1903 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



545 



)rner of the frame. This will at the same 

 me act as a brace.— Frank Benton. 

 I move my bees without spacers. I move 

 )0 or more colonies every year. — Ricker. 

 After a colony- had been wintered in a 

 ngle-walled hive, the hive-walls contained 

 pints of water, or 5 to 6 lbs. — F. Benton. 

 Marks can not winter his bees in chatf. 

 icker wants no chaff; Greiner, only chaff 

 r place in cellar. 



The Cyprio-Carniolan bee is a success, 

 f a full-blood Cyprian queen is used, the 

 ross will beg-entle. The temper of a cross 

 Dmes from the male, the Carniolan drone, 

 'his cross has only one fault: It will not 

 o to breed from them. — F. Benton. 

 If you pri-ctice clipping- queens' wings, 

 e sure 3'ou clip ei'ery queen. — Marks. 

 Best time to clip queens is during fruit- 

 loom.— H. C. Roat. 



A pair of scissors with a curved blade is 

 he handiest for clipping; prefers one not 

 oo short. — Greiner. 



The wings assist the queen in walking; 

 ihould not be removed entirely or cut too 

 hort. — F. Benton. 



To cure a drone-breeder, give a comb of 

 merging bees; a few days later, another; 

 hen introduce a queen.— Benton. 



We manage our apiary as follows: Keep 

 he entrance cleared in early spring. 

 A'hen warm enough we look over the bees, 

 :!ip the queens, give honey when necessary; 

 -•ontract, tuck up, and leave alone till hon- 

 >y-flow, when packing is removed and su- 

 lers given. When swarming occurs we 

 live with five frames on old stand, and put 

 ill boxes on the new swarm; shake part of 

 he bees from the parent hive into the 3'oung' 

 iwarm, and move it to a new location, well 

 tucked up, and then leave it alone. The 

 young swarms are given room as necessarj^; 

 and when the white-hone^' season is over 

 we give each two or three empty frames, 

 when no more is done with them except 

 packing in the fall. — Master Case. 



Aster ericoida rarely fails to produce hon- 

 ey. — Benton. 



Kver3' honey-producer ought to know how 

 to rear good queens. The use of swarming 

 cells will eventually produce a swarming 

 strain of bees. Good cells maj' be selected 

 by their size and regularity. Jarring of 

 cells may result in the death or crippling 

 of the young queen. After her last larval 

 moult, the queen remains attached to the 

 f<X)d. Some food maj' be taken by osmosis. 

 The umbilical cord (of Gallup) is a mistake. 

 The necessary- conditions to rear queens 

 exist during the swarming season. A col- 

 ony rearing- queens should have plenty of 

 stores; unsealed brood had better be remov- 

 ed. Absence of brood will produce a great 

 desire for a queen, and the larval food pro- 

 <luced by the thousands of nurses is avail- 

 able for the rearing of queens. Had 200 

 cells built by one colony, and nearly all 

 produced good queens. To confine cell- 

 building bees is not necessary. Naturally 

 built cells are better than artificial cells. 

 It is a g-ood plan to remove royal larvae 



from natural or even post-constructed cells, 

 and substitute minute larvae of our own se- 

 lection. To form nuclei with full frames is 

 convenient but expensive. Two combs are 

 not as readily occupied by the queen as 

 three or more frames. Small-frame nuclei, 

 three to live frames each, of '3 L. size, are 

 convenient, and m}' preference. A perma- 

 nent feeder is essential in nuclei. 



The number of mating- hives in an apiary 

 would be about 20 for each 100 hives of 

 bees. 



The idea of giving- an abundance of room 

 to a queen in a mailing-cage is wrong-. 

 The food apartment should be coated with 

 wax; and, when filled, the food again 

 should be covered with wax. Powdered 

 sugar and extracted honey is the best food. 



In the selection of stock to breed from, I 

 use the following rules: Observe the mark- 

 ings first. They should be right. The 

 workers must be of large bodies. Note their 

 behavior, their irritableness or docility, 

 their activity. A queen should be large 

 around the waist under the wing; wings 

 long; the color should, in case of the Italian 

 race, not be light yellow nor black. — Ben- 

 ton. 



The use of full sheets of foundation in 

 section boxes is a matter of dollars and 

 cents. It is money in the bee-keeper's pock- 

 et. Many bee- keepers have gone back on 

 the use of foundation in the brood-chamber. 

 — C. C. Southerland. 



It pays to use foundation in sections; but 

 the quality of the honey is impaired by its 

 use. — Smith. 



MASSIE'S HIVE AND BOOK. 



Some Corrections. 



BY T. K. MASSIE. 



7)/;-. Editor: — Fully believing that you 

 mean to be fair, and knowing that you are 

 rushed with work, and seeing that, in your 

 review of my book, you make some state- 

 ments that are liable to mislead j-our read- 

 ers, I ask for space to correct them. 



1. On page 376 you say, in substance, 

 that in my plan of direct introduction of 

 queens, the queen is let loose on the frames 

 of hatching brood which are separated 

 from the colony to which she is to be intro- 

 duced, by "a thin board." The fact is, 

 she is separated from the bees below by a 

 wire clotlt, which is nailed to a thin board. 

 The plan is as simple as can be, and is not 

 cumbersome. Simpl}' put in one queen and 

 remove the other, and she is absolutely safe. 

 Any one who takes the time to look at the 

 reasons why the plan is safe will see that 

 failure is impossible. 



2. Ycu say the hive " is similar to the 

 Danzenbaker, which seems to have suggest- 

 ed some of its features." The fact is, I 

 was using most of these features before I 

 ever knew of friend Danzenbaker, as he 

 saw when he visited me in 1898. It seems 

 strange how different men hit upon the 



