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THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



May 5, 



Mailing Queen-Bees to England has not been allowed 

 for years. Now the embargo is taken off, allowing the transit 

 of queens to and from the British Isles. — Gleanings, page 311. 



Plenty of Alighting-Room in front of a hive is supposed 

 to aid in the matter of white combs, for if the bees drop on the 

 ground in front, their dirty feet soil the combs. — Gleanings, 

 page oOit. 



Big Pay for Bee-Work.— Gleanings works out that F. S. 

 Arwine made y 15 per day from his bees in 18SS, counting 

 his honey from 184 colonies ( 16, 2-±0 pounds) at 10 cents a 

 pound ; SIS a day for 1889—16,766 pounds from 186 

 colonies. 



Markets for Tall Sections.— Gleanings, page 313, says 

 the tall section may not be suitable for all markets. It has a 

 big demand in parts of York State and in other Eastern 

 States, and is regarded with some favor in California, but 

 Chicago will none of it. 



Time and Place for Drawing Out Foundation are : 



Before or after hottest weather ; in an apiary well shaded; 

 by medium rather than strong colonies ; at the side of the 

 brood-nest, never in the middle ; preferably between two 

 flnisht combs. — German Journal. 



The Advantage of Big Entrances is shown by the fact 

 that the bees are quietly at active work, while colonies with 

 small entrances in hot weather roar like an approaching 

 storm, some of the workers being thus kept from work to ven- 

 tilate. — W. B. Ranson, Gleanings, page 308. 



Tall Sections as made by the A. I. Root Co., are 3%x5.t- 

 IX. _0. P. Hyde & Son say, in Southland Queen, they prefer 

 4^4x514x114. Both are plain sections with fences. Altho the 

 latter do not ship so well, they think the bees will build them 

 out quicker, because more nearly the thickness of natural 

 comb. 



Uniting Weak Colonies.— Southland Queen says shaking 

 bees off the combs into one pile will make them unite with 

 little fighting, while they would fight if united on the combs. 

 Cage the best queen, killing the others, shake all the bees into 

 an empty hive, then give them the frames of brood and put 

 the caged queen on top of the frames, the cage having candy 

 in the orthodox way, so the bees will liberate her. 



Bi-sulphide of Carbon for Foul Brood.— C. Davenport 

 (Gleanings, page 296), repeats what he has already said in 

 this journal about this cure, and the editor requests that those 

 "given to an experimental turn of mind " whose bees have 

 foul brood should try the bi-sulphide, calling attention to the 

 fact that if successful, it is better than the McEvoy treatment 

 in one respect, for it destroys only the brood, sparing the 

 combs and frames. 



Feeding Wax to Bees may be just as successfully done 

 as feeding honey when the bees are in want of wax, says J. E. 

 Crane, in Review, page 113. Scrape some thin shavings from 

 the top of a cake of bright yellow wax, put them over sections 

 the bees are capping, and in a day or two look at the mottled 

 sealing of the sections. But he adds in a postscript, " After 

 some experiments in feeding wax, I prefer to feed it in thin 

 sheets — some call it foundation." 



Young or Old Beei for Winter.- While in the opinion of 

 many, late-reared bees form an important factor in wintering, 

 C. Davenport, in Gleanings, thinks the age of the bees has 

 little to do with the matter. In 1896 honey-gathering stopt 

 with white clover, brood-rearing stopt early, and the following 

 winter he lost only three out of 244. In 1894 a fall flow 

 kept up breeding late, and the loss in winter was heavy, but 

 he attributes it mostly to the character of the late honey. 

 After all, it will be hard to convince many that young bees are 

 not better. Even if 244 colonies came through with no loss 



of a single colony, is it not likely that there was a greater loss 

 in hces than if the bees had been younger ? 



Foul Brood and Foundation — .\s bearing upon the 

 question whether there is danger from using in foundation 

 wax from an infected colony, the Ontario Expsriaiental Station 

 made some experiments. Foul brood germs were incorporated 

 with wax which was barely melted and at once cooled. Foun- 

 dation thus made was given in full sheets to six colonies, but 

 no sign of the disease followed. According to that there is 

 little to fear from foundation. 



