40 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



The following are the principle fea- 

 tures which I think must be combined 

 in a perfect rack : 



1. It should be made solid, having 

 no movable sides. 



2. There should be no partitions. 



3. It should be so made and ar- 

 ranged that tlie bees have direct or 

 continuous passage waj's from the 

 brood chamber into the sections ; there 

 should be neither honey-board or bee- 

 space between the brood chamber and 

 sections, nor should there be a bee- 

 space between the different tiers of 

 sections. 



4. It should be reversible. 



5. It should be so made as to serve 

 as a half-story on a single-walled hive, 

 without an extra covernig. 



6. It should be so aiTanged as to 

 permit the bees to ascend from the 

 outside of outside combs directly into 

 the outside of the side sections. 



As to the first, durability, if noth- 

 ing more, would be a sufficient argu- 

 ment in its favor; but tliere are 

 others, — convenience in handling, no 

 falling apart, always in shape and 

 ready for use. 



Xever in my experience as a bee- 

 keeper, could I conceive why any one 

 wanted partitions in a section rack ; 

 it not only costs time and money to 

 put them in, but, when they are in, 

 they occupy space that ought to be 

 filled with sections. 



On page 637 of Bee Jottrnal Mr. 

 Heddon quotes more than a cohmm 

 from the specifications of the Lang- 

 stroth patent, in order to demonstrate 

 his 4th principle upon which all hives 

 should be constructed, viz.: That "the 

 sections should never rest on each 

 other or on the brood frames." 



At the bottom of the middle column 

 on the above page we find this : ''This 

 shallow chamber, while it greatly 

 facilitates the storage of honey in 

 large receptacles, is especially adapt- 

 ed to securing it in small ones", which 

 usually meet with the readiest sale." 



After-experience changed Mr. Laiig- 

 stroth's views, which, had Mr. li. 

 known, he probably would not have 

 quoted quite so much ; for on the very 

 next page he (Mr. L.) says : " I see no 

 reason why sections for comb honey 

 may not be set, to the best advantage, 

 directly on these sheets. Before giv- 

 ing up'my apiary. I found that small 

 boxes were much more readily filled 

 by Italian bees, when put directlv on 

 top of the frames ; and that, how- 

 ever admirably the shallow chamber 

 answered for black bees, the Italians 

 plainly wanted nothing to do with it." 



The" advantage of setting the rack 

 directly on the frames are : 



1. The bees will not fasten it so 

 tightly as where the bee-space and 

 honey-board are used. Every bee- 

 keeper knows what an amount of 

 comb is generally built in the bee- 

 space and conseqiiently of the effort 

 required to remove the rack. 2. Tlie 

 building of these pieces of comb re- 

 quires time and material, hence we 

 arrive at our second reason, viz.: Less 

 work for the bees and no waste of wax. 



8. The bees will go into the sections 

 much sooner. 



4. ilore comb honey. 



5. Easy and quick manipulation. 



By the use of a reversable rack we 

 get "our combs built solidly against 

 both the top and bottom of the sec- 

 tions, which adds very much to the 

 appearance of our honey as well as to 

 its stability, which advantage can not 

 be over-rated when it is to be handled 

 much, or shipped to a distant market. 



I remember, when at the Cincinnati 

 convention, over a year ago, D. A. 

 Jones held up a section of honey and 

 told in his forcible manner, how to 

 get comb honey that would take the 

 premium every time. It was simply 

 to reverse the sections when partly 

 filled. 



As racks are generally made, the 

 bees can not pass directly up from the 

 outside of the side comb into the sec- 

 tions, but thev must go in toward the 

 center of the hive until they come to 

 the passage between the first and 

 second rows of sectioius, liefore ascend- 

 ing. That this is a disadvantage any 

 one can well see ; for we wish to give 

 our bees every advantage possible, be- 

 cause upon so doing we add just so 

 UMcXi to our profits, be it ever so little. 



If this improvement was made to 

 all racks, I think there would be less 

 complaint that tlie side sections were 

 the last to be filled. It may be that 

 we are laying the blame of half- 

 finished side sections on the glass 

 sides of some crates, while the want 

 of a direct passage way is just as 

 much to blame. 



New Philadelphia, O. 



For the ABiericoa Bee Juumal. 



Dysentery without Pollen. 



W.M. F. KAXZLEK. 



