170 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL, 



Mar. 16, 1899. 



Selling Sections by Count is advocated by J. E. Crane, 



in the Bee-Keepers' Review. He thinks it absurd that the 

 bee-keeper who produces thousands of sections of the same 

 size and nearly the same weight should sell them by weig-ht 

 and then the purchaser should sell them by the piece. He 

 thinks selling- by count would have a tendency to the pro- 

 duction of combs of more even weight. 



Putting Empty Supers OverPartly=Filled Ones is prac- 

 ticed bj- many toward the close of the season, but is now 

 recommended in the Progressive Bee-Keeper as a plan to be 

 used all through the season for the sake of getting sections 

 filled up more evenly in the super already partly filled. 

 You may rely on the plan for getting the sections" finisht 

 sooner, but there is also danger that the sections will not be 

 so white. 



Do Bees Get Used to flovements? is a question raised 

 by J. H. Martin, in the Bee-Keepers' Review. He cites the 

 common observation that bees are not so troublesome where 

 they are visited daily, and if the movements of the people 

 make the difference, why not movements of inanimate ob- 

 jects? Rethinks of planting a dozen flags in his apiary, 

 so that their contijiual motion may make the bees take less 

 notice of the movements of the bee-keeper. . 



Boiling Foul=Broody Honey 15 Minutes is held to be 

 long enough by the Bee-Keepers' Review critic. To the ar- 

 gument of Dr. Miller that Prof. McKenzie succeeded in 

 getting spores to grow after being kept for 2''i hours near 

 212 degrees, Mr. Taylor has a counter argument that will be 

 hard for the Doctor to withstand. He says the specific 

 gravity of honey is nearly a half greater than that of water, 

 so its boiling point will be above 212 degrees, giving- the 

 spores a harder roasting in boiling honey than in boiling- 

 water. 



Queen=Traps for Swarms — W. Z. Hutchinson has tried 

 leaving queens unclipt and allowing them to go with the 

 swarms, till he is heartily sick of it. His preference is for 

 queen-traps. He says in the Canadian Bee Journal : 



" I have tried both the clipping of queens and the using 

 of queen-traps, and my preference is for the latter. It saves 

 the time and trouble of hunting up and clipping the 

 queen, the time and trouble of hunting for and caging her 

 when the swarm issues, aud there is no danger of her being 

 lost- by the swarm coming out when no one is present to 

 care for it." 



One-Pound Sections Small Enough J. E. Crane says 



inJIGleanings: " The fact that the many attempts which 

 have been made to use a half or quarter pound section have 

 ended in failure would indicate that a section less than 4 '4 s4 '4 

 is*;iikely to prove unprofitable and quite impracticable. I 

 tried it myself some years ago, but have not cared to repeat 

 the experiment. Bees seemed to dislike to build comb and 

 store honey in very small receptacles, or else were unable, 

 when clustered in very small bodies, to secrete wax, and 

 build combs rapidly. We have learned by the use of -single 

 combs of various thicknesses the thickness of comb that 

 bees can build to the best advantage, which seems to be 

 somewhere from 1 to l^s inches." 



Quilt or No Quilt?— In this country the tendency is 

 toward discarding everything in the line of quilts and 

 sheets, having nothing between top-bars and board-cover. 

 Evidently the British colonies do not take kindly to this. 

 The Australian Bee-Bulletin says it may do for comb honey 

 but not for extracted. Disturbs bees too much in snapping 

 up the board cover. The Canadian Bee Journal objects that 

 too many bees are killed in putting on the cover. It may be 

 a question worth considering whether in throwing aside 

 quilts the bee-keeper may not be securing his own conven- 

 ience at too great an expense in the way of comfort to the 

 bees, but the man who isifamiliar with board covers without 



quilts will feel inclined to smile at the objections as to tak- 

 ing off" and putting on board covers. If it be admitted that 

 there is no trouble in taking ofl^ such a cover from a super 

 of comb hone^', or from a hive upon which it is expected to 

 put such a super, what possible difficulty can there be with 

 an extracting-super ? Are not bees just as plenty- and just 

 as irritable in one kind of super as the other ? And it will 

 be hard to corr\-ince one with experience in such things that 

 he cannot put on a board cover without killing bees in a 

 great deal less time than he can get on quilt and cover. 



