1906 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



495 



even when full of honey, as high as I can 

 reach; and it is necessary that this weight 

 should not come directly on the sections. In 

 piling up sections that are to stay any length 

 of time in the crates, always lay a piece of 

 paper over each one, which makes it practi- 

 cally dust-proof, especially if the paper is 

 long enough to extend down over the ends 

 of the crates. 



Pile your honey in a hot dry place. If 

 there if any suspicion of coolness or damp- 

 ness about it, do not put the honey near the 

 floor or in a corner. Have it at least a foot 

 from the floor, and where the air can circu- 

 late freely all around it. 



LIGHT BROOD FOUNDATION. 



Friend Scholl argues on page 208 for the 

 use of the lighter grades of foundation. I 

 had always myself believed in the use of 

 light foundation. I made it myself, and 

 never had any trouble with it on account of 

 light weight. But two years ago I filled a 

 number of frames with light brood founda- 

 tion, well wired. When I came to use these 

 frames, I found the foundation buckled and 

 bulged so that I hardly got a perfect comb 

 from the lot. Three reasons occur to me 

 for this. One is that the frames were filled 

 in cold weather. Some have claimed that 

 such will always buckle.* Another is that 

 the frames had been stored in a rather warm 

 place for a time previous to use— possibly 

 too warm for the foundation to stand. The 

 other is that it was the new Weed-process 

 foundation. Some claim that this buckles 

 worse than the old process. Which of these 

 reasons is responsible, or whether the fail- 

 ure is to be laid to a combination of two or 

 more, I do not know. I wish I did. Heavi- 

 er foundation of the same make had worked 

 all right the season before. In this case the 

 use of light foundation was far from being 

 a saving, if it was the weight that was re- 

 sponsible. 



SIZE OF ENTRANCE FOR SPRING. 



Better contract the entrances of the hives 

 pretty closely until the weather gets warm 

 and the colonies strong. This helps along 

 brood- rearing by keeping the hive warm, 

 and is a safeguard against robbing. 



SIZE OF ENTRANCE FOR WINTER. 



Last fall I objected to the advice to con- 

 tract the entrance of the hive for winter. I 

 am more than eveir of the opinion that it is 

 best to have a good- sized entrance until 

 brood-rearing begins in the spring and the 

 weather is reasonably warm and settled. 

 L-ist fall I inspected an apiary which I found 

 in unusually good condition for the season. 

 All except some of the later swarms were 

 strong in bees, and with an abundance of 

 honey. Such colonies almost invariably 

 winter well here. Yet this spring more 

 than half of them were dead. They died 

 with a hive full of bees and an abundance 

 of honey. The combs were wet, and every 

 thing looked as though the bees had smother- 



*This is true. The work Bhould alu-ays be done in a 

 warm room. — Ed. 



ed. The owner had contracted the entrance 

 to a space about |Xl. I believe if he had 

 left the entrance full width almost all that 

 had honey enough would have lived. I think 

 this mistake cost him forty or fifty good col- 

 onies of bees. An apiary of mine only a lit- 

 tle over two miles away lost less than ten 

 per cent, and another apiary only a mile 

 away wintered as well. 



STARTERS IN WIRED FRAMES. 



The question is often asked whether frames 

 can be successfully wired when only starters 

 are used in the frames. If care is taken to 

 have the hive level, the bees will build over 

 the wire almost as well as if it were rot 

 there. I have had hundreds of such combs 

 built, and I find just one objection to the 

 plan; and that is, that it results in a greatly 

 increased amount of drone comb being built. 

 When the comb- builders in extending the 

 comb downward reach the wire it seems to 

 break up the regularity of their work a 

 trifle— just enough so that, if the tendency 

 to build drone comb is present, they seem to 

 think it is a good place to make the change. 



CORRUGATED PAPER IN SHJPPING-CASES. 



On page 297 the editor appears to think 

 that the weight of sections on a narrow strip 

 of corrugated paper would crush or mash 

 down the paper. Possibly the ordinary drip 

 cleat, about f inch wide, would do this; but 

 in my use of the paper some years ago I us- 

 ed a strip of the paper an inch wide, just as 

 the no-drip cleats are used. The end tiers 

 of sections were thus supported by 1| inches, 

 and the central tiers by only an inch of cor- 

 rugated paper. Something over 200 cases 

 were prepared in this way. Most of these 

 were shipped to towns about 40 miles away. 

 I went with it myself, delivered it to the 

 grocers, and had a chance to inspect it all 

 myself. These narrow strips of paper, 

 while slightly flattened down, had not lost 

 all their elasticity by any means, but would 

 have been good for a much longer trip. [I 

 never tried the corrugated paper one inch 

 wide; but I did try the narrow drip cleats 

 on the paper, and found that these narrow 

 edges would break down the corrugations 

 when the ordinary weight of sections was 

 applied. This, of course, would destroy the 

 cushion effect so necessary.— Ed.] 



: CAUCASIAN BEES. 



I deeply regret that the government has un- 

 dertaken the distribution of these bees with- 

 out further test of their suitability for the 

 general purposes of bee-keeping, and I hope 

 that no one will get any of them unless he 

 is prepared to take the fullest precautions 

 to prevent their mixing with other bees. So 

 far there appears to be much stronger testi- 

 mony against them than for them. In fact, 

 about the only claim made for them seems 

 to be the comparatively unimportant one of 

 gentleness. It may appear at first sight 

 that the proper way to test them is to dis- 

 tribute them and let the public decide as to 

 their merits. But there is an important dif- 

 ference between bees and other things in 

 this respect. If the Department of Agri- 



