c 



March, 1917 



BUYING colo- 

 nies in box 

 hives at 

 $1.50 each is 

 better than to in- 

 crease when 

 sugar is high, p. 

 55. May it not 

 be better even 

 when sugar is low, if you take into account 

 that you gain a year in the liarvest with 

 the box hives'? 



Prof. Baldwin advises, when introduc- 

 ing a queen by sousing in honey, to have 

 the entrance narrowed for a day so as to 

 avoid robbing, p. 1161, Dec. 1. Possibly 

 it might be still better to operate in the 

 evening, so everytliing would be cleaned up 

 before morning. 



SuPERSEDURE of queens is not infrequent- 

 ly spoken of as a thing rather exceptional. 

 Think it over carefully, and see if you 

 don't settle down to the belief that, in the 

 natural course of affairs, barring accident 

 and interference of the beekeeper, every 

 laying queen ends her career by being super- 

 seded by the bees. 



J. H. J. HamelberG; p. 1167, you go 

 half an inch beyond me when you say " the 

 distance between the floor and the bottom- 

 bars of the brood-frame is 2V2 inches." But 

 you don't say how you prevent the bees 

 from building down in such a deep space. 

 Or don't the bees build down in the Dutch 

 lang-uage ? 



Walter J. Bailey^s ventilator, p. 1166, 

 looks like a good thing'. But the super sits 

 square on the hive. As it is an extracting- 

 super, why not shove it forward so as to 

 leave a ventilating-space of -^ or % inch 

 at the back end? Then the next super 

 could be shoved backward leaving a space 

 in front, and so on, staggering the pile. 



Have you made up your mind to improve 

 your stock by breeding from the best? If 

 you've begun only now to think about it, 

 you will hardly know which is your best 

 colony this year, and must guess the best 

 you can. But it's none too early now to lay 

 your plans for the breeding of 1918. Keep 

 a written record of eacli colony. If brood 

 is given to a colony to help it to build \\Y> in 

 the spring, or if brood is taken from it to 

 help others, put it down. Especially give 

 each colony credit for its honey each time 

 you take any from it. If you do that faith- 

 full}' this year you will have an intelligent 

 idea as to which colony or colonies to breed 

 from in 1918. There's big money in it. 



" Gleanings has decided it will accept no 

 advertisement from any pound-package man 

 unless he will furnish satisfactory refer- 



gleanings in bee culture 



STRAY STRAWS 



3 



Dr. C. C. Miller 



U 



enoL'S, guaran- 

 teeing pure 

 stdck and safe 

 arrival," p. 11. 

 I'd prefer im- 

 ]iure stock by 

 the pound, if so 

 represented, and 

 at a little lower 

 jirice. [Impure stock will not resist Euro- 

 pean foul brood as will pure stock; and it 

 will cost no more to furnish good stock than 

 poor stock. Why not furnish the best? 

 —Ed.] 



When a laying queen ends her career, 

 wliat kind of death does she die? I know 

 tliat normally she is superseded by the bees; 

 but I don't know whether she is killed by 

 the young queen or by the workers (it seems 

 rather horrible to think of one of her own 

 children killing her, whether queen or work- 

 er), or whether she dies a natural death. 

 Some one please tell us. 



J. E. Crane asks, p. 48, why I don't use 

 free-hanging frames, just as Langstroth 

 made them. I did use them many years. 

 They take less time for taking out frames, 

 but that gain is greatly overbalanced by the 

 amount of time it takes to put the frames 

 in ; and with the utmost care one can't space 

 them as regularly as the self-sj^acers. Then, 

 too, there is trouble with the frames twist- 

 ing, allowing bottom-bars to touch. 



Some one is reported, p. 56, as getting 

 even with the Dadants — freedom from 

 swarming — by having two stories for the 

 queen till a week before harvest, then put- 

 ting eggs and unsealed brood in the lower 

 story, hatching brood in the upper story, 

 an excluder between, p. 56. I'm pretty 

 sure my bees would swarm with that treat- 

 ment. But they might not — I think gener- 

 ally would not — with hatching brood below 

 and unsealed brood above. 



A. I. Root, you tell us, p. 65, that you 

 thought of taking the best potato, evidently 

 having jiicked it out, then thought better of 

 it, took another-, and passed the dish over to 

 Mrs. Root. So long as you had your eye 

 on the best, it would have been better to 

 pass that directly to Mrs. Root, not giving 

 her the chance to folloAV her usual custom 

 of taking the poox'est. At our house there 

 is no trouble as to selection — the potatoes 

 are all best. Mrs. Miller raises them. 



" For early sprixi;. while the bees are 

 building up, I crowd the frames up to 1% 

 to 1%, so that the bees can cover more 

 space," says F. H. Cyrenius, p. 63. The 

 closer tlie spacing the more combs the bees 

 can cover. But somewhere there comes a 

 point where the spacing is so close that 



