, re- 

 spectable people — people that I like, please 

 reconcile the foregoing with the statement 

 that your queens show a preference for new 

 comb while my queens, other things being, 

 equal, always prefer old comb. 



Decidedly interesting is J. E. Hand's 

 analysis of the swarming problem, p. 599. 

 There seems no little to support his view, 

 that diminished fertility causes the building 



of cells, cells cause swarming, an open cell 

 does not cause swarming because " an open 

 cell is not an element of antagonism," and 

 a closed cell causes swarming because " a 

 capped queen-cell is an element of antago- 

 nism to a vigorous queen." But some 

 troublesome questions arise. If a sealed cell 

 is necessary to cause swarming, how is it 

 that I've known many cases in which cells 

 were persistently destroyed and the bees 

 swarmed without waiting for cells to be 

 sealed, in some cases swarming with only 

 eggs in queen-cells? And if diminished 

 fertility on the part of the queen is a 

 necessary factor in swarming, how is it that 

 I have known colonies to swarm with a 

 vigorous queen not a month old, said queen 

 being introduced while the swarming fever 

 was on? The important thing, however, is 

 tlie practice resulting from the theory, and 

 in that Mr. Hand is solid : Requeen "before 

 the zenith of fertility merges into broodi- 

 ness." Yet it must be confessed there are 

 objections to carrying out that practice in 

 all cases. 



Prop. Baldwin, as I was reading what 

 you say, p. 525, about introducing a queen 

 by daubing her with' honey, I said, "But 

 don't you know tliat's more than 50 years 

 old, and long ago laid aside? " Then as I 

 read on about " half a teacupful of honey " 

 it began to look as if you had something 

 different from the old formula, which was 

 merely to daub the queen with honey taken 

 from her new home. Now suppose you tell 

 us minutely just what you do, for success 

 and failure often depend on apparent 

 trifles. [The honey method of introducing 

 was dropped years ago because it was no- 

 ticed that, after the queen was laying, she 

 looked as if she had been thru a period of 

 smothering. Her body would look sleek, 

 and she would look for all the world like 

 some bees that had been nearly smothered 

 to death. The general consensus of opinion 

 at the time was that, while this plan was 

 sometimes successful, it often and generally 

 resulted in injury to the queen. The fact 

 that such queen might die at a time when 

 she could least be spared, during mid- 

 winter or early spring, and that the colony 

 would then be hopelessly queenless, made 

 it unadvisable at the time to recommend the 

 method. Prof. Baldwin, however, is usually 

 careful, and he doubtless has eliminated the 

 objectionable feature. If the queens intro- 

 duced as he recommends look fresh and not 

 as if they had been greased up, it is prob- 

 ably all right. — Ed.] 



