1881 



gleajJ«i:ngs in bee culture. 



439 



find over 8 or 10 lbs. of honey, I extract it down to 

 about that. This I do, both to give room for the 

 queen and for dark crop of honey later. If this is 

 done, I think the first frost will find the bees in 

 much better condition for winter; as, if left undone, 

 many queens will not lay to aniomit to any thing af- 

 ter this, and it is the young bees we want for winter, 

 and plenty of them too. As soon as we have a gen- 

 eral frost over the country for i or .5 miles around, 

 I take ofif the boxes, and when I do this I look over 

 the brood-nest once more, and this is the last time 

 for the season. Now, I put <in the quilt and mark 

 each hive that needs feeding, the number of pounds 

 that, in my judgment, it will want. 



now TO FEED. 



Give time for the brood to hatch, and then take 

 the best granulated sugar, and to ~ pails of sugar 

 put -:, of a pail of hot water. 1 put it right in my ex- 

 tractor, and turn until it is dissolved. Now I can 

 draw it off as I want it. I take six-quart tin pans, as 

 large a number as I want 'to feed in one day, and 

 over the top put a piece of cheese-cloth bandage; 

 fasten this with a string on the outside, just below 

 the wire; give the bandage slack enough to reach 

 the bottom of the pan, and pl.ice a small stone in 

 the pan and on the cloth to hold it down. Set this 

 on the frames, over the brood-nest; fill it, and daub 

 a little on the outside, if they do not come up with- 

 out. A strong stock will carry a pailful down in one 

 night, and then if you want to feed more to the 

 same stock, all you have to do is to till it up again 

 until they have enough; and let me say this whenyou 

 are feeding: Don't stop when you think they have 

 enough feed, until you /r/ioir they can not starve; 

 then set them in a frost-proof and quiet cellar when 

 winter has set in in good earnest, and not before, 

 and next season you will not be beeless. 



N. F. Case. 



Glensdalc, Lewis Co., N. Y., Aug. 2, 1881. 



A FE%V WORDS OF E\Pl^ANATION. 



fROM A. I. Root's comments on my article on 

 page 3T6 of Gleanings, all would infer that I 

 ^^^ had reared all the queens I sent out with the 

 "unnatural" "tinkering" way. The careful reader 

 of my article will sec, if they will re-read it, that I 

 reared queens only by the transpusition process, to 

 supply the lack arising from not having but three 

 queens I cared to breed from, so when these could 

 not be kept swarming I reared by the transposition 

 process. Again: In m}' circular I say queens shall 

 be reared by natural swarming, " as far as passible," 

 and that is just what I have tried to do. I may 

 have failed to word my advertisement just as I 

 should in July Gleanings; but if so, I think noth- 

 ing serious will result therefrom, for I believe that 

 four orders is the total that I have received from 

 that source. Friend Root also says 1 have "criti- 

 cised the way friend Hutchinson, and the rest of us 

 who have raised queens, quite a little." I did criti- 

 cise Novice's way of using old bees for queen-rear- 

 ing, and 1 do so still ; but I believe I never criticised 

 friend Hutchinson. Friend H. took me to task for 

 what I wrote in A. B. J. about Nellis' ad\ice (after 

 Aug. 30) that then was the time to rear good queens; 

 from which there sprung a friendly discussion about 

 late queen-rearing between H. and myself, in which 

 the very important fact came out, which was, that H. 

 fed bis bees plentifully, while qucen-rcaring in the 



fall, which made a very favorable showing for him 

 over many of our queen-breeders-. 



Once more: The caution mentioned, about the 

 bees throwing out the transposed larvfe and using 

 their own, don't apply to the mode which I gave in 

 my article. Where the caution is needed is when 

 there is no queen in the hive; but with the queen 

 just laying in queen-cells the case is different; for 

 if larvtp are removed, the royal jelly is removed al- 

 so, the cell cleared (lut, and the queen lays in it 

 again. There is no need of bees changing larva^ 

 with a 1 lying queen in the hive, and, as far as my 

 observation goes, they never do it. If any one has 

 known where such a thing has been done, will they 

 please report? From close observation for a num- 

 ber of years, I have found that no food is ever 

 placed in a cell till the larvae have -emerged from 

 the egg; that in case of a larva in a worker cell, it is 

 usually fed as a worker for from one to two days 

 before the cell is enlarged for a queen-cell, and that 

 the cell is never enlarged clear down to the base, 

 but that a small portion of the worker cell remains 

 out, of which the larva is floated with royal jelly 

 about the third day. where bees rear queens from 

 eggs deposited in worker cells. Where an egg 

 (placed in a queen-cell) is designed for a queen, it 

 has no food placed around it till it hatches, when it 

 is fed sparingly (so to speak) for 4 or .5 hours, after 

 which an abundance of food is given till sealed 

 over; and that the cell is broad and large from the 

 time the egg is laid till the queen hatches. Now, if 

 what we have observed is correct, and we take from 

 a queen-cell a larva from two to four hours old, 

 reared in natural swarming, and place therein an- 

 other larva of the same age, what is the difference 

 in favor of the former larva? I see none. On the 

 other hand, if we force a stock to rear a queen at 

 times when the swarming impulse don't demand a 

 queen, will it be as apt to be reared with as favor- 

 able conditions as when the instinct implanted in 

 the bees by the Creator of all things tells them to 

 multiply and replenish the earth? Again: Will old 

 bees, which return to their old stand to find brood, 

 queen, and nurse-bees all gone by removal, and a 

 frame of eggs in its place, have the same instinct to 

 rear a queen, the same stomach to prepare royal 

 jelly, and the same large roomy queen-cells for the 

 perfection of the embryo that a J^tock does under 

 the impulse of natural swarming? I only throw out 

 these points in a friendly way for discussion or 

 thought, that we may gain light nn this very impor- 

 tant branch of our industry. 



G. M. DOOLITTLE. 



Borodino, N. Y., Aug. 4, 18^1. 



STATISTICS IN REGARD TO Ol R WIN- 

 TERINO LOSSES. 



flllF. American Bee Journal for July -0 

 contains a valuable statistical table 

 — ' ill regartl to the losses of bees. If I am 

 correct, this shows that the losses of bees 

 kept in the L. frame are less than in any 

 other, or, in fact, all others, in spite of the 

 plea that has so often been urged against its 

 shallowness. It also shows that box hives 

 stand no chance at all. compared with frame 

 hives, in point of losses. On this point, I 

 would suggest that putting frames into the 

 hives may not have any particular advan- 

 tage in wintering, so much as the fact that 

 bee-keepers having frame hives give their 



