26 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



Jan. IS, 



Coffee-Grounds for Smoke are recommended by a Ger- 

 man bee-keeper as better than tobacco, because producing 

 more smoke and not stupefying the bees. 



Receptacles for Wax, according to a writer in the Brit- 

 ish Bee Journal, should be of earthenware, as iron, tin and 

 copper have a bad effect on the color of the wax. 



Bee-Keeping on Shares. — A. Weathelet, of Rucher 

 Beige, has three out-apiaries in care of bee-keepers who re- 

 ceive one-fifth of the harvest. That would be considered 

 rather a small share in this country. 



Box-Hives for Wintering.— Le Eucher Beige says a 

 movable-frame needs 3;J to -10 pounds of stores for winter, 

 and a fixt hive 22 to 26 pounds. If that is true it must be 

 that box-hives are about oO per cent, better than frame hives 

 for wintering in Belgium. 



Bees for Cheaper Work. — On the FIsland of Ceylon, 

 formerly the flowers of vanilla were artificially fertilized by 

 the hand of man. After bees were introduced this was no 

 longer necessary, and the price of the product fell to a lower 

 point. — Mrs. Wilma Bumler, in Bienen-Vater. 



Save the Fragments. — Bienen-Vater advises that before 

 throwing away the accumulation of dead bees and gnawings 

 found on the floor of the hive in winter and early spring, the 

 whole should be past through a coarse sieve to save the little 

 particles of wax. German thrift sometimes goes a good ways, 

 but it might be a good thing to have enough of it to temper 

 our American wastefulness. 



Introducing a Queen, by Doolittle's plan, putting her 

 In a cage made of foundation, M. von Rauschenfels says is an 

 entire success with him, and he does not even care to open 

 the hive afterward to see if the queen has been received. The 

 plan has had little success in Europe, he says, because the 

 trouble was not taken to make two or three little holes in one 

 end of the cage so the queen could be fed. 



Free Hive-Entrances.— Thaddeus Smith relates in Glean- 

 ings that 55 years ago his father had hives set on flat stones, 

 the hive being raised J.( of an inch all around by nails at the 

 four corners. Those hives were left thus summer and winter, 

 and he thinks there was never too much ventilation. Many 

 of these hives remained S to 10 years thus without change, 

 and there never was any loss in wintering unless stores ran 

 short. 



Split Sections.— While on this side the new-old no-bee- 

 way section is having the floor, in England quite astir is being 

 made over something that has been in limited use ten years or 

 more, the split section. Some split the whole section in two. 

 then put the sheet of foundation between the two parts and 

 then bring them together. Others have only the top and two 

 sides split. When sections were first used in this country, a 

 saw kerf was made part way through the top-bar of the sec- 

 tion to receive the foundation. 



Paraffine Paper Over Sections. — Some discussion has 

 been taking place in Gleanings with regard to the benefit of 

 parafHne paper over sections for the purpose of preventing 

 the bees from daubing propolis on the sections. It seems that 

 Mr. Danzenbaker claimed great advantage for its use, and 

 took out a patent thereon, the understanding being that bees 

 were averse to touching paraffine. P. L. Thompson, in the 

 American Bee Journal and elsewhere, reported adversely, and 

 Dr. Miller said in Gleanings that his bees did not hesitate to 

 put bee-glue directly on the paraffine surface, admitting, how- 

 ever, that he had not followed instructions to weight down 

 the paper with some sort of packing. E. R. Root insists that 

 Instructions should be followed, but admits that they did not 

 achieve a glittering success when using "a super that Mr. 

 Danzenbaker had prepared as just right." In Dec. 15 Glean- 

 ings Lee L. Esenhower takes middle ground ; thinks the 



paraffine paper effective not because of the character of th& 

 paraffine, but because it covers the sections air-tight; while 

 in the same number S. D. Matthews is enthusiastic in praise, 

 claiming a saving of several dollars in cleaning sections, and 

 a higher price for the honey. 



