538 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



August 25. 



prune trees, 250 apple trees, 70 pear, 70 cherry, etc. Mrs. 

 Dunn has 15 colonies of bees there, and she tells us that their 

 " honey from white clover is most delicious." We haven't a 

 doubt about it. Mr. Thos. Topping is the experienced English 

 gardener and bee-keeper who has the care of Mrs. Dunn's ex- 

 tensive interests near far-away Tacoma. 



Mr. W. H. Pribgen, of Warren Co., N. C, has been called 

 "A Queenly Deceiver." This will be no surprise to any who 

 see the kind of queens he sends out. We have a sample be- 

 fore us, and she is a beauty in appearance — a rich, golden 

 yellow. And the bees accompanying her are just as sunny 

 looking. 



Mr. M. p. Pichtenmayer, of Bristol Co., Mass., who has 

 sent us several new subscribers, wrote us Aug. 13 : 



"I don't recommend the American Bee Journal in order 

 to get the premiums you offer, but for what it is worth to any 

 bee-keeper, which is more than just the dollar it costs for a 

 whole year. It saved rae more than that besides other infor- 

 mation I have out of it." 



Ontario Agricultural College.— The following is the 

 report of the Department of Apiculture, kindly sent us by a 

 subscriber in Toronto : 



"The Apiarv. — The season has been a good one for 

 honey, bees swarming early, and in some neighborhoods ex- 

 cessively. The supply of nectar was profuse, especially from 

 clover, but basswood yielded little, and latterly there has been 

 a scarcity by reason of the dry weather. The average yield 

 will be nearly 50 pounds per colony, and there has been a 

 good increase in colonies." 



Page Fence Age is the name of a monthly -t-page paper 

 issued by the Page Woven Wire Pence Co.. of Adrian, Mich, 

 It is sent free to any farmer asking its publishers to place his 

 name on their mailing list. The Page fence has been adver- 

 tised in the Bee Journal regularly now for about two years. 

 We presume many of our readers have that fence on their 

 farms or places of residence. 



By the way, should you ever write to the Page Woven 

 Wire Fence Co , please tell them you saw their name in the 

 American Bee Journal. 



Joint Meeting— Wis., Iowa, Minn.— Mr. Harry Lathrop, 

 of Browntown, Wis., sent us the following, Aug. 13 : 



Friend York :— At the last convention of the South- 

 western Wisconsin Bee-Keepers' Association a committee was 

 appointed to arrange for the next annual meeting, and it was 

 suggested that we arrange to hold a joint meeting of our asso- 

 ciation and those nearest to us in Iowa and Minnesota. North 

 McGregor, Iowa, was mentioned as a good place for holding 

 the meeting. As I do not know the names and addresses of 

 the officers of those Associations — in Iowa and Minnesota — I 

 would like to have them write to me. 



Our people think it would be real nice to hold such a joint 

 meeting, and we would like to know what the others think 

 about it. If you will kindly publish this letter In the Bee 

 Journal it may aid us in getting together. 



Yours truly, Harry Lathrop. 



Bees Carrying a Queen.— G. Gross reports in Gleanings 

 that he found a swarm on the ground with a dipt queen. As 

 the nearest bees were 200 yards distant, he thinks the bees 

 must have carried her there. The wary editor doesn't commit 

 himself as to his opinion in a foot-note, but it is probable that 

 he is responsible for the heading, which reads, "Do bees 

 carry the queen when swarming?" 



The Market Problem.— Under this title a discussion has 

 been started in the American Bee-Keeper that bids fair to oc- 

 cupy considerable space. Messrs. Jolley and Doolittle are dis- 

 putants-in-chief, and wheat, leather trust, speculator Leiter, 

 unearned charge,', and other things are thrown into the dis- 

 cussion with a lavishness bewildering to a common bee-keeper. 



Evidently the editor has some fear that some of the every-day 

 bee-keepers may not understand all the talk, and may object 

 to taking up room with it, for he commences a foot-note by 

 saying, "So far from introducing a foreign subject, we regard 

 this discussion as dealing directly with fundamental princi- 

 ples," and he promises If the brethren express their minds 

 freely on the subject he'll put in some extra pages for practi- 

 cal bee-talk while the discussion is on. 



