February, 1909. 



American l^ee Journal 



possession of. Colonies which he never would 

 expect to swarm in the smaller hives, swarmed 

 in these large ones, so he naturally concludes 

 that frames can be too large for security." 



Uniting Colonies. 



I have accidentally discovered that, if 

 both queens are taken away 3 hours or 

 more previously, both colonies are tem- 

 porarily demoralized, and have no fight 

 in them, and, after a good smoking, you 

 can unite by alternating the frames, 

 without scent or flour, and without the 

 loss of a single bee through fighting. 

 After uniting, insert the queen in a cage 

 — a cage which does not require disturb- 

 ing the hive to liberate her. This is a 

 simple plan, and will work well every 

 time, and at any time of the day. — John 

 Silver, in Irish Bee Journal. 



Honor Among Bee-Keepers. 



Oliver Foster says this in the Bee- 

 Keepers' Review : 



"In teaching and training the boys for the 

 bee-men of the future, the code of honor, 

 accepted by all worthy apiarists, should not 

 be overlooked, viz., that he who first plants 

 an apiary within a given bee-range, has a moral 

 right to that range as a bee-pasture, while 

 he utilizes its honey-resources. I am per- 

 suaded, from costly experience, that, from the 

 standpoint of self-interest alone to all con 

 cerned, this rule should be observed." 



Commenting on this, Editor Hutchin- 

 son says : 



"The Golden Rule of bee-keeping mentioned 

 in this issue by Oliver Foster, is one to be 

 heeded by all bee-keepers. It may be a long 

 time before a man can legally control the 

 bee-pasture of a region without also owning 

 the land, but, while waiting for that time, 

 we can all obey this rule — never to encroach 

 upon occupied territory. A bee-range belongs 

 to the man who first occupies it, so long as 

 he continues to occupy it. The man who will 

 crowd in upon the territory of another should 

 be looked upon as little better than a thief." 



Queens Fertilized in tipper Stories. 



At the time "Scientific Queen-Rearing" 

 was published I thought it was no trick 

 at all to get queens fertilized from upper 

 stories with laying queens in the hives 

 below, as I succeeded to my perfect satis- 

 faction during the basswood flow of 1888 ; 

 but 20 years of trial since then has prov- 

 en that I have to record 19 failures to 

 one of success, taking the score of years 

 together. The many private letters I re- 

 ceive also shpw that I am not alone in 

 these failures. — G. M. Doolittle in Glean- 

 ings. __^ 



How to Know an Old Qneen. 



I can recognize John Smith at a 

 glance; but to tell you just how I recog- 

 nize him so that from my description 

 alone you can recognize him at a glance, 

 is probably beyond me. In the same way 

 it is easy to recognize an old queen, but 

 not so easy to tell how. And yet it's a 

 fair question, so I'll make a stagger at 

 an answer. An old queen is darker and 

 more shiny in appearance, due to loss of 

 plumage, probably. She does not move 

 over the comb with the vigor of a young- 

 er queen, but more slowly and feebly. 

 In many cases she seems to lose her 

 footing, and acts as if about to fall off 

 the cotiib. Now, that doesn't seem to 

 tell much, but I'm not sure I can do any 

 better. I'll be glad, Mr. Editor, if you 

 or any one else will improve upon it. It 

 is only fair to say that even the few 

 signs I have given are not infallible. A 



queen that has been balled may look 

 black and shiny while still young. A- 

 gain, I have seen a queen which looked 

 not very old, and yet my record told me 

 she was three or four years old. 



[You have given the general charac- 

 teristics that go to show an old queen ; 

 but there is a certain indescribable gen- 

 eral appearance which is at once recog- 

 nized by the veteran queen-breeder, and 

 which to him is almost infallible. — Ed.] 

 — Gleanings in Bee Culture. 



Apiculture in Spain. 



The editor of Gaceta Apicola de Es- 

 pana, in the September issue, laments the 

 condition of bee culture in Spain in very 

 pessimistic terms. He says that, on 

 many occasions, he has referred to the 

 superior position of bee-keeping in Cuba, 

 where the conditions are no better than 

 in Spain. But he says the style of bee- 

 keeping in Cuba is North American, not 

 Spanish, thanks to the easy coinmunica- 

 tion with that country. (The Spanish 

 usually term our country Norte Amer- 

 ique.) In Cuba the predominating flow- 

 er is the campanilla, which produces a 

 very light rich honey, much sought after 

 by foreign merchants who e.xport it to 

 Europe. He claims the honey of romero 

 (rosemary), which is common in Spain, 

 would compete with the campanilla if 

 given an opportunity ; but the amount of 

 honey produced by the movable-comb 

 system in Spain is relatively very small; 

 whereas in Cuba movable combs are the 

 whole show. This accounts for Cuban 

 superiority, both as to quality and quan- 

 tity. 



