Julv 



1899. 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



471 



Bees in the Walls of a House. — A colony of bees were 

 located in the dead-air space between the two walls of a 

 brick house. A. D. Hopps threw in carbolized water all thru 

 the sides by means of a small syringe, and that being- more 

 than the bees could stand they came out and were hived. — 

 Gleanings in Bee-Culture. 



Duties of Worker=Bees are thus given by A. H. Dufl in 

 a Kansas Bulletin : At two or three days old, preparing 

 food and feeding larvae ; at 10 or 12 days old, secreting wax 

 and building comb ; at about 20 days old, field-work. The 

 generally accepted age for field-work is 16 days. It would 

 be interesting to know upon what grounds Mr. Duff has de- 

 parted from the traditions of the fathers. 



Controlled Fertilization of Queens. — Dr. Mason gives 

 further publicity in the Bee-Keepers' Review to an item 

 given in Canadian Bee Journal. The Doctor had tried 

 shutting in at 9a.m.virg'in queens and the drones he wanted 

 to meet them, then letting them out when drones had ceast 

 to fly, but both queens and drones were uneasy, fretting and 

 stewing to get out for a flight. Mr. Holmberg has supplied 

 the missing link by putting the nuclei in the cellar where 

 they keep quiet, giving the nuclei a good supply of drones. 



Wax=Moths in Strong Colonies.— Dr. Bartrum demurs 

 to the statement of British Bee Journal that there is little 

 fear of wax-moths in strong colonies. Even with the strong- 

 est colonies he finds it advisable to squeeze putty " into all 

 the crevices on the top frames of the combs," in order to 

 avoid injury to surplus honey. Possibly the kind of bees 

 has something to do with the case. In England black bees 

 are preferred by many to Italians, and it is well known that 

 blacks — in this country at least — .will not protect themselves 

 against moths as will the Italians. 



Capacity for Strong Colonies. — A. H. Duff says in the 

 Kansas Bulletin that it would be a fatal mistake to confine 

 a very strong colony to a single story of usual dimensions. 

 A second story should be added, the bees using both stories 

 for brood and honey combined until the beginning- of the 

 honey harvest. Then only one of the stories should be left, 

 if comb honey is to be produced, this story being filled with 

 brood. In place of the removed story, tv\'0 tiers of sections 

 should be given above. If the extractor is to be used, leave 

 both stories, putting the brood below and the honey above. 



Separator and Non-Separator Honey.— A picture is 

 given in Gleanings in Bee-Culture of eight sections of 

 extra-fancy honey in bee-way sections. The honey is snow- 

 white and of fine flavor, the only drawback being that some 

 sections are too full and some are lean because separators 

 were used only in every alternate space. Editor Root thinks 

 more money could be obtained for such honey by using the 

 full number of separators. It seems that some make a suc- 

 cess of producing section honey with half the usual number 

 of separators, or with none at all, but in some circumstan- 

 ces, perhaps in most circumstances, it is wisdom to use them. 



Do Bees Made Queenless Choose Larvfe too Old for 

 Good Queens?— Some time ago Dr. Miller took issue against 

 the somewhat generally accepted theory that bees left to 

 themselves, in their haste to secure a queen as soon as pos- 

 sible, would select by preference larva? so old that good 

 queens could not be produced from them, maintaining tliat 

 a queenless colony when left to itself would select the best 

 material it had on hand. Several of the leading writers 

 stood up for the old theory, declaring that actual experi- 

 ment had shown that when a queen was suddenly removed 

 from a colony a lot of very poor queens was reared. In 

 Gleanings in Bee Culture Dr. Miller says beliefs have been 

 read into his article that he never held. He thinks it the 

 instinct of the bee to rear a number of queens, not all at the 

 same time but somewhat in succession, and after the first 

 few days of queenlessness there being no sufficientU' young 

 larva; present the bees will use those too far advanced, and 

 these will produce poor queens. If all the queen-cells are 



used the result will be bad. But if the matter is left en- 

 tirely to the bees to secure from the lot only one queen, the 

 queens first started from the young larva; will mature be- 

 fore the objectionable ones, and the result will be a goocl 

 queen. Also if several of the cells are given to a nucleus, 

 the chances are in favor of a good queen. But he counts 

 that the Doolittle plan has the markt advantage that all 

 cells may be good. 



