202 



AMERICAN BEE JCUHNAL. 



Mar. 30, 1899. 



Old Foundation is Still Good, according- to G. M. Doo- 

 little, in Gleaninys. Feb. 15 he was putting- foundation 

 about a year old in sections, and foundation purchast in 

 1896 in brood-frames. 



A Handy Way to Carry Bees, according- to the editor 

 of the Bee-Keepers" Review, is to pick up the hive and carry 

 it on the shoulder. This does not apply to hives with loose- 

 hanging: frames, and hardly to very large hives. It is es- 

 pecially appropriate for Heddon hives. 



Taking Bees Out of the Cellar was discust at the Brant- 

 ford convention, the prevailing opinion being that they 

 should be put out early — in March or April ; some preferring 

 to take out all at once, others by installments. No uniform- 

 ity of opinion as to whether they should be put on the old 

 stands. — Canadian Bee Journal. 



Is Extra Prolificness Desirable? — To the argument that 

 users of small hives never really know how prolific their 

 queens would be if given room. Editor Hutchinson, in the 

 Bee-Keepers' Review, replies that there is no object in 

 having one queen lay so much ; the object being a big lot 

 of bees whether from SO or 100 queens. 



To Preserve Fruits in Wax.— Take the fruit a little be- 

 fore it reaches maturity, being careful that it is in every 

 way without bruise or blemish, and retaining the stem. 

 Holding the fruit by the stem, dip it in melted beeswax that 

 is not too hot, and gently remove it. It will have a thin 

 envelop of wax, and if put in a cool, airj' place, will keep 

 nicely for several months. — Prak. Wegweiser. 



Wax from Old Combs with Solar Extractor. — Editor 

 Hutchinson having said that when old combs are put in the 

 solar extractor, '2 or -, of the wax is lost, O. O. Poppleton 

 makes, in the Bee-Keepers' Review, the following report : 

 Number of combs rendered, 32 ; amount of purified wax, 9 

 pounds ; amount of residue, 3 pounds, IS/2 ounces. He 

 thinks that not a third of the residue was wax. 



The riorton S-warming-Pole is figured and described 

 in Gleanings, it being the invention of the late Miles 

 Morton. A square pole slides inside a hollow pole, or long 

 box, 2 inches square and 12 feet long. It is an extension 

 affair, a pull upon a rope sliding' the inside pole up, so that 

 it may be made to reach a swarm 30 feet high while the 

 operator stands on the ground. If the swarm is higher than 

 30 feet, the pole is still a help, for one need not climb so 

 hig-h with the pole as without it. 



Varieties in Nectar-Secretion.— F. Greiner gives some 

 interesting points in regard to this in the American Bee- 

 Keeper. Cherry-trees are valuable for honej' in Virginia, 

 and almost worthless in Western New York. Apple is better 

 for honey North and South. The great honey-plant, white 

 clover, in his locality yields only enough for brood-rearing 

 three years out of four. O. L. Hershiser exhibited at a con- 

 vention some white honey ^yhich he felt sure was g^olden- 

 rod, while golden-rod is almost universally considered amber. 



Scolding Bees. —Rambler wants to know why it is that 

 when you are at work in the apiary, two or three bees will 

 follow and scold you when it might be a thousand as well. 

 He says if you knock the scolders down, in five minutes an- 

 other two or three will take their places. Dr. Miller says 

 the rule with him is that when the two to six scolders are 

 batted down, peace prevails. Editor Root says he finds it 

 sometimes one way and sometimes the other, but he thinks 

 it is good practice to knock down the scolders. 



Do Large Hives Have Larger Colonies in Spring? A 



.question of fact enters into the large-small-hive discus.sion. 

 The advocates of larg-e hives say they will have a stronger 

 population in spring. \V. E. Hutchinson, editor of the Bee- 



Keepers' Review, says this is an unwarranted.assumption. 

