April, 1909. 



(American Bee Journal 



than by the combined Chapman and Dudley 

 Tube combination, although it would gladden 

 an enthusiast's heart to see the way the masses 

 of bees will ascend into the section super 

 by the former method. Does my opinion coin- 

 cide with yours? 



7. Would not the finest comb honey, on the 

 average, be produced by the Doolittle system, 

 more especially if the old hive containing the 

 brood were placed close to the new hive, with 

 a Dudley Tube connecting both hives? 



8. I know of one person who has long-lived 

 bees. Would not bees of such inheritance 

 be extremely valuable even in a short honey- 

 flow? 



9. You, no doubt, read the able article of 

 Chas. Trout, of California, in the American Bee 

 Journal, on rearing early queens and drones. 

 Could we not by this method get queens and 

 drones prior to the honey-flow, in our North- 

 ern territory? Michigan. 



Answers. — 1. I don't know what plan you 

 have in mind, but I have some question 

 whether you will like the plan of killing all 

 queens in July. Try it on a partial scale first. 



2. That plan will do more to prevent swarm- 

 ing than cutting out cells. But with brood over 

 the sections, the cappings of the sections will 

 be darkened, and the brood over the escape 

 may not be cared for in the best manner. 



3. "Let every man be fully persuaded in 

 his own mind.' 



4. I know of no reason why it should be 

 easier. If you take into account taking out 

 and putting back frames, it is harder. 



5. Although a 10-frame hive is not en- 

 tirely convenient to use as an 8- frame hive, 

 still it can be used in that way, whereas an 

 S-frame can not be used as a 10-frame at all. 



6. Not having had experience with both 

 methods, I am not in position to give them 

 the fairest comparison. 



7. I'm not sure I catch your meaning. 

 Honey of best quality can be produced by the 

 Doolittle system; but so it can by other sys- 

 tems. 



8. Yes, long life is valuable, whether flows 

 be long or short. 



9. Mr. Trout says his "method is still in 

 the experimental stage." However it may turn 

 out in California, it hardly needs any experi- 

 menting to decide that it would be a dead 

 failure here. 



Effect of Bees on Flowers. 



I have a next-door neighbor who is en- 

 gaged in the florist business, and he asserts 

 that flowers for cutting, when visited by bees, 

 deteriorate much more rapidly than flowers 

 that have not been so visited. In other 

 words, the presence of bees shortens the life 

 of cut-flowers or flowers for cutting. I am 

 particularly desirous of keeping a few colonies 

 of bees but do not desire to injure my neigh- 

 bor's business. Could you advise me as to 

 whether my bees would materially affect his 

 interests? - New York. 



Answer. — The life purpose of a flower is to 

 produce seed. When fertilization has taken 

 place, the bloom is no longer needed to at- 

 tract the bee, and, other things being equal, 

 one would hardly expect a fertilized blossom 

 to last as long as an unfertilized one. In the 

 case of cut flowers, however, there is in most 

 cases no production of seed. A cultivated 

 rose, for instance, with its multitude of petals. 

 is a botanical monstrosity, not capable of 

 producing seeds, at least to the same extent as 

 a single rose, and if it does not become fer- 

 tilized by the visit of a bee. one can hardly 

 see how such a visit should shorten its life. 



Increasing Number of Colonies — Al- 



sike Clover — Bees Dying Off — 



Eyes of Bee. 



I enjoy rca*'- 'j the "Question-Box" very 

 much, and considtr it alone worth all that the 

 American Bee Journal costs. I had 30 colonies 

 last year, spring count. I increased to 50 by 

 artificial swarming. I had only 4 natural 

 swarms. They gave me 8500 one-pound sec- 

 tions of fine honey, and 300 pounds of ex- 

 tracted. I use your famous T-supers, and 

 practise tiering up, as I find I get by far the 

 best results, 



1. Do you think with the above results from 

 30 colonics that I would be safe to increase 

 to 100? There arc not to exceed" 25 colonics 

 outside of mine within a radius of 3 miles. 

 Our principal yield is white clover. We have 

 had some basswood, but they did not work on 

 it last year. There is a little sweet clover on 

 the railroad. 



