(Entered as second-class matter July 30, 1907, at tbe Post-Offlee at Chicago, III., under Act of March 3, 1879.) 

 Published Monthly at 75 cents a Year, by George \V. York & Co., 118 West Jackson Ronlevard. 



GBURGB W. YORK. Editor 



CHICAGO, ILL., JANUARY, 1909 



VoL XLIX— No 1 



brial ^otes 

 and Commenfs 



V4l,''*S' 



^•*~> 

 -*-- J 



Bce-Cultui'f and the Government 



In the forthcoming report of the Sec- 

 retarj' of Agriculture for 1908, at Wash- 

 ington, D. C, we find the following 

 paragrapli relating to bee-culture : 



"The work on bee-culture has been enlarged, 

 and its operations have been unusually pro- 

 ductive. The work on bee-diseases has been 

 continued through the year, and it has been 

 showit that the annual loss from these dis- 

 eases, conservatively estimated at $2,000,000, 

 may be considerably reduced by the application 

 of better methods of manipulation. Testing 

 of different races of bees has been carried 

 on near Washington, and a study of the pro- 

 duction and care of extracted honey, a study 

 of the present status of bee-keeping, experi- 

 ments on mating queens in confinement, and 

 other work looking tow-ard the bettering of 

 apiculture has been under way." 



No doubt bee-keepers will be inter- 

 ested to learn the details of the work 

 that has been conducted by the Depart- 

 ment of Agriculture through the Di- 

 vision of Entomology, along the line of 

 bee-diseases, testing different races of 

 bees, etc. Some of this work has been 

 described in special bulletins, which we 

 have announced from time to time. Dr. 

 E. F. Phillips and his assistants certainly 

 have ample opportunity for doing some 

 good work in the interest of bee-keeping. 

 They have already evidenced their fit- 

 ness for the positions they occupy. But 

 much remains to be done yet. 



Ij' abeille et la ruche 



That's the name of the French trans- 

 lation of Dadant's Langstroth, that clas- 

 sic on the Hive and Honey-bee, of which 

 a new edition has appeared. The popu- 

 larity of the work among French-speak- 

 ing bee-keepers is -shown by the fact 

 that this makes 7000 copies of the 

 French translation. (The third edition 

 of the Russian translation is soon to 

 appear.) Bringing this latest revision 



fully up to date has made an increase 

 of 120 pages over the previous edition. 

 Not every one will fully understand just 

 how it is that a work entirely American 

 in character should be so kindly received 

 among bee-keepers of another nation- 

 ality, because not every one understands 

 the standing of the Dadants in their na- 

 tive country — France. The elder Dadant 

 was known in this country as a bee- 

 keeper of highest standing, but he was 

 still better known in France. Good writ- 

 er that he was in English, he was still 

 more at home in his native tongue, and 

 wrote more for French than for Ameri- 

 can journals, .\gainst bitter odds he 

 waged a heavy battle in favor of the 

 movable-comb hive, coming off trium- 

 phant. C. P. Dadant, the son, inherits 

 the good that was in his father. .\ fluent 

 French writer, he is at home in the best 

 French bee-papers, as was his father, 

 witli the advantage of having spent near- 

 ly all his life in this country, thvis being 

 a tliorough Frenchman and an up-to- 

 date -American bee-keeper rolled in one. 

 The beautiful manner in which the 

 book is gotten up does not tend to lessen 

 its popularit)'. Among bee-keepers of 

 this country may be found here and 

 there a student of the French language. 

 Such an one might do worse than to in- 

 vest $1.50 in this excellent work in order 

 to use it as a French reader. 



Propolis from Wax 



Under this heading, J! A. Huff says 

 in Gleanings in Bee Culture : 



A few years ago I had a cake of bright- 

 yellow wax lying out in the yard under some 

 shade-trees. One day I noticed some bees on 

 this wax. I watched them a while, and found 

 that they were gnawing on the wax and put- 

 ting it in their pollen-baskets. As nearly as i 

 could tell there were only six of them. I 



looked over the hives in the yard and found 

 that those bees were daubing up a crack bc- 

 tweett the cover and hive-body on a certain 

 hive; and, as nearly as I could tell, those few 

 bees were the only ones working on this cake 

 of wax. I watched them perhaps half an hour, 

 and saw that, during their manipulation of 

 the wax, it got darker, and almost resembled, 

 according to my eye, the propolis on the hive 

 in other places, iiome time after that, having 

 occasion to open this hive, I noticed that the 

 wax those bees deposited was the genuine stuff 

 called propolis, in color, stickiness, and smell; 

 and ever since that time my belief has been 

 that propolis is manufactured by the bees out 

 of wax mixed with some substance to change 

 it chemically. That the bees never gather 

 any substance to use as propolis I will not 

 claim. 



The probability is that if Mr. Ruff 

 would melt the propolis in question he'd 

 find it separate into two parts, one wa.x 

 and the other propolis. No doubt many 

 have noticed bees nibbling pieces from 

 e-xposed wax and packing it on their legs, 

 which they no doubt use for plugging 

 up cracks in place of propolis: but that 

 by any possible means they can change 

 wax into propolis is extremely doubtful. 

 Although used in place of propolis it 

 is still wax, albeit mi.xed with propolis. 

 The "color, stickiness, and smell'' of 

 propolis is so pronounced that under 

 ordinary observation one might not dis- 

 criminate between a mixture of wax 

 and propolis, half-and-half, and a pure 

 sample of propolis. 



The important point in the case is 

 that no small amount of wax may be 

 thrown away under the impression that 

 it is propolis. When section honey is 

 scraped for market, a certain amount of 

 propolis is accumulated. Whether it will 

 pay to get the wa.x out of this may be a 

 question. -\s an experiment, 2)4 pounds 

 of such scrapings were put in a drip- 

 ping-pan with a little water, and heated. 

 More or less of small chips and other 

 impurities were present, and there was 

 obtained 2'/2 ounces of very dirty wax. 

 Not very good pay, that ; but with scrap- 

 ings of better quality and larger amount 

 the case might be different. 



Measures to Prevent Swarming 



O. L. Hershiser says in the Canadian 

 Bee Journal : 



With me the control of swarming in the 



production of extracted honey is successfully 

 accomplished by enlarging the brooa-cnamber 

 from time to time as needed, by adding what 

 I have found by experience will be not just 

 enough, but an abundance, of room for the 

 queen, and at the opening of the honey har- 



