1903 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



621 



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BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW. 



The July issue is a fide one in every way. 

 The frontispiece shows a half tone of Blan- 

 chard's Music Hall, Los Ang-eles, where 

 the National convention will be held. It is 

 a magnificent place, and an audience of 500 

 would be scarcely perceptible in it. A pi- 

 ano on the stag-e seems to be awaiting Dr. 

 Miller. It is surrounded by tropical fruits 

 of various kinds. Those who can attend 

 this convention will be highly favored. 

 \b 



R. L. Taylor contributes an interesting 

 article on what to do at the end of the sea- 

 son — how to equalize the sections as the 

 harvest nears the end; how to arrange un- 

 finished sections that are to go back on the 

 hives. In regard to feeding back to get un- 

 finished sections filled out, Mr. T. says: 



A few years ago there was much said about feeding 

 back liGuey to secure the completion of unfinished 

 sections ; but the idea seems (rightly, I think) to have 

 gone out of fashion. Honey thus produced is not of 

 very good appearance. It begins to candy in the fall ; 

 soon becomes solid, and is of a decidedly poor flavor. 

 I now th'iik it is preferable to so manage that the 

 number of unfinished sections is so small that there is 

 no occasion to resoittothat method of disposing of 

 them. 



H. R. Boardman writes on the same sub- 

 ject, and says substantially what Mr. Tay- 

 lor does about feeding back. (See Doolittle, 

 next column.) 



Mr. Wm. McEvoy tells how to treat foul 

 brood after the honey harvest. This is a 

 star article, written at first as a private 

 letter to Mr. Hutchinson, who is now foul- 

 brood inspector of Michigan. 

 \lu 

 AMERICAN BEE-JOURNAL. 



From a very modest beginning, Miss 

 Emma Wilson has made her department, 

 "Our Bee-keeping Sisters," one of the best 

 in the Old Reliable; in fact, I think it is 

 the most so, although friend Hasty is a 

 close second when he does write. Miss 

 Wilson's scholars ask a good many prac- 

 tical questions which are ably answered. 



In regard to getting a foul-brood law in 

 California, Prof. A. J. Cook saj's: 



California secured an excellent law, with no ex- 

 pense and very little effort. Whj' was this? Because 

 Southern California is very generally organized. 

 There are many farmers' clubs. Thus they have tre- 

 mendous influence. Thty considered as a whole the 

 matter of legislation, and decided that they needed 

 six laws, one of which was the foul-brood law. They 

 went solidly to the I^egislature, and secured every en- 

 actment that they desired. 



The following, in regard to pre-judging 

 queens, by G. M. Doolittle, is well worth 



the consideration of all who bu3' queens. I 

 deem it one of the most remarkable cases 

 Mr. Doolittle has given us. After speak- 

 ing of certain queens that were condemned 

 by Dr. Gallup and Mr. Alley, he says: 



I will say that I had one of tho.se worthless (?) Ham- 

 lin queen.S sent me as a premium for securing the most 

 subscribers to a certain bee-paper in a given time. 

 The queen came in June: and as she was from one of 

 he best breeders of the seventies, I thought to give 

 her the best possible chance, which I did. Imagine 

 my surprise to find that, with all my extra care and 

 coaxing. I could get her to put eggs in only .three Gal- 

 lup frames, and very scattering at that. I came very 

 near pinching her head off in the fall, but finally con- 

 cluded to give the colony frames of brood and honey 

 from other colonies, and thus the colony was got 

 through the winter. The next season she proved no 

 better than she had the year before, and I have no 

 doubt Dr. Gallup would have called her a " worthless 

 degenerate," and Mr. Alley would have alluded to her 

 as " worthless as a house-fly." Was she thus? Well, 

 we shall see. 



I had her in my hand one day, beipg just about to 

 pinch the life out of her, when the thought arrested 

 me that Dr. Hamlin would not send me a worthless 

 queen as a premium and that I would rear a few 

 queens from her, which thing I did, she dying soon 

 afterward, of apparent old age. All of these young 

 queens proved to be extra good ones, and one of them 

 was the mother of the colony which gave me 506 lbs. 

 of honey in 1877, and was used in laying the founda- 

 tion of my present apiary; 466 pounds of this honey 

 sold at 20 cents per pound, and 100 at 15 cents, the total 

 cash resulting from that colony that year being |108.20. 

 Was her mother worthless? Quite a " house-fly," 

 wasn't she? Stood way up by the side of the best of 

 cows as to value! The honey sold from this colony 

 during that year amounted to 18.20 more than Mr. Al- 

 ey prized his $100 queen at, and lacked only $i)1.80 of 

 giving as much cash in a single year as the celebrated 

 Root long-tongued queen was ever valued at. And 

 yet, if I do not misinterpret Dr. Gallup, he would no 

 more have bred from that Hamlin queen than he 

 would from those two imported worthless (?), degen- 

 erate (?), housefly (?) queens he got of A. I. Root, which 

 he tells us about on page 423. 



FEEDING BACK EXTRACTED HONEY. 



"Good afternoon, Mr. Doolittle. Do you 

 know any thing about feeding back ex- 

 tracted honey to produce comb honey?" 



"Just a little. But what put that sub- 

 ject in your mind at this time of the year?" 



" I read somewhere last winter that if 

 one were to run an apiary for extracted 

 honey, during the harvest of white honey, 

 and feed the same back to the bees to put 

 into sections, said extracted honey would 

 sell in the section form for enough more to 

 give me a big profit. Is this a fact? And 

 if so, how and when should extracted honey 

 be fed back in order to produce comb hon- 

 ey?" 



"Feeding back extracted honey in order 

 that comb honey may be obtained is some- 

 thing that has been tried by very many of 

 our best apiarists, and still remains, if I 

 am right, an unsolved problem with some 

 of those who have tried it. Some have re- 