2. Do you think it will pay to buy alsike 

 clover seed for farmers to sow within one 

 mile — would say 40 acres' Would it make any 



perceptible difference in the yield of honey? 



3. Why do the bees die in some colonies 

 worse than in others in the same row, packed 

 the same, and to all appearances in the same 

 condition? In front of some hives there seems 

 to be a quart or more of dead bees, while in 

 the next hive there will be none at all. My 

 bees are packed outdoors under sheds facing 

 the East and South. 



4. How many eyes has a bee? Iow.\. 



Answers. — 1. Of course it can only be a 

 guess; but I feel it a pretty safe guess to say 

 that you would be all right with 100. 



2. Yes, or to sell it to them at a bargain. 



3. Differences in individual colonies are not 

 easily accounted for. Yet the difference may 

 be more apparent than real. In one case the 

 bees have gone a distance from the hive to 

 die; in another they remain in plain sight A 

 superseding of queens or a difference in their 

 laying may bring it about so that in one colony 

 there may be more old bees ready to die than 

 in another. 



4. Each bee has 3 simple eyes. The number 

 of compound eyes varies. Cheshire counted 

 on each side of the head — in a worker, 6300; in 

 a queen 4920; in a drone 13,090. 



or that there be any label at all. But it for- 

 bids labeling it honey unless it is honey, and 

 if the name of the producer is on the label 

 it must be the name of the true producer. In 

 a word, the label mustn't lie. 



4. I have no labels, as I don't produce ex- 

 tracted honey ; but you can likely get them 

 from any bee-supply dealer. 



Wedged Frames — Super Springs — 

 Queens and Swarming. 



1. In your answer to "X'irginia," you tell 

 him to use the wedges that come with the 

 frames. I make my frames. Please explain 

 how to make or get them, and how to use 

 them, 



2. Do you use springs with the T-super? 

 n so, how many, what kind, and how? Also 

 how near full would the super be before an 

 empty should be placed below it ? Will the 

 bees then finish it above? 



3. All my queens are clipped with the hives 

 flat on the ground. Will the queen go back 

 into the hive when the bees swarm? 



Kentucky, 

 Answers. — 1. A saw-kerf is made in the 

 under side of the top-bar, into which the edge 

 of the foundation goes. Then close beside 

 this is another saw-kerf made by a finer saw. 

 and into this narrower kerf the wedge is 

 crowded. The wedge is a thin strip of wood 

 as long as the under side of the top-bar, one 

 side being chamfered down to an edge, so as 

 to enter the kerf. If you make your own 

 frames it will perhaps be easier for you to 

 have no saw-kerf in the top-bar, but merely 

 to let the foundation come up to the top-bar 

 on the under side, and cement it there with 

 melted wax. 



2. I use a single spring in each super, 

 crowded in between the follower and the side 

 of the super. It is the common super-spring 

 sold by supply-dealers, in shape something like 

 the elliptic spring of a buggy. 



3. Usually the queen returns to the hive 

 when a swarm issues, but occasionally one 

 enters another Iiive, or wanders off and is 

 lost. 



Bee in France and America — Honey. 



1. Let us know who is right, the American 

 or the Frenchman? I read on page 40, under 

 the heading, "The Bee a Winner in France," 

 that the bee drew 523,843 votes, as a domes- 

 tic animal, which looks well. But the G. B. 

 Lewis Co. print on the first page of their 

 catalog: "A bee is a little insect." How can 

 it be domestic in France, and an insect in 

 America? 



2. The bee gathers nectar from the flowers, 

 which nectar, after undergoing a chemical pro- 

 cess in the bee. becomes honey. Is not nectar 

 dumped into the comb, then evaporated and 

 becomes honey? 



3. According to the Pure Food Law, must 

 every honey-package be labeled with the pro- 

 ducer's address, if sold by the producer to 

 grocers or customers? 



4. Please send me a few sample labels. I 

 sell most of my honey in Mason fruit-jars. 



Wisconsin. 

 Answers. — 1. A bee is domestic in France 

 antl an insect in America just the same as a 

 dog is domestic in France and a quadruped in 

 America; it is an insect in both countries 

 and it is domesticated in both countries. 



