THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



521 



extant V" Honey differs in character. 

 Seasons vary. Localities are not all 

 similar. The world is large. It seems 

 there has always been enough good 

 honey, or good something, somewhere in 

 the world, so that bees enough for 

 seed have always been left. Apiarists 

 are endeavoring to ascertain under 

 exactly what conditions bees will 

 always winter successfully. We can 

 put bees in a repository and keep the 

 temperature at any desired point. We 

 can do this year after year. If mois- 

 ture and ventilation have any bearing 

 upon the problem, these can be con- 

 trolled. I think that few, if any, dis- 

 pute that food is a factor in the prob- 

 lem. The food cannot be unvarying 

 in character, in all instances, if we 

 " follow nature." 



Mr. Wright says (page 472) that his 

 father rarely lost'bees when he kept 

 them in large box-hives, and " left 

 them to their own sweet will," but 

 when he began to put on boxes and 

 take all the early honey, and compel 

 the bees to live on pollen and poor 

 honey, then they began to die. He 

 also mentions a man who hives his 

 bees in large box-hives, leaves them 

 to " their own sweet will " and loses 

 no bees. Let me ask, where is the 

 profit in such bee-keeping ? 



Living about 16 miles from here is 

 a bee-keeper who, a few years ago, 

 kept black bees in large box-hives, 

 leaving them undisturbed. He seldom 

 lost bees, and ridiculed Italian bees, 

 movable-comb hives, etc., attributing 

 the loss of bees to these "new-fangled 

 fixin's." Finally, in one of those 

 "disastrous winters" alibis bees died 

 "jusc the same" in spite of their 

 being so nearly free from man's dis- 

 turbing hand." 



Mr. Wright thinks that if the bees 

 have gathered no honey, and need 

 feeding, it may be all right to feed 

 sugar rather than let them die. This 

 is exactly the line of reasoning fol- 

 lowed by those who advocate the use 

 of sugar for winter stores, viz : that 

 "it may be all right to feed sugar 

 rather than let them die " — of the 

 diarrhea. 



I agree with Mr. Hill in thinking 

 that the difference in price between 

 extracted honey and sugar is so slight 

 that it is doubtful if it would be 

 profitable to extract the honey and 

 substitute sugar, i. e., laying aside 

 the superiority of sugar as a winter 

 food ; but when we can so manage 

 that nearly all the honey is stored in 

 the shape of comb honey in sections, 

 the price of which is at least twice 

 that of sugar ; and all we have to do 

 is simply to put on a feeder and feed 

 the sugar syrup to the bees, then the 

 difference is not quite so meager. Mr. 

 Hill says that those of whom he wrote 

 would not feed sugar because it 

 would lower the price of honey. 

 Farther along he quotes Mr. Wright 

 as saying that " sugar feeding or bee- 

 keeping has got to go down." Mr. 

 Hill adds : "Nothing will put bee- 

 keeping down so quickly as putting 

 down the price of honey." Whether 

 lowering the price of honey will " put 

 bee-keeping down" depends alto- 



f ether upon what lowers the price, 

 f it is lowered as the result of an 



increase in the number of producers, 

 then bee-keeping, or rather a large 

 nuQiberof hee-keepers will go down. 

 It will be the " survival of the Bttest." 

 But when the price of honey goes 

 down as the result of using improved 

 hives, fixtures and appliances, and of 

 adopting superior methods of man- 

 agement, then bee-keepers are more 

 prosperous than ever. As the price 

 of a commodity decreases, its con- 

 sumption increases, and the demand 

 becomes more steady. 



Mr. Hill says the using of sugar by 

 bee-keepers has put down the price 

 of honey. Let us suppose, for the 

 sake of argument, that the use of 

 sugar by bee-keepers has lowered the 

 price of honev ; has it not also lowered 

 ihe cost ? Did not the extractor lower 

 the price of honey V Has not comb 

 foundation cheapened honey V Has 

 there been a single improvement in 

 bee-keeping that did not cheapen 

 honey V 



Mr. Hill says : " Recall the most 

 successful apiarists, t+ien find out how 

 many feed sugar, and draw your own 

 conclusions." Did I not say, in a 

 former article, " The advice to feed 

 sugar for winter stores is not in- 

 tended for those who are uniformly 

 successful with natural stores y" but 

 what shall those do who are not suc- 

 cessful ? 