Clipping: Queens. — With a pair of very small scissors 

 Mr. Aikin follows the queen as she walks on the comb, and 

 when he gets one of the blades under the wing he snips. Doo- 

 little catches the queen by the wings, holds her an inch or so 

 above the frames, and with the small blade of a pocket-knife, 

 made very sharp, cuts off the wing, letting her drop on the 

 frames. — Progressive Bee-Keeper. 



Bee-Spaces of Italians and Blacks. — Some difiference of 

 opinion has developt in Gleanings as to the space bees will 

 leave between two opposing surfaces of sealed honey, or be- 

 tween the comb and an adjoining surface of wood. The 

 editor says '^ and J. E. Crane says 3^' 10. It transpires that 

 the difference of opinion niay be caused by the difference in 

 bees, Italians having the larger space, and blacks 3/16. 



Prevention of Increase. — Here's C. TheiUnann's plan as 

 given in the American Bee-Keeper: Let the bees swarm 

 naturally; when a swarm Issues, cage the queen, lay her at 

 the entrance, and let the swarm return. The queen may be 

 left at the entrance a week or more. Usually a young queen 

 will have hatcht by the seventh day, but whether she has or 

 not, all queen-cells are cut out and some of the ripest laid at 

 the entrance, for the bees to care for, and the first one hatcht 

 will reign, the others being killed. The old queens are killed 

 if not needed elsewhere. 



Introducing' Valuable Queens. — G. M. Doolittle says. Id 

 the American Bee-Keeper, that he doesn't lose one queen in 

 50 by following the instructions for introduction that are sent 

 out by queen-breeders when they mail queens, but that one in 

 50 may happen to be one of most value, so when he has a val- 

 uable queen to introduce he takes another plan, a plan he has 

 now followed for more than 15 years without a single failure. 

 With wirecloth he makes a cage that will hold a brood-comb, 

 at each end the cage having a piece of wood 2 inches wide, 

 3/16 thick, and 'e inch longer than the depth of the frame. 

 A cover is made so that when a brood-comb is fastened in it 

 no bee can get in. Into this cage is put a frame of hatching 

 brood with no unsealed brood, the queen and her escort are 

 put in, and the frame thus caged is put in the middle of any 

 colony strong enough to keep it warm, the caged frame taking 

 the place of two frames. In five or six days, when the cage 

 has plenty of young bees, the frame is put into an empty hive 

 in a new place with a frame of honey, as a nucleus. B>ames 

 of hatching brood may be given to hurry matters. 



Large vs. Small Entrances. — The editor of Gleanings 

 has been fomenting a quarrel between G. M. Doolittle and Dr. 

 Miller as to the size of entrances. Dr. Miller maintaining that 

 a colony in a hive raised half an inch or more on four blocks 

 is less likely to swarm because cooler. Dr. Miller had his 

 inning in the number for June 1, and no reply came till 

 August 1. But Mr. Doolittle was not keeping still for noth- 

 ing, and now comes with testimony gathered direct from the 

 bees, and plainly says he expects to drive the Doctor from the 

 " arena," and then annihilate the arena itself. He had 10 

 colonies with usual entrances and 10 others of equal strength 

 with the entrance enlarged after the Pettit plan, measuring 

 15x1}^. Three of the colonies with large entrances swarmed 

 before any with the common entrance did. 



He says that not only does the large entrance all around 

 do no good, but it does harm, for the bees can easily keep the 

 hive cool with a ISxJ-a entrance. With the large entrance all 

 around, aggregating fiO square inches, the fanners have no 

 power to send the heated air circulating all about the combs 

 and hives, while they do have such power with the J<-inch 

 entrance. "And why the bees come out of the hive on hot 

 days is so that they will not be so much in the way of the cir- 

 culation of the air caused by the fanners, and not because it 

 is cooler outside, for in reality it is cooler inside." 



Every Present Subscriber of the Bee Journal 

 should be an agent for it, and get all other bee-keepers possi- 

 ble to subscribe for it. See premium offers on page 539. 



