AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



189 



In this department will be answered those 

 questions needing immediate attention, and 

 such as are not of sufficient special interest to 

 require replies from the 'J5 or more apiarists 

 who help to make "Queries and Replies" so 

 interesting' on another page. In the main, it 

 will contain questions and answers upon mat- 

 ters that particularly interest beginners.— Ed. 



They Swarmed and Swarmed. 



Although I have handled bees for sev- 

 eral years, I still consider myself quite a 

 novice in the business. I actually 

 thought (until the other day) that when 

 a colony once swarmed, and got through 

 with it and settled down to work, they 

 were done for that season. I have a 

 colony that swarmed on April 30th ; 

 that swarm cast a swarm on June 2nd, 

 and the parent colony swarmed again on 

 June 15th. Is this unusual or not ? 



This has been a fine honey season so 

 far, but at present it is getting very dry, 

 and unless it rains soon, it will close the 

 season until the fall flowers bloom. I 

 am using a Langdon non-swarmer, and 

 believe It is going to be a success. 



F. T. Brooke. 



Brookewood, Va., July 14, 1893. 



Answer. — Cases like the one you 

 mention are not very common, and as a 

 general rule when a colony gets through 

 one siege of swarming it can be counted 

 on to behave itself for the rest of the 

 season. Still, "virgin swarms" and 

 "buckwheat swarms" are known to 

 most bee-keepers, and are more likely to 

 occur, as in your case, where the first 

 swarm comes off early in the season. 



Partly Capped Sections of Honey, Etc 



1. Will you tell me what to do with 

 partly capped and uncapped honey at 

 the end of the season ? 



2. At what time is there more honey 

 and less brood in the brood-frames ? 



Walter R. Wood. 

 Bellevue, Del. 



Answers. — 1. Like any other mark- 

 etable article, it pays to sort honey. A 

 few sections partly finished mixed in 

 with a nice lot will hurt the sale of the 

 whole. So don't let anything get into 

 your first-class honey that isn't strictly 

 first-class. 



That which lacks a very little of being 

 finished can be sorted into a lot by itself, 

 and sold for a lower price. Your home 

 market may take a good deal of such 



honey, and it depends upon the price 

 you can get for it, how close you should 

 sort this lot. In some places there is 

 fair sale for sections that are less than 

 half filled. Some prefer to sell them at 

 a very low price, for the sake of getting 

 rid of any further trouble with them. 



There are two ways to proceed with 

 those unfinished sections that you do not 

 want to sell. One way is to extract the 

 honey out of them, the other is to let 

 the bees rob it out. In either case let 

 the bees do the finishing, for a section is 

 not fit to be used the following season 

 that has not been thoroughly cleaned 

 out by the bees. Pile the supers of sec- 

 tions where the bees can get at them, 

 protecting them from the rain, and al- 

 lowing entrance for only one or two bees 

 at a time. If you allow the bees free 

 access by a large entrance, you will very 

 likely find the sections torn to pieces by 

 the bees. 



If your unfinished sections have been 

 kept nice and clean, and have been 

 thoroughly cleaned out by the bees, they 

 will be valuable for "bait" next season. 

 Indeed, if you have enough of them for 

 your whole crop, your crop should be 

 larger, on the same principle that you 

 can get more extracted than comb honey. 

 B. Taylor has devised the " handy comb- 

 leveler," that makes excellent work lev- 

 eling unfinished sections, and removing 

 anything objectionable on the edges of 

 the cells. 



2. At the close of ihe honey harvest. 



Many Eggs in One Cell. 



I send you a piece of brood-comb with 

 eggs. Did you ever see a queen so pro- 

 lific ? I believe there are two in the 

 hive. They seem to vie with each other 

 to see which can lay the most eggs in 

 one cell. Why don't all eggs hatch ? 

 You will notice ten eggs in some cells, 

 from regular size down to small particles. 

 Now, how can I dispose of this non- 

 sense ? I can't find the queen — I sup- 

 pose it is a laying-worker. The bees 

 are trying to supersede her. I will 

 watch that queen-cell, and see how his 

 droneship gets along. 



J. C. Wallenmeyer. 



Evansville, Ind. 



Answer. — So far as we know, no one 

 has ever given a reason why all the eggs 

 do not hatch when a dozen or so are laid 

 in a cell. Simmins, a prominent British 

 bee-keeper, says that the eggs will not 

 hatch until the workers surround them 

 with the milky fluid that serves as food. 

 If that be correct, then it may be that 