Mr. Hill further asks, " Are there 

 not twice as many bees wintered suc- 

 cessfully on their natural stores as 

 there are on sugar y" To get at the 

 true inwardness of the matter, he 

 should have asked for the pro rata loss 

 of bees wintered on sugar stores, com- 

 pared with that of those wintered on 

 natural stores. 



The only fair objection that can be 

 brought against the use of sugar for 

 the winter stores of bees, is that "it 

 may assist in giving color to an unjust 

 accusation," in the same manner that 

 the use of foundation " may assist in 

 giving color to an unjust accusation." 

 As my opponents failed to notice this 

 point, I will again repeat, " Shall we 

 stop using foundation ?" 



Rogersville,<^ Mich. 



Kor the American Bee JoumaL 



Reyersed Oiieens, etc, 



REV. M. MAHIN, D. D., (40). 



On page 501 of the current volume 

 of the American Bee Journal, G. 

 W. Demaree tells of young queens 

 having their heads the wrong way in 

 the cells, and not being able to cut 

 their way out. I have more than 

 once found young queens in that con- 

 dition, but at the same time I dis- 

 covered how it happened, and there 

 is no mystery about it at all. When 

 a young queen cuts out of the cell 

 she does not always wait to cut off 

 the whole circumference of its end or 

 point, but leaves on one side as it 

 were a hinge. This allows the lid to 

 close so neatly that one may handle 

 the cell, as I have repeatedly done, 

 without observing that the queen had 

 cut out. 



As a further fact to be considered, 

 it should be rembembered that there 

 ought to be some of the so-called 

 royal jelly left in the cell when a 

 queen hatches ; and in search of this 

 she in many if not in all cases, re- 

 enters the cell. If the end be open 

 she can back out, and no harm will be 

 done ; but if the lid of the cell is still 

 hinged to it, and makes a close fit, 

 the bees crawling over it will close it 

 so tightly that the queen will not 

 push it open, and she will perish in 

 her prison. I have found queen-cells 

 from which queens had hatched with 

 the lids waxed fast. Whether it was 

 done by accident or design I cannot' 

 say. 



It is not at all likelj; that in any 

 case a queen would be in a reversed 

 position in the cell. She could not 

 spin her cocoon in that position with- 

 out spinning it at the base of the cell; 

 and, in fact, while spinning it her 

 weight and her motion would so 

 crowd her down into the point of the 

 cell that her normal development 

 would be impossible, and, further, 

 her food would be at the wrong end 

 and separated from her by the web of 

 her cocoon. In view of these facts 

 I do not hesitate to express the opin- 

 ion that a careful examination of the 

 cells, in the case of Mr. Demaree's 

 reversed queens, would have revealed 

 the fact that they had been opened, 

 and that the queens had re-entered 

 them. I hope that if he shall find 

 another case of the kind he will care- 

 fully examine the point of the cell. 



THE SEASON OF 1886. 



In this part of Indiana the season 

 has been very dry ; and yet there has 

 been a fair yield of white clover 

 honey. The yield has been very 

 much better than I would have sup- 

 posed, in view of the small amount of 

 rain. Basswood was an entire failure; 

 only a few of the trees bloomed, and 

 the few that did bloom yielded little 

 or no honey. All of my bees except 

 one colony are still at New Castle, 

 Ind. I have no place here where I 

 can keep them ; and so when I want 

 to see how they are doing I must take 

 a railroad trip of 60 miles. At New 

 Castle there has been much more rain 

 than here, and if I could have given 

 my apiary proper attention I would 

 have had a fair yield of white clover 

 honey. But though basswood trees 

 abound within reach of my bees, 

 there is not the slightest trace of the 

 peculiar aroma of basswood in the 

 honey. 



I miss my bees very much, as I take 

 great pleasure in manipulating and 

 observing them. My one colony in 

 this place is six blocks from the par- 

 sonage, and is not visited verv often. 



Bluffton,d Ind., Aug. 12, 1886. 



Wlieii Marketing Extracted Honey, 



it is a sad blunder to use barrels holding- 

 from :!00 to ."lOO pounds— they are too large 

 to be desirable for the trade, too bullty to be 

 handled with care in transportation, and too 

 dear to be lucrative to the producer, for 

 honey put up in such large barrels is subject 

 to a discount of one centper pound, because 

 of the diltieulty in disposing of it without 

 repacking and dividing into smaller lots. 



