198 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL, 



Mar. 30, 1899. 



great many different opinions about it. I think some Ne- 

 braska bee-keepers will tell you they produce three times as 

 much extracted honey as comb. No doubt they are telling 

 you the truth. There are others, again — I have in mind 

 Mr. Aikin, of Colorado — who will tell you he can produce 

 nearly as much, if not altogether as much, comb as ex- 

 tracted ; circumstances are different in different places, and 

 I think it is one of the things that will settle itself, and I 

 doubt very much if it would be wise for us to try to decide, 

 becau.se both extracted and comb honey are needed in the 

 market ; like everything else, if I tind I can rfjake more 

 money by producing one than the other, I am settled by 

 that, and so each one will settle the question largely for 

 himself. 



PRODUCTION OF COMB HONEY AND EXTR.\CTED. 



QuES. — How many are there who produce principally' 

 extracted honey and how many principally comb ? Ans. — 

 Extracted honey, 3 ; comb honey, 13. 



AVER.^GE LIFE OF BEES. 



QuES. — What is the average life of the bee ? 



Dr. Miller — That depends upon what kind of a bee it is ; 

 if it is' a queen it will perhaps live on an average of about 

 two 3'ears. I think there have been some cases in which it 

 has been pretty satisfactorily settled that queen-bees have 

 lived as long as six years. They are often superseded in 

 less than a year from the time they emerge frorn the cell ; 

 sometimes I have had them superseded in a few weeks. 

 Very likely queens are superseded oftener than you suppose. 

 A common thing is for a queen to be superseded after the 

 time of swarming : it may not have occurred to you that 

 every queen that dies in the natural condition of affairs, if 

 you don't meddle with them, is superseded. The worker, in 

 the busy season, will average about six weeks ; the life of 

 the worker depends upon the amount of work it does. The 

 drones I cannot tell you much about ; they will last usually 

 until there is a stoppage in honey. 



[Continued nest week.] 



CONDUCTED BY 



DR. C. C. MILLER, Marengo, 111. 



(The Questions may be mailed to the Bee Journal office, or to Dr. Miller 



direct, when he will answer them here. Please do not ask the 



Doctor to send answers'by mail. — Editok.] 



The Wells* Two-ttueen System. 



Please describe as nearly as possible how the two-queen 

 system is handled and workt by producing comb honey. I 

 would like to try the two-queen system the coming season. 



New York. 



Answer. — I don't know what you mean by the two- 

 queen system, unless you mean the Wells' system, which 

 has been practiced to .some extent in Englatid. The main 

 feature is having two colonies side by side in a large hive 

 with a division-board between them, a lot of holes being 

 burned through the division-board, and when the harvest 

 comes the bees have access to the same super. Sbme like 

 the plan and some don't, and the British Bee Journal thinks 

 it not an advisable plan for the majority. So far as I know, 

 no one has reported a success with the plan in this country. 



Varieties of Bees. 



1. Kindly differentiate between the following varieties 

 of bees, especially as regards appearance, but al.so as re- 

 gards honey-getting and temper : 3-banded, 5-banded, 

 golden and leather-colored Italians, Albinos and Adels. 



2. Prof. Cook in his Manual speaks well of Syrians. 

 Do subsequent experiences confirm or disprove his good 

 opinion of them ? Johnny Bull. 



Answers. — 1. The original pure Italians that came 

 from Italy were 3-banded, that is, the first three bands of 

 the abdomen next the thorax were yellow ; breeders in this 

 country by selection have secured workers with five yellow 

 bands, some having all the bands yellow, these last being 

 called golden. Some of the imported 3-banders are of a 

 darker color, and are called "leather-colored.'" Albinos 

 among bees' are much the .same as albinos among the human 



race — bees which have been so bred that the coloring-matter 

 is somewhat lacking. Adels are bees to which that name 

 has been arbitrarily given, just as you might breed from 

 some of yottr best bees and call them " Johnny Bull Bees." 

 As to honej'-getting and temper, the 3-banders being the 

 most fixt type may be perhaps most generally relied on as a 

 whole class for gentleness and industry, while in the variant 

 types some may be good and others bad. 



2. Very little is said about them of late, making it some- 

 what doubtful as to their confirming generally his good 

 opinion. 



< « » 



Bees Don't Always Die of Foul Brood. 



Do all bees that die and have dead brood in the hive die 

 of foul brood ? Is the honey fit for family use ? I have lost 

 two colonies that way this winter ; both had pletity of honey. 



Washington. 



Answer. — No, thousands of colonies die and leave dead 

 brood without there being an)' foul brood in the case. The 

 honej' left in such hives is all right for table use, unless the 

 bees have had diarrhea and have daubed the honey. 



Cubic Inches in Eight Frames— Queen-Excluders. 



1. How many cubic inches inside the frames of a dove- 

 tail hive ? 



2. What style of queen-excluding honey-board do you 

 use between the hives ? Iowa. 



Answers. — 1. The outside dimensions of the frame are 

 17^ and 9's, making the inside ineasure .sotnething like 140 

 square inches. The width of an 8-frame dovetailed hive is. 

 12^8 inches, and deducting from this about H for dummy 

 and space leaves 11';. That makes about 1,610 cubic inches- 

 as contents inside the frames. 



2. Wood-zinc, when any are u.sed, but no excluders are 

 generally used between my hives and supers. 



Substitutes for Natural Pollen. 



1. I have five colonies of bees. The queens stopt laying 

 about Sept. 1. Will my bees live till spring? There seems, 

 to be plenty alive yet, but there are also lots of dead ones. 



2. We have some warm weather just now (Feb. 20), and 

 my bees go to the feed-lot I2 mile away, and carry corn-meal 

 home. 'Will it do to put a box of meal closer to the hives 

 for them ? 



3. I will have to feed my bees this spring. Can I put 

 candy or syrup on a stand close to the hives so that they can 

 all help themselves on warm days ? Kansas. 



Answers. — 1. There is nothing unusual in anything 

 you mention, and your bees will probably come out all right. 



2. Yes. it will be a nice thing to give them something 

 of the kind one to ten rods from the apiary. They will 

 probably like it a little better to have groinid corn and oats ; 

 but as soon as they can get plenty of natural pollen they 

 will pay no attention to the substitute. 



3. Yes, put it a rod or more from the nearest hive. 



Making Nudei-The Golden Method. 



1. I intend to increase my number of colonies the coming 

 season by dividing. My plan of doing it is this : I have 14- 

 old colonies, and want to increase them to 28 in all. So I 

 thought I would take 14 of my new hives in which I want to 

 hive the new swarms, and make a nucleus in each, by put- 

 ting a frame of brood and eg'gs and one of honey in each 

 hive, and then contract the inside of the hive with a divi- 

 sion-board so as to keep the bees which I intend to put into 

 the hive confined to the side of the two frames. How many 

 bees will I have to put into a hive ? Will a pint or so do ? 

 And will these bees rear a queen from the eggs given them ? 

 Do you think a nucleus formed in this way will be all right ? 

 Would it be safe from robber-bees ? 



2. In the American Bee Journal of Jan. 5, G. M. Doo- 

 little gives his plan of making nuclei. Is his plan the same 

 thing ? There is one thing that isn't clear to me in his ar- 

 ticle, altho it may be very plain to an expert in bee-keeping. 

 Does he use one of the old colonies in making a nticleus ? 

 That is, does he make room in an old colony by using a 

 division-board, and then put the two frames in the place 

 partitioned off, with the rest of the old colony on the other 