As to the Value of Queens " The Boiler in the Amer- 

 ican Bee Journal, 42, says ' In opposition to the views of 

 Editor Hutchinson, who says queens are the least expensive 

 part of a colony. . . .C. P. Dadant in Gleanings is emphatic 

 in the assertion that in the spring the queens are the part, 

 of most especial value.' Why jumble language, brethren ? 

 Isn't the common air of ' most especial value,' and yet, isn't 

 it the least expensive ?" — Critic Taylor in the Bee-Keepers' 

 Review. 



That is a slight intimation that there is no difference 

 after all in the views of the two men. Well, Mr. Taylor, 

 look at the Review, 55, where Mr. Dadant says, "Queens, to 

 us in early spring, are the most expensive part of a colony," 

 and try your hand at reconciling that with Editor Hutchin- 

 son's statement that thej' are the l/ras/ expensive part of a 

 colony. 



A Bee=and-Poultry Scheme is thus given by S. M. 

 Keeler in the American Bee-Keeper : 



" I have a small plot of ground that I sow to buckwheat 

 the first of July, and seed it with crimson clover. The bees 

 are ever readj' for the nectar from both. When the buck- 

 wheat is ripe thg hens are let in to harvest it, and grow fat. 

 The clover comes in bloom the next spring, two or three 

 weeks sooner than white clover, and just the time bees need 

 looking to, to keep them from starving. And such a mass 

 of red blossoms, and such a mass of bees humming over 

 them, is very gratif3'ing to the bee-man. 



"Now, when the bees are done working the flowers, the 

 clover is cut and cured, and run through a clover-cutter for 

 the hens while they are in their winter quarters. Then the 

 ground is put to buckwheat and clover again on the first of 

 Julv. And so on every vear." 



Cold Facts in Favor of Plain Sections is what the editor 

 of Gleanings calls the following statements (some would 

 call them hot facts) by J. E. Crane : 



"Will the evolution of the honey-box bring the plain 

 section into general use ? I believe it will. One dealer in 

 Washington told me he would paj' three cents per pound 

 more for the 4x5 plain-section honey than for the old-style 

 sections. Indeed, I was offered two cents per pound more, 

 for 5,000 pounds of clover honey, to be delivered next fall, 

 than I have been receiving of late for my best grade of 

 honey, if put in plain 4x5 sections. In New York I inquired 

 of Mr. Segelken for his plain-section honey, that I mig-ht 

 compare it with that in old-style sections. He said he had 

 very little left in plain sections, as such lots were pickt up 

 first by retail dealers, who preferred them to the old-stj-le 

 sections. I found the same true in Albany, N.Y., where I 

 stopt to look over the honej-. As these retail dealers are 

 not in the supply business, I thought their opinions worth 

 recording-." 



Ordering Supplies in Advance is very generally advised, 

 and a sort of blame thrown on the man who does not send 

 his orders some time before the goods are needed. By way 

 of variety, a writer in British Bee Journal has this to say 

 on the other side : 



" I do feel, as a beginner, that this is a great grievance 

 to us amateurs, who do not and cannot know, until expe- 

 rience teaches us, what we do want, and, in consequence, 

 are kept waiting by tradesmen, who ought themselves to 

 know by experience when, and to what extent, the rush of 

 orders. will come in. It is the only trade I know where the 

 seller has the face to expect his customers to tell him be- 

 forehand what they will want ; and in our case — I speak for 

 us novices — we do not know, and the tradesman loses what 

 mig-ht turn out afterwards to be good customers by the fear- 

 ful delay in suppU-ing the most simple and absolutely nec- 

 es,sary articles, and thus frequently putting back a beginner 

 to so late a date that he is unable to make a success by 

 having everything f« fraiii at the proper time, and perhaps 

 even disgusting him for good in consequence." 



