April, 1909. 



American Vae Journal 



phide about 2 weeks after taking thera from 

 the hive, but if you have Italians there will 

 be little need of that. 



3. I don't think it is true. 



■1. You need a large hive-entrance in any 

 cellar, but it is more important in a damp 

 cellar. A damp cellar also needs a little 

 higher temperature than a dry one. 



6. If it's the kind of appearance I have in 

 mind — grey rather than blue — it hardly indi- 

 cates anything wrong. Regular mold may in- 

 dicate either that the cellar is damp or that 

 the hive is not well ventilated, or it may indi- 

 cate both. A low temperature also favors 

 mold. 



Charge for Pasturing Bees, 



What is usually charged for pasturing bees? 

 I want to take 10 or 20 colonies 10 miles 

 from home. Wisconsin. 



Answer. — There is no sort of rule about 

 it It's just as you agree. I never agreed 

 to pay anything; but I always left a liberal 

 allowance of honey. In any case you should 

 make such arrangement about it that your 

 landlord will feel he has the best end of the 

 bargain. 



Introducing Queens. 



1. Wbat is the best way to introduce a 

 queen ? 



2. What kind of a queen would you recom- 

 mend? 



3. What month is the best to introduce the 

 queen? Illinois. 



Answebis.^ — 1. When you have a queen sent 

 by mail, instructions for introducing accom- 

 pany her. They will likely be to let her stay 

 caged in the hive a couple of days without 

 letting the bees get at the candy, then remove 

 the old queen and let the bees at the candy. 



2. ItaiiaxL 



3. Any time after honey is yielding well, 

 say from the first of June. 



Honey Gives Him the Stomach- 

 Ache. 



I am very fond of honey, but unable to eat 

 it as it gives me stomach-ache. Kindly advise 

 me what the trouble is, and how I am to eat 

 it to avoid this distress. 



Pennsylvania. 



Answer. — Hard to tell what the trouble is. 

 Possibly the honey is taken in connection with 

 too much other food. Possibly too much liquid 

 is taken at the meal. In any case, the proba- 

 bility is that whatever is the cause of the 

 disagreement is something that ought to be 

 changed anyhow, whether honey is eaten or 

 not- Might be well to try tiking a small 

 quantity at a meal, not as a dessert after a 

 meal, but as part of the meal, increasing as the 

 honey is borne, and drinking between rather 

 than at meals. 



Mating of Queens from Different Lo- 

 calities. 



1. Would it be advisable to make queens 

 with drones bred from the same mother? 



2. I got 4 queens from the same place in 

 Texas. Would it be better to rear drones 

 from one of them and queens from the other, 

 to mate with for requeening my other colo- 

 nies, which are black bees? or would you 

 advise me to get a breeding-queen from some 

 one else, and use drones from those I haver 



Ontabio. 



Answers. — 1. If you mean to mate a queen 

 with a drone reared from the mother of^ the 

 queen, no; and you probably couldn't do it if 

 you tried. 



2. Unless in special cases, it would be bet- 

 ter to have the drones and the queens in no 

 way related. 



Italianizing Bees— "Tested" and "Un- 

 tested" Queens. 



1. We have 100 colonics of bees which we 

 want to Italianize, but do not know the best 

 way to go at it. as some of our hives have 

 crooked combs. How can we introduce a queen 

 to a colony which has crooked combs? Don't 

 we have to get the old queen before intro- 

 ducing the new one? How would it be when 

 introducing a queen to take a nucleus _ and 

 place it in a hive, putting this hive containing 

 the queen in place of the old hive, when 

 most of the bees are out at work, letting the 

 flying bees enter in the hive with the new 

 queen? or would the bees kill the new queen? 



2. Would it be best to buy queens, or 

 to buy nuclei and rear our own queens? 



3. How far away from other bees would we 

 have to place a colony to insure pure mat- 

 ing? 



4. What is the meaning of a "tested" and 

 an "untested" queen? 