Beating Unfair Discrimination. — In Belgium, a tax on 

 sugar makes it expensive for winter feeding. The law allows 

 a rebate on sugar not directly consumed, but used in making 

 confections, etc. Bee-keepers applied for same rebate on 

 sugar used for feeding, but were refused. Le Rucher Beige 

 now proposes to have a manufacturer of conserves make a 

 syrup of prunes, 80 per cent, sugar, call it "syrup apicole," 

 eat the prunes and feed the syrup to the bees, thus getting ad- 

 vantage of the cheap rate. 



Keeping Queens Over Winter. — Doolittle relates in 

 Gleanings that after trying somewhat faithfully in several 

 ways he has never made a great success of keeping queens 

 over winter except a single queen in a tolerably strong colony. 

 With what is called a -iframe nucleus he could sometimes 

 succeed in getting queen and bees through to the harvest. 

 Oftener they would waste away in late April or early May till 

 they die entirely or were robbed. He could keep several 

 queens caged all right till about February, when they would 

 get uneasy and die with diarrhea, or the cluster would move 

 to get at fresh honey and leave the caged queens to their fate. 

 Then he tried nucleus boxes with frames 6 to 7 inches square, 

 putting several over a strong colony in the cellar and tucking 

 them up warm with blankets over them, but it ruined the 

 strong colony, and out of 30 nuclei he only got through two 

 queens. So he gives it up for a bad job and appeals almost 

 pathetically for any little help that any one can give toward 

 solving the problem. 



Production of Wax. — Reidenbach thinks he has de- 

 termined that wax is produced from pollen in the large intes- 

 tine of the bee. In his opinion, honey serves only to keep up 

 heat during its production, making only a small amount of 

 honey necessary for wax-production during warm weather. 

 Careful analysis of the contents of the large intestine fixt him 

 in his decision. He thinks more wax might be secured with- 

 out loss of honey if the bees always had opportunity for build- 

 ing, as in the super, and in late summer in warm weather 

 toward the outside of the brood-nest. In a time of dearth, in 

 very hot weather, he took from a strong colony half its combs, 

 they being densely covered with bees. In place of the re- 

 moved combs he gave frames with starters. The bees began 

 lively to gather pollen, and in eight days had built a half- 

 pound of beautiful comb, with no loss of honey. Having 

 enough of the old combs for brood, the queen did not occupy 

 the new combs. At the same time the other colonies lay idle. 

 — Pfaelzer Bienenzucht. 



The New Section and Fence. — Dr. C. C. Miller dis- 

 cusses these in Gleanings, not entirely agreeing with the edi- 

 tor as to their merits. The former raises some doubt as to 

 the fence separator being cheaper in the long run, not quite 

 seeing the force of the argument that the fence is cheaper be- 

 cause used year after year, while the plain separator is thrown 

 away after one year's using. For he says that the plain sep- 

 arator can also be used year after year, only it's cheaper to 

 buy new. He indulges in a sly dig at the editor's preference 

 for section-holders over T supers, saying that while certain 

 advantages claimed for the fence don't count for the T super, 

 they do count for the section-holder, so the fence is a good 

 thing for those who have nothing better than the section- 

 holder. 



The Doctor is hardly ready to admit that the new section 

 will be more free from pop-holes in the corners, for on exam- 

 ining sections produced in a Danzy super with fence on one 

 side of the sections, he found the pop-holes were worse than 

 the common section with plain separators. The editor 

 replies that observation has been the reverse. 



Dr. Miller admits the saving in shipping-cases, and figures 

 it down fine, njaking the saving $5.60 on 4,800 sections, 

 which .$5.60 will go a long ways toward paying the $1.00 per 

 100 for the fence. He also thinks there will be an advantage 

 in the new section from the fact that when standing on a table 

 one section cannot possibly be pusht into another, as may be 

 the case if the sections have the usual inset. He thinks 

 grocers may be inclined to use cuss words when trying to get 

 the first section out of a case when the sections fit so tight 

 together that there is no room to get the thumb-nail between 

 them. To this the editor replies that all shipping-cases should 

 be supplied with a follower and wedge, both for safety in 

 shipping and for convenience in taking different sizes of 

 sections. 