 For several years he had three sizes of hives — 8-frame, 10- 

 frame and 11-frame — and he still uses 8's and lO's, and he i& 

 syre that the most populous colonies are not always found 

 in the larger hives. Large-hive men want a hive large 

 enough to fully accommodate the most prolific queen at any 

 time, while he wants a hive large enough to accommodate 

 the a%'erage queen. If there is more room in the brood- 

 chamber than the queen will occupy, white honey goes in 

 there that should have gone into the super. 



What Darkens Honey-Combs is a matter that has been 

 pretty thoroly discust in Gleanings. Aside from some cases 

 of darkening by pollen, J. E. Crane thinks the first brown 

 color given to the combs is from the cocoon. Dr. MiJler 

 thinks Cheshire is right in saying that the darkening is due 

 to the residua of the bowels of the larv;e being plastered 

 outside the exuvium, within the cell-wall. But he thinks 

 white sections in the super, if left on long enough, are dark- 

 ened by dark material being carried up from below. Both 

 are agreed that the feet of the bees have nothing to do with 

 darkening. 



The Curative Properties of Honey are strongly lauded 

 in an item in Centralblatt. A lad had his knee badly in- 

 jured by falling on a hard object, and the physician said it 

 was a serious matter of several weeks. In spite of the dif- 

 ferent remedies applied there seemed no diminution of the 

 pain and inflammation. The father then resorted to the use 

 of honey, wrapping well the injured part with it. Within 

 a quarter of an hour after the application the lad fell asleep, 

 peacefully sleeping several hours, and on awakening de- 

 clared the pain was all gone. The remedy was continued, 

 and in 10 davs he was about as usual. 



Selling Sections by Weight and by the Piece. — In re- 

 ply to the proposition of J. E. Crane, that sections should 

 be sold by the piece and not by weight, R. A. Burnett, the 

 prominent honey commission merchant in Chicago, says 

 there are many difficulties and many things to be consid- 

 ered. He says the demand for 14-ounce sections comes from 

 those dealers who want to undersell their neighbors, and 

 yet eqxial or excel them in profit. He concludes by saying : 

 "We have thought very much on this question, and can 

 never get away from the conviction that the only fair and 

 accurate way is to buy and sell honey by weight." — Bee- 

 Keepers' Review. 



Equalizing Colonies Before the Honey-Flow was dis- 

 cust at the Brantford convention, some favoring, some op- 

 posing, according to the report in the Canadian Bee Journal, 

 The chairman, Jacob Alpaugh, said : 



" I have done some equalizing ; that was in times when 

 I did not have as many bees as later on. I believe j'ou can 

 do it to advantage, but you need to be careful ; it is worse 

 than spreading brood — to take from one hive and give to- 

 another. Go to your strong hive, take out a frame of hatch- 

 ing brood, take it to a weak colony and replace it for a 

 frame that is just full of eggs, and take that back to the 

 strong colony. You will find them both strong, afterwards, 

 and no loss of brood ; the same bees are there to cover the 

 same amount of frames." 



Is Swarming Contagious? — A good deal of testimony, 

 one time and another, seems to show that it is, and that the 

 excitement of a swarming colony may induce others to is- 

 sue that would not at least have issued so soon. F. E. 

 Brown reports a case in which he had 18 swarms in the air 

 at one time, all settling in one bunch. One swarm after an- 

 other settled on a slender cedar-tree 10 feet high, which ac- 

 commodatingly bent to th$ ground. Then the bees were 

 put into hives and set on stands, many of them swarming- 

 out again as fast as they were hived. This was kept up a 

 good part of the day. The middle of the afternoon the oper- 

 ators gave it up as a bad job and sat down to watch what 

 the bees would do. At 4 o'clock they arose in a body, but 

 instead of sailing off lit on another tree. The air was black 

 with the roaring mass, and bees in hives apparently quiet 

 left brood and honey and joined the saturnalia. As the day 

 waned the bees began going back to their hives, and when 

 account of stock was taken there were 18 new swarms. The 

 next day was a repetition, the 18 swarms being as frantic 

 as ever, and all that spring on heavy swarm days the bees 

 from new swarms would deserr, leaving brood and honey. — 

 Gleanings, 