5. Which of the Italian bees are considered 

 tht best and most gentle — the Golden or the 

 3-banded? Utah. 



Answers. — 1. Yes, you will have to remove 

 the old queen. A very good way to introduce 

 a queen into a hive with crooked combs, is 

 to straighten the combs, or transfer them into 

 frames. Or, you can drum out the bees, put- 

 ting an empty box over the hive and pound- 

 ing on the hive till all the bees run up into 

 the box. Then you can find and remove the 

 old queen, let the bees return to the crooked 

 combs, and crowd the cage with the new queen 

 between the combs. Your nucleus plan will 

 work, only the queen must be caged for 2 or 

 3 days. 



2. You might compromise, buying a num- 

 ber of queens and rearing the rest. 



3. You would probably be pretty_ safe at 

 2 miles, but to be entirely safe you might have 

 to be 5 miles or more. No one knows exactly 

 how far. 



4. A tested queen is one which has been 

 laying long enough so that you can see by 

 the markings of her worker progeny that she 

 has been purely mated. An untested queen 

 has not been thus tested. 



5. Opinions differ. Probably the most pre- 

 fer the 3-banders. 



Decoy Hives — Bees in Louisiana. 



1. How do you fix decoy hives to catch 

 swarms ? 



2. Would bees properly handled here be 

 profitable? We have a large lake full of 

 willow, some fruit, and lots of wild flowers 

 during summer and fall, but we have no 

 clover nor buckwheat. Louisiana. 



Answers. — 1. There is no fixing needed, any 

 more than in getting a hive ready for a 

 swarm. If you put in the hive one or more 

 empty brood-combs it will be more attractive 

 to the bee-moth, for which you must look out. 



2. I have no personal knowledge of your lo- 

 cation, but it is very likely that you have 

 other flowers that will largely take the place 

 of clover and buckwheat. 



Langdon Non-swarming Device — 

 Early Work with Bees. 



1. In reading over "The Honey-Bee," Bul- 

 letin No. 1, New Series, Third Edition, writ- 

 ten by Frank Benton, I find the Langdon 

 Non-Swarming Device, on page 104. What 

 do vou think of the device? I can not find 

 anything about it in any of the American Bee 

 Journals. 



2. Mr. George Williams says, on page 53, 

 that you get up before daylight and pull your 

 colonies to pieces. Do you think that in- 

 creases your honey-yield? Indiana. 



Answers. — 1. Great things were expected of 

 the Langdon device when it was first made 

 known, but the hopes concerning it were not 

 realized, and for some years nothing has been 

 said about it. 



2. I never shake my bees merely for the 

 sake of shaking them, and when I manipulate 

 them do no unnecessary shaking. But Mr. 

 Williams thinks the necessary^ shaking they get 

 makes them work more diligently. I don't 

 know whether he is right or not. 



What Supplies a Beginner Needs. 



I have 12 colonies of bees in good frame- 

 hives. I am a beginner. What shall I order 

 in the way of supplies? I wish to run for 

 comb honey, and increase by natural swarm- 

 ing. I have nothing in the way of tools, and 

 my time is limited, as I am a rural mail 

 carrier. I have your "Forty Years Among 

 the Bees." I also take the American Bee 

 Tournal and Gleanings in Bee Culture. All 

 are fine. Kentucky. 



Answer. — It is not an easy thing to tell 

 what any one needs without pretty full par- 

 ticulars as to harvest and conditions. In 

 general terms I should say that you should 

 have on hand enough sections all ready in 

 supers in advance, so that you can gjve to 

 the bees as many as they would fill in the 

 best season you have ever known, and then 

 an extra one for each colony besides. Pos- 

 siblv you have had so little experience that 

 you don't know what the bees would do in 

 the verv best kind of a season. Well, then, 

 we might guess that in the very best kind of 

 a year you would pet an average of 125 

 sections per colony, although that may be put- 



ting it pretty low if you are in a good location. 