2. No:' if you were to gather nectar and put 

 it in cells it wouldn't be honey, and if the bee 

 were to dump the nectar into the cells just the 

 same as it gets it from the flowers it wouldn't 

 he honey. It must undergo a change in the 

 bee. although that change may continue after- 

 ward. 



3. No; the law docs not require that the 

 producer's name be on the label. It docs not 

 require that the word "honey" be on the label 



Unfinished Sections — Comb Leveler — 



Position of Pictures in 



"Forty Years." 



1. Last fall the honey season closed sud- 

 denly with supers on the hives. As a result, 

 I have a big lot of sections unfinished, too 

 many to throw away. Of course, I let the bees 

 clean them out last fall. Will it do to give 

 the sections full thickness of comb to the bees 

 next summer without leveling down the comb, 

 or will the new honey be off-color it put in 

 last year's comb? Of course, the sections are 

 clean. 



2. Can you tell where I can get the Taylor 

 Handy comb-leveler? I haven't seen it listed 

 in the catalogs for some years. Or do you 

 think it is not necessary to thin the comb? 



3. In your "Forty Years Among the Bees," 

 why is it that the illustrations are not on the 

 same pages as the descriptions of things? For 

 instance, on page 200 you refer to Fig. 74, 

 but the figure itself is on page 217, and so on 

 all through the book. California. 



Answers.— 1. If the sections are not in 

 the least discolored, they may be given just 

 as they are. Sometimes the edges are dis- 

 colored, the rest of the section being white. 

 In that case they should be leveled down until 

 the discolored part is all removed. 



2. I think it is entirely possible you might 

 get one by writing to one of the large manu- 

 facturers, even if the Taylor Handy Leveler 

 is not on their list. 



3. You'll have to ask the publishers about 

 that. They're the guilty parties in the case. 

 Indeed I don't remember that they consulted 

 me about it. Go for them good and iiard, for 

 it would be much handier to have the pictures 

 right on the page where reference is made to 

 them. But there are places where there would 

 he 3 pictures on the same page, and that 

 couldn't very well be without putting one pic- 

 ture on top of another, which would hardly 

 do. After all. there may be some good reason 

 why the pictures are put the way they are. 



Perhaps Bee-Paralysis — Moth and 

 Bees. 



I am a novice in the bee-business and am 

 into it partlv as a side line, and partly for 

 love of the little busy bee." Western Wash- 

 ington is a very poor honey-producer, about 

 one year in 4 or 5 giving a fair crop. 



1. I have one dovetailed hive of hybrid 

 Italians that is a sore puzzle to me every year. 

 They appear strong and healthy in the spring, 

 but as soon as they begin turning out young 

 bees, I find on the alighting-board a number 

 of bees which are coal black in color, no down 

 on them, and slimmer than ordinary bees. 

 They can not fly, but just flutter their wings 

 and hop about, while the rest pull them about 

 and act in a generally excited way. This goes 

 on all summer, the bees civing little or no 

 surplus, while adjacent colonies are doing 

 fairly well. Can you explain? Last year was 

 very poor indeed. Over half of the bees in 

 this neighborhood will not winter through, 

 which I consider a good thing, as nearly every- 

 body has a few box-hives from which thev 

 derive no benefit at all. I sell my honev lo- 

 cally, getting 25 cents per section for all I 

 can produce, and then some, whne shipped-in 

 honey brings onlv 15 or 20 cents. Of course, 

 I put out nothing but No. 1 fancy combs, 

 using the other grades myself, or as bait-combs. 



2. Do bees carry tnolh while swarming? I 

 caught 3 swarms that came from moth-infested 

 hives of a neighbor, and had to destroy them 

 all in the fall. They were full of web and 

 caterpillars. None of my own bees are bothered 

 at all. 



That February number of the American Bee 

 Journal was a 'cracker- jack I" 



Washington. 



Answers. — 1. Looks like what is called bee- 

 paralysis. The bees are probably no slimmer 

 than others, but look so because their plumage 

 is gone. They probably appear to he tremb- 

 ling. In the coiQcr parts of the country the 

 disease doesn't amount to much, but it is a 

 very serious matter in the warmer parts. 

 Many cures have been given, only to prove 

 failures afterward. O. O. Poppleton has had 

 much experience with the disease, and recom- 