■\Ve, the readers of the Bee Jour- 

 nal, are under very high obligations 

 to Mr. W. Z. Hutcliinson, for he 

 "brought before us Dr. Donhoff. a 

 very competent witness in our pollen 

 controversy, in Vol. XIX, page 641. 

 Dr. Donhoff was a great chemist, and 

 a close observer, and settled, micro- 

 scope in hand, many disputed ques- 

 tions in bee-life. Please allow me to 

 add some more facts brought out by 

 Dr. Donhoff. 



1. Cold is the cause of dysentery. 

 Dr. Donhoff brought well-filled bees, 

 in two small boxes, and put one of 

 these boxes under his shirt on his 

 breast for 24 hours, where tlie ther- 

 mometer showed 72}^° ; the other box 

 he placed in a room where the tem- 

 perature was .50- to .59°. In opening 

 the boxes, after 24 hours, he found the 

 first box as clean as before, but the 

 second box, kept in the colder room, 

 soiled with discharges. After repeat- 

 ing this experiment several times, 

 and giving the same results, he con- 

 cluded that bees, if they live in a 

 temperature of from 50- to 5SP, will 

 contract dysentery — {Apendix to F. 

 Huberts xcork. Vol. II, page 244, by G. 

 Kleine.) 



Any one who will repeat this ex- 

 periment can get well- filled bees, if 

 he follows the advice of Mr. Doolittle — 

 whose writings are an honor to our 

 valuable Journal — and disturb a 

 colony of bees, then they will rush 

 head foremost into cells and fill them- 



selves, and in so doing each one can 

 be secured by their wings. 



2. Dr. Donhoff dissected bees in 

 November, and did not find a particle 

 of pollen in their stomach, but found 

 pollen in their intestines in February 

 by bees which had brood, and by 

 those which had no brood (II, 274). 



3. Prof. Leuckart, another great 

 chemist, found by dissecting in No- 

 vember no pollen, but in the middle 

 of December; and was able, out of the 

 excrement of the plants, to tell where- 

 from the pollen was gathered (II, 241). 



4. In the stomach of the queen and 

 drones no pollen has been found (II, 

 242). 



Tlius, it is proved that bees eat 

 pollen, but it is not proved that out 

 of the eating dysentery will follow, 

 for, in the experiment at No. 1, we 

 find dysentery without pollen. 



Spencer Co., Ind., Jan. 1, 1884. 



For tbe American Bee Journal. 



Stings and Their Poison. 



R. J. KENDALL. 



I was much interested in reading 

 the report of the second day's Michi- 

 gan state convention, and especially 

 that portion devoted to " Is Bee Keep- 

 ing Healthful ?" The title struck me 

 as being novel for I thought the 

 healthfulness of bee keeping was one 

 of the settled tilings of life, and that 

 the thing had definitely advanced 

 from theory to fact. But" from the ex- 

 pressions given at the convention, my 

 ideas on this score are shown to be 

 mistaken utterly. 



When bee keepers like James Hed- 

 don, Dr. Mason, Mr. Millard and pos- 

 sibly hundreds of others, whose ex- 

 perience I do not know, state that bee 

 sting poison renders them nearly 

 " helpless," it is indeed a revelation 

 to one like me who had got it firmly 

 fixed in mind that the poison from 

 stings merely had ill effects at the 

 start. In fact I liad began to believe 

 that stings were like tobacco, — only 

 made one sick for the first, but after- 

 ward became more desirable than 

 otherwise. 



In a late Journal I read an article 

 that tended to prove that the acid bee 

 poison was really of great benefit to 

 the human system. This illusion is 

 dispelled. 



;My own experience has been of such 

 a nature as to render me a little skep- 

 tical of the beneficial and delightful 

 results from bee stings. But in spite 

 of tliis experience when I read wliat 

 lioot, Quinly, Newman. Cook, and in 

 fact nearly all the writers say about 

 it, I thouglit I must lie mistaken, and 

 that I was not huit at all, in spite of 

 the convincing nature of a bee sting, 

 ill popular imagination. 



I began keeping bees by getting one 

 colony said to be Italians, in the fall 

 of 1882. I got them in October and 

 they had plenty of winter stores. 

 During the few days of autumn and 

 the fine days of early winter, I used 

 to open the hive, takeout the frames 

 and look them over (to learn some- 

 thing.) I took off the roof and put 

 my face close to them. I had no cover 



