• DELVOTELD,*' 



•AND HOME, 



shedbyTHEAl^OoYCo. 



$ia°PER\tfcR. ^® "Medina-Ohio- 



rflof 



Vol. XXXIII. 



FEB. 15. J 905. 



No. 4 



Nearly every bee-keeper has some one 

 queen that is clear ahead of all the rest. 

 Breed from her exclusively. No matter if 

 the editor did say that, page 128, it's worth 

 saying again. 



It appears that there is such a thing as 

 control of fishing-grounds on public waters. 

 There ought to be no greater difficulty as to 

 control of bee-pasturage if bee-keepers 

 should ever so desire. 



At Brussels, in the Botanic Garden, 

 plants of toad flax protected by gauze from 

 visits of bees, etc., did not have a single 

 flower fecundated, while others side by side, 

 freely exposed, produced seed in abundance. 



Comb-building, I always supposed, was 

 at its best in hottest weather. Prof. Brun- 

 ner, Argentine Republic, says the best tem- 

 perature is between 64 and 74 degrees. 

 Above 108 or below 61, little or no wax is 

 secreted. 



I feel sorry for you chaps who live 'way 

 down south. You can never experience the 

 feeling of satisfaction one has in sitting in 

 one's shirt-sleeves in a warm comfortable 

 home while outside the mercury is shivering 

 around in the region of 10 to 20 degrees 

 below zero. 



When screws are put into hot tallow, 

 says J. A. Green, page 118, there will be a 

 lively ebullition caused by the escape of the 

 air in the wood. When boiling foundation 

 splints in beeswax the escaping vapor ap- 

 pears to be several times the bulk of the 

 splints, and hardly a fourth of the bulk 

 could be air. Isn't it the moisture? 



Bee-stings are having a boom in some of 

 the foreign journals as an antipyretic. It is 



claimed that a few stings suffice to cure 

 intermittent fevers, even the most per- 

 nicious, more surely and promptly than qui- 

 nine. I wonder how much there's in ii. 

 [Huber and I are making some experimeris 

 that are somewhat interesting. He goes 

 into the bee-cellar and makes the bees sting 

 him; then he turns them loose on me. Some 

 time we will tell our readers something 

 about it.— Ed.] 



Prof. Brunner, of Argentine Republic. 

 South America, tells, in Apiculteur, about 

 working for wax. As fast as the bees build 

 combs and fill them, he melts them and feeds 

 back the honey to build more, no matter 

 how much they gather from the fields. It 

 takes 6.8 pounds of honey to make one of 

 wax, and the wax sells for a third more than 

 its equivalent of honey. That will do with 

 his inferior honey at less than 3 cents a 

 pound; but at 30 cents a pound for wax it 

 wouldn't pay, so long as the honey can be 

 sold at 5 cents a pound. 



The idea given by Doolittle, page 133, 

 that, when a frame of sealed honey is put in 

 the middle of the brood-nest every week or 

 ten days, the extra heat caused by removal 

 of the honey guarantees against chilled 

 brood is a new one. I'd like to know just 

 how much there's in it. If a frame of honey 

 be thrust into the middle of a brood-nest, 

 there being just enough bees to cover the 

 four frames of brood that are present, would 

 there be no danger of chilling in a cold spell? 

 How many frames of brood should there be, 

 Bro. Doolittle, when you insert the first 

 frame of honey ? 



PuNics were not as bad here, Mr. Editor, 

 as in Medina, page 135. The workers were 

 half-bloods (virgin queens were mailed from 

 England), and were champions at gluing 

 and stinging, just as you say, but they were 

 hustlers. They wouldn't do for comb noney, 

 however, for they were the worst ever at 

 making greasy-looking, watery combs. [We 

 had the pure bloods, and they succeeded in 

 driving both A. I. R. and myself away from 

 them. They were but little if any better 

 than the ordinary Cyprians. But one swal- 



