138 



AMERICAN BEE 



Mar. 2, 1899. 



ToPrevent a Swarm Scattering into other hives, sim- 

 ply sprinkle the bees with a little water whenever you dump 

 them 'off the branch on which they have clustered ; then 

 they will not take wing, but march straight for the hive in 

 front of them. — F. L. Thompson, in Progressive Bee- 

 Keeper. 



Getting Section Honey and Extracted from a colony at 

 the'same time, is characterized by G. M. Doolittle in the 

 Progressive Bee-Keeper as a myth. So long as there is any 

 room in the estracting-combs, bees will build no comb in 

 sections, even if the extracting-combs are farther than the 

 sections from the brood-nest. 



Getting Light Honey from the Wax=Extractor.— Ordi- 

 narily the honey that comes from cappings thrown in the 

 wax-extractor is injured and darkened by the great heat re- 

 quired to melt the wax. Rambler finds he can get the honey 

 in good condition by a mild heat long continued. This is 

 secured in a cloudy day, and in a bright sun he makes his 

 own clouds by putting a gunny-sack or something of the 

 kind ajfew inches above the^glass. — Gleanings. 



A Point for Large' Hives isjmade by Adrian Getaz in 

 Gleanings, who insists that it is not enough that colonies 

 are strong to overflowing when the harvest comes, but says 

 he gets best results from those that are strong before this 

 time, even if no stronger than others when the harvest be- 

 gins. He thinks that when a colony merely fills up with 

 bees ready for the opening of the harvest, that the workers 

 are not old enough for best results. Practically, the colo- 

 nies'mu-st be strong the preceding fall. 



W. 



Bee=Keeping in Cuba seems to be a live topic nowadays. 

 W. Somerford talks about it in Gleanings. He thinks bell- 

 flower or canipanilla honey is finer than bas.swood, and one 

 who eats it will want more. He tells of 700 gallons pure 

 sugar-cane honey being extracted and unsalable, which the 

 bees gathered the first year of the war from burnt cane- 

 fields. He thinks that competition from Cuban honey need 

 not be greatly feared, as Cuba is not so very large, and not 

 more than half of it will do to keep bees on at all, except as 

 a side-issue. 



Practice Better than;Theory.— What I have done, and 

 the result, is of far more importance to the world than what 

 I want and why. In other words, if more of our writers 

 would wait about telling us their theories till after they had 

 practiced them for a few years, and then tell us how they 

 workt, and their .success, less chaft' would appear in our bee- 

 papers, and the fraternity be saved much bv not being led 

 to try so many will-o'-the-wisp things, which result ui a 

 long "chase" after nothing.— G. M. Doolittle, in the Pro- 

 gressive Bee-Keeper. 



Some Interesting Apicultural Figures, in the American 

 Bee-Keeper, are given by G. M. Doolittle. He began bee- 

 keeping m 1869, paying 10 cents each for 6-pound boxes. 

 Got two boxes filled and ate the honev. The next vear he 

 -sold at 2a cents a pound, boxes costing $16.66 for each 1,000 

 pounds of honey. In 1872 or 1873, 2 .jound sections came in, 

 costing $30 a thousand in the fla-. or $40 ready for use 

 Sold honey in 1874 for 2»% cent^. .ir 27 cents after taking 

 Sl'r "i?** °J sections in flat. Thei: sections fell to $25, $18, 

 $15, $12, $10, $8, and $7. To-day tne finest 1-pound sections 

 are $3, and if honey had fallen ii; the same proportion, sec- 

 tion honey would to-dav bring 6 rents a pound. 



Does the 8-Frame Hive Accommodate the Average 

 Queen ?^In answer to this question, C. P. Dadant says in 

 Gleanings 



" Emphatically I will say no. Neither do I think that 

 the bee-keeper who makes any tests at all, no matter who 

 he is or where he is, would answer the question in any other 

 way. My experience is that about H of the queens are 

 crowded in a 10-frame brood-chamber, and that not over 

 one-tenth of the colonies can be sufficiently accommodated 



with breeding-room in an 8-frame hive ; while perhaps only 

 two or three percent of the healthy queens would find this 

 hive too large. 



