1906 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



643 



tare, for hardly any reader of a bee-paper 

 can fail to know him. Perhaps no man who 

 has ever written on bees has scanned more 

 pages of bee literature in the English and 

 foreign languages than the man from Ma- 

 rengo. In his regular department of Stray 

 Straws he gives us the benefit of his wide 

 reading, and his over forty years of actual 

 experience in the bee-yard. 



His style of writing is as instructive as it 

 is pleasing; and after you have read him you 

 begin to know him as a near and dear 

 friend; and although he has passed his three- 

 score and ten by just five years, he seems to 

 have a young heart, and an enthusiasm for 

 his chosen pursuit that almost equals that of 

 a beginner in bee-keeping. 



Dr. Miller is the author of the book " For- 

 ty Years Among the Bees, ' ' one of the best 

 treatises that has ever been published. It 

 is filled with illustrations— in fact, is full of 

 good things told in such an entertaining way 

 that the book reads more like a racy novel 

 than a mere text-book. 



I am sure I am voicing the wish of thou- 

 sands of our readers who will say with one 

 accord, " Long live the man who gathers up 

 the Stray Straws ! ' ' 



DIVISION-BOARDS FOR "SPRINGING" BEES. 



The ordinary single-thickness boards or 

 followers have the same outside dimensions 

 as the brood- frames— that is, there is a bee- 

 space all around them— top, bottom, and 

 ends. When I visited Mr. Julius Hoffman, 

 fifteen years ago this summer, he was using 

 a division-board that had rubber strips nail- 

 ed on the bottom and end edges. This rub- 

 ber was about i\ inch thick, and wide enough 

 to reach across the gap of the bee- space 

 when nailed on the sides of the board. When 

 the board was shoved down into the hive the 

 rubber edges came in contact with the etds 

 and bottom of the hive, making a close tight 

 fit. If the bees glued the rubber to the hive 

 it was so yielding it would readily let go. 



I remember that Mr. Hoffman emphasized 

 the importance of having a brood-nest in 

 the spring just large enough to accommodate 

 the cluster of bees; and this brood-nest, he 

 said, should be completely shut off from the 

 rest of the hive, so there could be no place 

 for air currents to circulate from the unused 

 part of the hive into the warm part occupied 

 by bees and brood. 



Nearly thirty years ago A. I. Root made 

 what he called his chaff division-board. 

 This was two inches thick, double-walled, 

 having the ends and bottoms cushioned with 

 a padding of chaff and canvas, the inner 

 walls being filled with chaff. These ans- 

 wered the same purpose as the division- 

 board by Julius Hoffman, but were better in 

 that they were thicker. They also answer- 

 ed the purpose of dummies. A couple of 

 them would fill up the space completely, usu- 

 ally occupied by four frames. 



We have been selling these boards all 

 these years; but I suspect bee-keepers gen- 

 erally have never quite attached all the im- 



portance they should to the value of a con- 

 tracted brood-nest completely shut off from 

 the rest of the hive in spring brood- rearing; 

 and I do not know but it would be a good 

 idea for us to go back to some of the origi- 

 nal principles. While we can not use artifi- 

 cial heat in the spring, we can do a great 

 deal to conserve the natural heat that would 

 otherwise go to waste. 



The ordinary followers or division- boards- 

 commonly sent out with hive combinations 

 can be made close-fitting in the same man- 

 ner that the Julius Hoffman boards were 

 made. But as rubber is getting to be quite 

 expensive, some good strong roofing material 

 like rubberoid, magnesia, or asbestos roofing 

 cut up into strips, would answer as excellent 

 substitutes. These should be tacked on the 

 edges of the board, sticking out just far 

 enough to little more than fill up the bee- 

 space gap. I would go further and nail the 

 strip on the top edge also, and thus com- 

 pletely shut off the brood-compartment of 

 the hive from the empty unused space 

 through which a great deal of the warm air 

 will escape. 



In some localities this suggestion may not 

 be too late, even this season; and even if it 

 is, "paste it in your hat " ready for use this 

 fall, winter, or next spring. 



The value of such a board would be that 

 one could have two colonies or nuclei in one 

 brood-nest. A tight-fitting division-board 

 all around would make this perfectly feasi- 

 ble. Mr. A. K. Ferris has already shown 

 the importance of this in two of his intro- 

 ductory articles explaining his system of 

 comb-honey production and swarm control. 



THE NATIONAL CONVENTION TO BE HELD AT 

 SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS, NOV. 8, 9, 10. 



The Executive Committee have finally de- 

 cided on holding the next meeting of the 

 National at San Antonio, Texas, Nov. 8, 9, 

 10. San Antonio, as is probably well known, 

 is in the heart of some of the finest bee 

 country in the world. There are extensive 

 bee-keepers in the vicinity, whose crops run 

 up into the many thousands of pounds; and, 

 strategically, this will be a place where, I 

 imagine, the local attendance will be as 

 large as if not larger than any previous 

 meeting ever held in the history of the As- 

 sociation. Low railroad rates will be offered 

 for several hundred miles out of San Anto- 

 nio, and at the same time there will be 

 home-seekers' rates available from all parts 

 of the country. These rates will be excep- 

 tionally low— almost as low as the cent-a- 

 mile trip to the G. A. R. place of meeting, 

 which will be this year at Minneapolis. 



I have understood that the Executive Com- 

 mittee have been considering the two points. 

 For a time they thought they would go to 

 Minneapolis on account of the low railroad 

 rates; but Director Udo Toepperwein exert- 

 ed himself to a point whereby San Antonio 

 practically meets all competition and now 

 secures the convention. This will give bee- 

 keepers in the North, who desire it, an op 