 If your supers hold 24 sections each, as a 

 good many supers do, it would take about 5 

 supers to hold the 125 sections, as we don't 

 need to be so exact about it. But some 

 colonies will fill more than the 5, and some 

 less; you can't hold them to the exact number, 

 and at the last there will necessarily be more 

 or less unfinished sections on the hives when 

 the season closes: so you ought to count an 

 extra super for each colony; altogether, 6 su- 

 pers per colony, or 72 supers of sections for 

 the 13 colonies. Understand, only once in a 

 while you will have a season when you will 

 need so many; but you never know but what 

 the next season may be a bouncer, and you 

 must be prepared for it. What are not needed 

 will be all right for the next year. Even if 

 the season proves an entire failure, your su- 

 pers will be all right for the first good season 

 that comes. 



As to hives, you will probably want to 

 double your number, preventing all after- 

 swarms, so you will need to have in readiness 

 a hive for each colony, or 13 in all. 



Getting Honey Out of Combs With- 

 out an Extractor. 



Do you know of any method of getting the 

 honey out of combs in wired frames without 

 the use of an extractor? Where one has only 

 3 or 3 colonies of bees, the expense of an 

 extractor is hardly justifiable, as the amount 

 of honey would hardly pay for the machine, 

 and yet the honey must be got out somehow, 

 and should be done without destroying the 

 combs. Idaho. 



Answer. — No, I don't think there's any 

 way of getting honey out ot combs either 

 wired or unwired except by the use of an ex- 

 tractor. Of course you could wash the combs 

 or melt them, but I'm sure you mean to keep 

 the combs whole. 



Increase in July — Hive for the 

 Farmer. 



1. Could any increase be made with a queen 

 received in July this season? 



2. I have 20 colonies in 3 kinds of hives, 

 most of them 8 and 10 frame Dovetail hives 

 with Hoffman frames. I would like to get 

 thera into one kind of hives and frames. 

 Would the Root Dovetail hive take the Miller 

 frame ? 



3. For the average farmer who will not 

 handle frames very much, which do you think 

 would be best, the 8-frame Dovetail, the 10- 

 f rame Dovetail, or the Danzenbaker ? 



Illinois. 

 Answers. — 1. Yes, you can do a lot of in- 

 creasing after that time, with plenty of colo- 

 nies to increase from. At the time you intro- 

 duce your new queen into a colony, make an- 

 other colony queenless. A week or 10 days 

 later destroy all the queen-cells started in 

 this latter colony, and give it brood from your 

 new queen. That will give you queen-cells of 

 the new stock, which you can give to nuclei, 

 and these nuclei you can gradually strengthen 

 by giving brood well matured from strong 

 colonies. Of course you will be wise not to 

 draw too much brood at a time from any one 

 colony, always leaving it at least 4 frames of 

 brood, for if reduced too much it might not 

 recover so late in the season. 



2. Yes, the Miller frame is the same size 

 as the Hoffman, and fits the Dovetail hive. 



3. The ID-frame Dovetail is a safe choice 

 for any farmer. 



Introducing Queens — Control of 

 Queen - Mating — Long - Tongue 

 Italians — Nucleus Method of 

 Increase, 



1. While looking at one of my hives, March 

 13, I noticed a queen fly from the entrance 

 and make a few circles and then go back to 

 her hive. It was about 12 o'clock, and the 

 thermometer stood at 54 in the shade. Was 

 not that an unusual occurrence for that time 

 of year? The queen seemed small and took 

 wing very easily. 



2. I would like to have your opinion on 

 this way of introducing a queen that comes 

 through the mails: Pry the perforated piece of 

 tin off the end, then put queen-excluding zinc 

 over it and let the workers pass out. Then 

 take from the colony you wish to introduce 

 the queen to, enough workers to fill up the 

 cage, then put back the perforated tin, and 

 let the bees eat the candy out before they 

 release the queen. 



3. Do you think that if we could control 

 the mating of the queens and drones that we 



(Continued on page 146.) 



