1250 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Dec. 1 



sugar in two parts water often crystallize? 

 Is it then entirely useless as food for bees? 



What would be the effect of feeding a col- 

 ony all of the syrup they would carry into 

 the hive? If there was a surplus in the 

 spring would it be a benefit, i. e., would the 

 bees begin working sooner in the super? 



Why remove the cover of the hive in put- 

 ting on the winter case? Why not pack the 

 chaff around it, place a sack of the same 

 over it, and then put on the winter case? 



Waldoboro, Me., Oct. 27. J. H. LovELL. 



[Sealed stores of sugar syrup, when prop- 

 erly evaporated and ripened, would be of 

 the consistency of from 15 to 25 per cent 

 of water, and from 85 to 75 per cent of 

 sugar. A good deal depends on conditions. 

 Usually 20 lbs. of stores is sufficient for an 

 outdoor colony. In that case you would 

 need to figure on anywhere from 15 to 18 

 lbs. of sugar to the hive. I would generally 

 feed it half sugar and half water, because 

 this more nearly approaches nectar, giving 

 the bees a better chance to ripen it, or, to 

 speak more scientifically, "invert" it. A 

 thin syrup would be very much less liable to 

 crystallize than a thick one, for this reason. 

 Where one desires to stimulate, a two-part- 

 water and one-part- sugar mixture will be 

 better than an equal-part solution. 



For winter feeding I would not advise 

 feeding a colony all the syrup it will take. 

 It should be permitted to have a clustering- 

 nest of empty cells in the center of the 

 brood-nest, with sealed stores all around 

 them. To jam in the feed until every thing 

 is full of sealed stores would be going alto- 

 gether too far. 



On the other hand, it is true that a colony 

 that has an over-supply of stores will be in 

 much better condition in spring than one 

 that has a scant amount; but a golden mean 

 is better still. 



Where the winter case will permit it, it is 

 better to leave the outdoor winter cover on 

 the hive just as the bees have sealed it. To 

 break the sealing and thenj)ut on the winter 

 case after cold weather has set in will give 

 the bees no chance to seal again, and be- 

 cause of that fact some heat will escape. — 

 Ed.] 



A FEW SUGGESTIONS AND QUESTIONS. 



In increasing this year on the three- from- 

 two plan I did not put any brood in the 

 " brushed-swarm " hives, and in one case a 

 super was half filled with bee-bread. 



As the outside frames in the body of a 

 hive are mostly filled with honey, would not 

 their removal give needed room and dis- 

 courage swarming? If comb honey were de- 

 sired, their place could be taken by frames 

 with starters put in the center of the body: 

 if extracted, the empty combs could be re- 

 placed in the middle. 



In preparing shipping-boxes the pieces 

 which hold the glass might be used to carry 

 a statement of the shipper's name— "Pure 

 Comb Honey from Apiary of—." 



Perhaps The A. I. Root Co. would put it 



on as above, leaving space for the insertion 

 of name and place by shipper. If both 

 strips had it on, the legend could be read 

 either side up. 



I find that I can use the Miller feeder 

 more easily by adding a board on the bottom 

 so that it can be put on top of the brood- 

 chamber without using a super. 



Kensington, Md. C. G. Dickson. 



[When you speak of a three- from- two 

 plan of increase you do not make it entirely 

 clear to what you refer. In the absence of 

 any statement, I will assume that a part of 

 the bees from two hives are brushed into a 

 third, this third one having no brood. Why 

 was the super filled with pollen in your case? 

 Probably because you put these two lots of 

 shaken bees on to foundation, or starters, in 

 the brood-nest. If the bees happened to 

 draw out the foundation in the super first, 

 they would probably store pollen in the first 

 drawn comb. You do not say whether you 

 gave this third hive, made up from the other 

 two, any kind of queen. Correspondents in 

 asking questions should be explicit in de- 

 tails, otherwise we are handicapped in giv- 

 ing intelligent answers. 



The removal of the combs of honey at the 

 sides would tend slightly to discourage 

 swarming; the putting in frames of starters 

 would be all right providing the queen occu- 

 pied the comb as soon as it was drawn or 

 partly drawn from the foundation. 



Your suggestion regarding the use of the 

 wordmg "Pure Honey from Apiaryof — " 

 on the horizontal rails of shipping-cases is a 

 good one. We should like to hear from our 

 readers as to whether there would be any 

 objections or whether the former wording 

 could be improved. — Ed.] 



A COLONY OF BEES LIVING IN THE OPEN 

 AIR WITHOUT A HIVE. 



Having had a little experience a few days 

 ago which I regard as something unusual I 

 will relate it to you and ask if it is often 

 that others have like experiences. 



I was called away some distance from 

 home by a message over the telephone, to 

 the effect that the sender had discovered a 

 swarm of bees hanging in an apple-tree, 

 buildmg comb. I was, of course, convinced 

 that he had found a swarm of bees, but I 

 thought that, from the amount of comb they 

 said there was, it was mostly if not all imag- 

 inary. But when I arrived at the place and 

 was shown the bees hanging on a limb of a 

 Ben Davis apple-tree, about 12 ft. from the 

 ground, I concluded it was a rather large 

 cluster; and upon blowing smoke in them I 

 discovered, sure enough, that there was comb 

 and considerable of it at that. 



When we got the limb down and examin- 

 ed it we found that there was plenty of 

 comb honey and brood hatching out. We 

 tied three frames full of brood and had 

 enough comb to fill a good-sized dishpan left, 

 with from one-half to one gallon of honey 

 which ran out of the comb. 



I thought myself that this would have been 