Prevention of Swarming by Perforated Zinc at En- 

 trance seems to be one of the things at which the novice 

 quite generally grasps with alacrity. As a swarm cannot 

 go off without a queen, it seems the natural thing for the 

 inexperienced to jump at the conclusion that a measure that 

 will prevent the departure of the queen will prevent swarm- 

 ing, without taking into account the fatality that may ac- 

 company such a thing. To the inquiry of one more who 

 has conceived the idea of preventing swarming by means 

 of perforated zinc at the entrance, the editor of the British 

 Bee Journal replies with perhaps a shade of impatience (an 

 impatience which is quite justified) that the idea of pre- 

 venting swarming hy such means is absurd. The thing 

 has been tried again and again, and only failures reported. 

 Among other troubles, "excluders have become blockt by 

 drones endeavoring to squeeze thru in the headlong outrush 

 of a swarm, and strong colonies half suffocated thereby in 

 hot weather." 



Management for Comb Honey. — H. H. Hyde, having 

 said that as soon as the fast flow has commenced he goes 

 thru, filling the bottom story full of sealed brood as much 

 as possible, placing frames of the youngest brood at the 

 outside of the hives, S. P. Culley heartily endorses the plan, 

 and says : " The principles involved, are briefly, it secures 

 the right conditions to insure prompt starting and vigorous 

 work in the sections, to-wit ; (a) it gives a brood-chamber 

 full of brood, not much honey ; (b) it obviates the necessity 

 of bees traveling over much honey to reach the super — a 

 thing four out of five colonies do with extreme and expen- 

 sive reluctance and one or more out of five refuse to do at 

 all ; (c) it invites the bees to store honey directly over the 

 brood, which is in harmony with their own idea ; (d) placing 

 ' frames of the youngest brood at the outside ' of the brood- 

 nest diverts from storing at the sides of the brood to storing 

 above, in the sections." — Progressive Bee-Keeper. 



Queen-Excluders Indispensable for Extracting, altho 

 not necessary for comb honey, is the theme of C. A. Hatch 

 in Gleanings in Bee-Culture. He says that without exclu- 

 ders more combs must be used for the same amount of 

 honey, as much of the storage-room is occupied with brood 

 and pollen ; labor is saved in the fall, for with the excluder 

 the brood is all where it ought to be; but the strongest 

 point he makes — a point that can hardly be emphasized too 

 strongly — is that without the excluder the queen will occupy 

 extracting-combs. and the food of the larva:- will be thrown 

 out in the honey, to say nothing abovit the larvae themselves 

 floating around in it, and the lowering in this way the qual- 

 ity of the honej' is a very serious matter. He believes in 

 using plain sheets of perforated zinc. These should not be 

 given when the super is first put on, but after the bees are 

 well started, even if the queen lays in the super. When the 

 excluder is given, put queen and brood below, or at least 

 put onU' sealed brood above. 



I 



Rearing Queens by Unqueening a Colony. — The editor 

 of the Bee-Keepers' Review refers to an article in Glean- 

 ings in Bee-Culture in which Dr. Miller admits that when 

 left to their own choice some of the queens will be poor, and 

 holds the Doctor still in error in insisting that the first 

 queens hatcht will be good, and that bees continue to start 

 queen-cells after larva; are too old. Even if the first queen 

 is best, soiiietiines she goes off with a swarm. Mr. Hutch- 

 inson has started as many as a thousand batches of queen- 

 cells, and till he knew better followed the plan of making a 

 colony queenless. Most of the cells were started the first 

 day after the queen's removal — occasionallj' one the second 

 day. All hatcht on the same day, with an occasional one a 

 day later. That is, the regular cells, but sometimes two or 

 three days after the regular batch was started, what he 

 calls ■• fool-cells " were started with half-grown worker 

 larvje, producing worthless queens. So his bees don't do as 

 the Doctor claims — continue starting cells in succession. 

 As Dr. Miller seems to stand alone in his views, one might 

 be excused for asking him why, since he is not a queen- 

 breeder, he should pit his limited observation against that 

 I of all those who have reared queens by the thousand. 