To Prevent Brood in Supers, M. I'abbe Pincot says all 

 that is necessary, is to place the supers so the sections shall 

 run crosswise, whereas if the sections run in the same direc- 

 tion as the brood-frames, the queen will go up and lay. 

 M. Ch. Legrain replies that he placed sections running cross- 

 wise and had brood galore. Dr. C. C. Miller replies to the 

 other part of the contention by saying that his sections run in 

 the same direction as the brood-frames, and he had only two 

 sections with brood out of 18,000. — L'Apiculteur. 



To Stop Robbing, F. Chatelain says, in L'Abeille et sa 

 Culture, he finds out from which hive or hives the robbers 

 come, then proceeds as follows : Take a well-loaded smoker, 

 and smoke the robbers ; after two or three minutes close the 

 entrance. When the robbers that were outside have gathered 

 in numbers at the entrance, smoke them away and make an 

 opening large enough to introduce the nozzle of the smoker, 

 and give them another dose inside. Open wide the entrance 

 and allow all outsiders to enter, then smoke heavily till the 

 bees rush in a stream out of the hive. That ends the robbing. 



Ripening of Honey. — 0. O. Poppleton had exceptional 

 opportunity while in Cuba, as he relates in Gleanings, to de- 

 termine the rate of evaporation of newly-gathered honey in 

 the hives. The shrinkage from first-gathered to well-ripened 

 honey was about one-fourth, and that shrinkage took place 

 almost wholly during the first night, only one-tenth of the en- 

 tire shrinkage taking place after that time. So he thinks it a 

 mistaken notion that there is any material gain in any way by 

 extracting honey before it is ripe. He also found that the bees 

 gathered just as much honey when they had 50 pounds in the 

 hive as when they had only five, so there was just room enough 

 to store what they gathered. 



Management with Empty Combs. — A man has a num- 

 ber of colonies and two-thirds as many combs as those that are 

 occupied. He asks G. M. Doolittle (Gleanings, page 304) how 

 to manage for best results, his principal trouble being swarm- 

 ing during the honey-flow. He is told to have laying queens 

 ready in advance in nuclei. When a colony is about ready to 

 swarm, set in its place a hive with eight empty combs, and 

 brush all the bees into it, giving it the supers. Then move 

 another strong colony to a new location, set in its place the 

 hive of brood-combs and brood without bees, and give it a 

 frame with queen and adhering bees from a nucleus. Do this 

 at a time when the most bees are flying, and the returning 

 bees will stock it. Thus you'll have three colonies from two, 

 and in good shape for work. 



Tests of Foundation are reported by R. L. Taylor, in 

 Review. Drawn foundation was promptly undertaken at once, 

 and it appeared it would be first finisht, but on the coutrary, 

 at the end of the honey flow (which was poor) a drawn-founda- 

 tion section in the center of the case weighed only 70 per cent, 

 as much as one of plain foundation beside it. If this was be- 

 cause the bees did not like the foundation and only used it 

 until something better could be made ready, it condemns 

 drawn-foundation. But he thinks it might be because the 

 cells were promptly filled with thin honey which took a long 

 time to be evaporated, in which case there would be no trouble 

 if there were a whole super full of drawn-foundation instead 

 of only six sections. He seems to think it Is hardly a fair test 

 to try a very few sections of drawn-foundation with others. 



Dr. Beal, of the Michigan Agricultural College, measured 

 the bases after they were workt out by the bees. The base of 

 natural comb that seemed to be of about usual thickness 

 measured about .007 of an inch. The others averaged about 

 11 per cent, less, all but the drawn-foundation, which was 37 

 per cent, thicker than the natural. The no-wall foundation 

 was the thinnest of all, averaging .00433. It will be of In- 

 terest to know how this will compare with the foundation the 

 A. I. Root Co. are now making, whose base measures only 

 .003 of an inch! 



