298 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



May 11, 1899. 



A Plan for Watering Bees is g-iven in the British Bee 

 Journal that may be very convenient for those who drink 

 much tea or keep few bees. The spent tea leaves are satur- 

 ated with water and put in a .saucer in a sunnj' spot for the 

 bees. 



Sacks to Contain Melting Combs, C. Davenport saj's, 

 in the Bee-Keepers' Review, should not be of any 2voven 

 cloth, as this will leave a large portion of the wax in the 

 slumgum. but should be coarse, knit, cotton stuff, like that 

 in a cheap, but heavy, coarse, knit, cotton sock. 



Difference in Queens — S. F. Miller had seven colonies 

 of equal streng-th : one of them filled everything full from 

 top to bottom, while the others gathered no honey to amount 

 to anything. The editor of Gleanings thinks the difference 

 in results might be accounted for by the difference in queens. 

 He says : 



" We once had a colony in our apiary that would fill its 

 hive full of honey when the othJr bees would be almost on 

 the verge of starvation. Work ? We never had anything 

 like them. Rob ? Thej' would clean out anything they 

 could fight down. The queen of this colony we called the 

 'honey queen,' and her daughters were sold at advanced 

 prices." 



Putting Section=Supers Between Stories of Brood- 

 Combs, is advised in the Progressive Bee-Keeper, by R. C. 

 Aikin, as a sure way of getting rushing work done in the 

 sections. G. M. Doolittle says, in the same paper, that it is 

 good practice to have an extracting-super between two 

 stories of brood-combs, but it's a bad thing for sections, be- 

 cause the old, black comb from above will be carried down 

 in bits to help seal the sections. Even with old combs be- 



low, the snow-white appearance of the sections will be af- 

 fected. " To produce the most ' snow-white ' honey in sec- 

 tions, it must be built over new cojnbs below, or over combs 

 of sealed bi'ood or honey by very strong colonies." 



Spring Feeding of Bees is discust in Gleanings by G. M. 

 Doolittle. He objects to outside feeding', because bees for 

 two miles around must be fed, because there is some danger 

 it may start robbing, and because those which need the 

 least may get the most. If a warm morning is followed by 

 a chilly afternoon, bees may be lost by flying out, and at 

 this time of the year one bee is worth as much as a hun- 

 dred at the close of harvest. In early spring each colony 

 should have from 10 to IS pounds of honej-, then they will 

 need no further feeding unless the weather is bad in fruit- 

 bloom. Instead of feeding nightly for stimulative pur- 

 poses, he thinks it better to give full combs of honey, and 

 if these are not at hand, then combs filled with sugar syrup. 



Starting Bees in Sections. — The editor of Gleanings 

 commends a plan for starting bees in sections given by 

 Mrs. A. J. Barber. She says : 



" I had 60 colonies of Italians in my out-apiary, and in 

 trying my experiment I tried to be fair. I took 30 supers of 

 half-depth extracting-frames full of comb from the home 

 apiary, and put them on 30 hives in the out-apiary at the 

 same time that I put sections on the other 30 hives. In four 

 or five daj's the extracting-combs were full of new honey, 

 and the bees excited and busy at their work, while most of 

 those having sections were loafing, and some had swarmed. 

 I raised the combs by putting a super of sections between 

 them and the brood-nest. At the end of two weeks from 

 putting on the combs those sections under the combs were 

 better filled than those on the hives that had no combs. As 

 soon as the combs were sealed I put them away to extract, 

 having that amount of honey extra, and the bees started 

 nicely in their work. I had only about a third as many 

 swarms from those hives as from the ones with sections and 

 no combs." 



But those who have been in the habit of using bait sec- 

 tions will probably think it is no advantage to use extract- 

 ing-combs in their place, unless it be desired to have ex- 

 tracted honey. 



THE G. B. LEWIS GO'S 



BEE=HIVES 

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