The editor is correct. Spain ought to 

 be a great honey country. It has the 

 right kind of flora, and excellent cli- 

 mate, and proximity to great honey mar- 

 kets. In fact, there is a great opportu- 

 nity right now for the Spaniards to 

 show what they can do if they will only 

 follow the lead of the Cubans and im- 

 port American bee-supplies by the car- 

 load. Will they rise to the opportunity 

 and grasp it? They can very speedily 

 overtake and surpass all European or 

 West Indian rivals. — Gleanings in Bee 

 Culture. 



The Price of Bee-Papers. 



Editor Hutchinson, of the Bee-Keep- 

 ers' Review, in his October number, had 

 this to say on the above subject, among 

 some other things that we will not take 

 space to copy : 



"The Review has frequently commented 

 upon the price of bee-journals, more, perhaps, 

 than has been abolutely necessary, but nothing 

 has done more in this country to foster, encour- 

 age and build up bee-keeping than have bee- 

 journals. They are deserving of success; not 

 only this, but it is decidedly to the advan- 

 tage of the bee-keepers to have them succeed; 

 and no journal can become a permanent suc- 

 cess when published at too low a price. There 

 has come an era of low-priced literature, and 

 many class journals, forgetting that they ap- 

 pealed to a limited number of readers, im- 

 mediately lowered their subscription price, hop- 

 ing thereby to roll up enormous lists, only 

 to be grievously disappointed. I doubt if there 

 is a bee-journal that would greatly increase 

 its list by reducing its price to 10 cents a 

 year. Bee-keepers are not so greatly inter- 

 ested in their price, if it is within the bounds 

 of reason, as they are in the character of the 

 journals, in the information and helpfulness 

 that they bring. 



"Some fifteen months ago Mr, York was 

 publishing a weekly at $1.00 a year; now he is 



publishing a monthly at 75 cents. One more 

 boost. Brother York, and you will have the 

 price where it seems to me it ought to be. 

 You certainly are to be congratulated upon 

 the moves you have made. As you say,_ bee- 

 keepers are not cheap folks. ^ They are willing 

 to pay a fair price for their journals. A paltry 

 25 or 50 cents more each year is scarcely 

 noticed by each subscriber, but, in the aggre- 

 gate, it means all the difference between suc- 

 cess and failure for the publisher. Brother 

 York says that no bee-journal has been suc- 

 cessful at so low a price as 50 cents a year. 

 He might have gone further and said no one 

 has been successful at less than $1.00 a year. 

 In the publication of a journal there are a 

 whole lot of fixed expenses that remain about 

 the same, regardless of the price of the jour- 

 nal, the frequency of its issue, or the size 

 of its subscription list, and, with the limited 

 circulations that fall to the lot of bee-jour- 

 nals, there does not enough money come in to 

 meet these expenses and leave a profit, unless 

 the price is about $1.00 a year. If Brother 

 York should eventually raise his price to $1.00, 

 all of the bee-journals on this continent would 

 be published at the same price." 



Of course, it may become necessary 

 for us to raise the price of the American 

 Bee Journal to $1.00 a year. If we find 

 that it cannot be kept up to its present 

 standard at 75 cents a year, the only 

 thing left for us to do will be to raise 

 it to $1.00, as Mr. Hutchinson suggests. 

 However, if we can have a sufficiently 

 large number of subscribers, and also 

 advertising patronage, we expect to be 

 able to keep the price at 75 cents. 

 As Mr. H. says, there are certain fixed 

 e.xpenses that remain the same regard- 

 less of what the subscription price may 

 be, such as office rent, cost of engrav- 

 ings, type-setting, etc. These could not 

 be reduced even if a paper were only 5 

 cents a year in subscription price. 



We always want to give our readers 

 good value for their money, and are sat- 

 isfied that we have done so, and are now 

 doing so. We are now giving 3S4 large 

 pages of reading matter for only 75 

 cents. That is quite a book. Of course, 

 if there were a half-million who would 

 take the .'American Bee Journal regularly 

 it would be different, but, as Mr. H. re- 

 marks, there are only about so many who 

 will subscribe for a bee paper anyway, 

 and their number is not large enough to 

 allow a publisher to issue a bee-paper at 

 as low a price as is possible to put out 

 a publication of a general character. 



But what we would like to see our 

 readers do now, is not only to renew 

 their own subscriptions as fast as they 

 expire, but also send at least one new 

 subscription at the same time. This 

 would soon double our list of readers, 

 which would go far toward insuring the 

 permanency of the present 75-cent sub- 

 scription price. 



Objections to Single-Tier Cases. 



It is a matter of some consequence for 

 a bee-keeper to decide as to the kind of 

 shipping-cases he shall use. Cases con- 

 taining 12 sections each have the argu- 

 ment in their favor that a consumer will 

 often purchase a case when he would 

 not think of buying a case containing 24 

 sections. On the other hand, it is argu- 

 ed that consumers seldom buy comb 

 honey by the case, and when a jobber or 

 wholesale dealer sells to the grocer it is 

 no more trouble for him to sell the lar- 

 ger case than the smaller. Then, too, it 

 costs the producer considerably more for 

 2 small cases than for a large one. 



Of course 12-section cases are always 