"Perhaps many people will disagree with me, who have 

 never used anything larger than an 8-frame hive, because 

 they judge of the possible strength of a colony bj- the expe- 

 rience that one may get with such a hive. I beg leave to 

 say that it is next to impossible to judge fairlj' of this ques- 

 tion without first giving a trial to large brood-chambers the 

 year round. It is useless to expect as populous a colony for 

 either spring, summer, or winter, on an average, in a small 

 hive, as in a large one. One might as well expect as large 

 a colt from a pony as from a Norman mare. A greater 

 cluster, a larger space, and a greater amount of stores are 

 bound to produce, with a queen to match, a more satisfac- 

 tory colony." 



Shall Sections be Scraped?— Editor Holtermann. of the 

 Canadian Bee Journal, does not take kindly to the idea that 

 it is better to have .sections daubed with propolis so people 

 will think the honey genuine. He says : 



"The above reminds me of an incident when out at 

 Farmers' Institute work some years ago. The member of 

 the Government deputation with me was very partial to 

 milk, of which verj' little, even for tea and coffee, had been 

 upon the table for some time (we were in a newer and colder 

 part of the Province). One day for dinner a jug of milk ap- 

 peared upon the table. I took half a glass and began sip- 

 ping it. It tasted so strong of the stable I suggested to my 

 colleague there was no mistake about it ; this was genuine 

 cow's milk. He filled his glass promptly and downed half 

 of it before he struck the flavor. It was cow. We do not re- 

 quire to have our honey product in a crude condition to 

 enable an intelligent public to understand it is genuine. It 

 is just as absurd to call for propolized and travel-stained 

 honey as it is to call for hair in butter." 



Sweet Clover — Melilotus — This plant closely resembles 

 Alfalfa, but makes a much larger and coarser growth, and 

 is especially adapted to lime soils. It will make a good 

 growth on any lime soil, even on the white barren lime- 

 hills, where the land is so poor that no other plant will live. 

 Melilotus is of little or no value on the red clay or sandy 

 soils which contain little lime. In this latitude it is a bien- 

 nial plant, making only a moderate growth the first year, 

 but an excellent growth the second. This plant comes from 

 seed the first year and from roots the second, and will then 

 continue to re-seed itself for years without interference. 

 The seed may be sown late in August or in Februarj-, at the 

 rate of Yz bushel per acre, as directed for Lespedeza. 



Melilotus, in either the cured or green state, is not gen- 

 erally liked by animals unaccustomed to it at first, but they 

 soon learn to relish it, and it is very nutritious either in the 

 green or cured state. Melilotus starts into growth early in 

 the spring when other green forage ife scarce, and stock 

 learn to like it quickly. This plant not only furnishes a 

 large amount of grazing, but has few equals as a soil-im- 

 prover. — Mississippi Experiment Station Bulletin. 



Tar Odor a Cure for Foul Brood. — Loyalstone says in 

 Australian Bee-Bulletin : 



" I got some foundation, wrapt a piece of cheese-cloth 

 over it, then I got a box of thin wood, placed two pieces of 

 tarred felt in the bottom of it, put the foundation in cloth 

 on top of this. Then put two more pieces of tarred felt on 

 top. Put this in a warm place for three weeks,' when the 

 foundation had inhaled the tar it smelt very strong. I then 

 hived two swarms bad with foul brood in a fresh hive with 

 starters made of this foundation, and hived two other 

 swarms bad with foul brood in a fresh hive with starters of 

 ordinary foundation, with this result : The two swarms 

 hived on tar-smelling foundation showed no sign of foul 

 brood. The other two hived on ordinary foundation were 

 again attackt with foul brood. So again I experimented. 

 The worst of these two I hived in a fresh hive with starters 

 of tar-smelling foundation. The other I hived in a fresh 

 hive with ordinary foundation. Again the hive with anti- 

 foul-brood foundation showed no signs of foul brood, where- 

 as the other one was infected. The last I transferred into 

 a fresh hive with anti-foul-brood foundation, and it showed 

 no signs of foul brood. I then got a lot of thin cakes of 

 wax and put in a box in a warm place surrounded with 

 tarred felt, and in six weeks the smell of the tar was so 

 strong in the was that you could not boil it out. The more 

 the was was boiled the stronger was the smell. Make this 

 wax into foundation and foul brood will not trouble j-ou. It 

 has not in the many cases I have tried. 



