424 



CLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



May 15 



''starters in place of full sheets in brood- 

 comf'' (italics mine). Of course, I chang-- 

 ed it to "frames," as you will see in the 

 Straw. Say, doctor, I wish you could be 

 an editor just long- enough so I could "get 

 it back" at you. I promise you I would 

 make your life miserable after the two first 

 issues of your paper had appeared. — Ed.] 



I'm afraid some beginner may be advised 

 in the wrong direction by what Geo. W. 

 Strangways says, p. 387. He made a few 

 trials with full sheets of foundation, and 

 the combs warped, and some of it was con- 

 verted into drone comb. But hundreds of us 

 have made many trials on a large scale 

 without any failure, which rather goes to 

 show that Mr. Strangways failed to fasten 

 his wires into the foundation, or made some 

 other mistake not usually made. I have 

 more than 2000 combs built upon full sheets 

 of foundation, and I don't think you can 

 find a warped one in the lot. Neither will 

 you find a square inch of drone comb in the 

 whole lot which the bees have built upon 

 worker foundation, although you'll find a 

 good bit of drone comb where by some 

 means a hole has been made in a comb, to 

 be filled in at the will of the bees. It 

 would be a very unusual thing to see the 

 drone-cells built upon worker foundation 

 that was straight. If it should be warped 

 or curved, I should expect drone-cells on 

 the convex side. But there's no need to 

 have it warped or curved. [We have thou- 

 sands of beautiful combs built off from full 

 sheets of foundation, and it would be hard 

 to find a single cell of drone comb except 

 near the top-bar. Carelessness in putting 

 in the wires, or attaching foundation to the 

 wires, may result in the stretching of the 

 foundation, making the cells large enough 

 to rear drones. Yes, perhaps the beginner 

 should go slow. — Ed.] 



In a Straw, p. 372, I said there must be 

 a mistake about formaldehyde curing foul 

 brood without destroying healthy brood, 

 and in a footnote you say, "No mistake," 

 Mr. Editor, and then later on you say, 

 " But it may be that I am wrong in assum- 

 ing that healthy sealed brood will not be 

 killed." This leaves it a little uncertain 

 just where you do stand. Whether the 

 healthy brood be killed or not is a matter 

 of thousands of dollars' difference, and it 

 would be foolish to raise false hopes. lean 

 not conceive the possibility of any drug 

 sufficiently energetic to go to the bottom of 

 a cell of sealed honey and kill a foul-brood 

 spore there, and yet leave uninjured a cell of 

 brood in any stage. [I was first under the 

 impression that only a spray and not a gas 

 was used to disinfect the combs. With 

 that impression I reasoned that the drug 

 could thus be injected into the perforated 

 cappings of foul brood, while the healthy 

 brood with cappings intact would not be 

 molested. But now that we know positive- 

 ly that a gas of a decidedly penetrating 

 character is used, there can be no question 

 that healthy as well as diseased brood will 



be killed. But, see here, doctor; we can 

 save even the brood by letting it all hatch 

 out that is healthy, then subsequently dis- 

 infect the combs with gas. Of course, we 

 could do that with the McEvoy treatment; 

 but the McEvoy method involves the de- 

 struction of the combs, either by melting or 

 burning up — can't get around it. If the 

 formaldehyde-gas treatment can be made 

 effective, we really do not need to destroy 

 a7iy thing. The same combs and same hives 

 can be used over and over again. I do not 

 feel as sanguine as some do, that formalde- 

 hyde is going to do all that is claimed for 

 it ; but so much has been said in its favor 

 that it deserves careful consideration on the 

 part of practical bee-keepers and all the 

 bee-papers. — Ed.] 



You SAY you're going to take A. I. R. on 

 your first auto trip. Don't you do it unless 

 he consents to have his hands tied ; for just 

 as sure as you get up a good speed he'll 

 want to go three times as fast, and then 

 he'll grab the thing out of your hands and 

 get to going at such a rate that he'll run 

 you into the Atlantic Ocean. [At first At 

 I. R. was skeptical. He thought the auto- 

 mobile was a "naughty mobile;" that it 

 would break down ; would stop, and would 

 not run. Well, that is the way my machine 

 did until I learned more about handling it; 

 and now that I am able to make it go when 

 I want it to go, father is pleased — very 

 much so — over it. He asks questions, and 

 actually gets down on his hands and knees, 

 and squints under the machine. He now 

 begins to wonder if he could not run it. 

 Well, I am going to give him a chance. 

 We are at present visiting our out-yards 

 with the auto. After my experience with 

 horses stung and killed around the bees it 

 is a real comfort to run my iron horse clear 

 up among the bees without the least fear of 

 the bees stinging it. Sometimes even now 

 when I run up close to a trolley-car or a 

 common steam-car I forget myself and won- 

 der if somet-hing will not happen — not that 

 I shall get run into, but that my horse 

 may get scared. Then the feeling (a very 

 comfortable one I can tell you) comes to me 

 that my steed will not scare. I tell you, 

 the coming way of handling out-apiaries 

 will be with the automobile; and I most 

 firmly believe that Rambler's joke of two 

 years ago, of doing our extracting with the 

 same engine that runs the auto to the out- 

 yard will be realized before we know it ; 

 and I should not be surprised if some enter- 

 prising chap would use his machine for 

 making bee-hives, brood-frames, etc. Yes, 

 I hope to see the day myself when a self- 

 propelled road-scraper will level off our 

 horrible clay roads at a third of the cost 

 the work is now performed for with horses. 

 —Ed.] 



Go SLOW about advocating setting hives 

 on stakes, p. 392, on the ground that one 

 "can shove his toes under, permitting him 

 to get closer to the hive," until you'v-^ given 

 it a thorough practical trial. I've just been 



