968 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Nov. 15 



sour you can do nothing more with it than 

 to make it into honey vineg^ar; but honey 

 slightly sour may be rendered good by 

 boiling, and feeding it to the bees in the 

 spring to stimulate. — Ed.] 



HOW TO KEEP HONEY FROM CANDYING IN 

 A ZERO TEMPERATURE. 



We note in your last issue some comments 

 on a method for keeping honey from candy- 

 ing (extracted). Some twelve years ago 

 we gave you the history of a gallon of hon- 

 ey; but whether it ever saw print or not is 

 more than we can say at present; but we 

 will give it again. At the above time, in 

 June or when the first white-clover honey 

 came in, we extracted a gallon, which we 

 wished to use for making queen candy. As 

 the honey was rather thin we placed the 

 jar on the reservoir of the kitchen stove, 

 with the injunction that it was to stay there 

 till we removed it. Well, it stayed there 

 for perhaps two months, the temperature 

 varying all the way from 75 to 150 degrees 

 or perhaps a little higher at times. This 

 honey was kept for two years, and part of 

 the time in winter, when it went as low as 

 zero, but it never candied. At present we 

 keep our honey in live or six sixty-pound 

 cans blocked up back of the kitchen stove 

 for several weeks before bottling. We be- 

 lieve this will keep it from going to candy 

 until the grocer sells it. We find alfalfa 

 honey quite stubborn. You can melt this 

 honey in the oven, and it's ready to sugar 

 the next da3^ or two. 



In the same issue of Gleanings we also 

 notice something about the Swarthmore 

 method of getting queens fertilized. We 

 tried it on quite an extensive scale last 

 season, but it failed to worked satisfacto- 

 rily. We used up three or perhaps four 

 hundred virgins. The best we ever did 

 was to get six laying queens out of eight. 

 Some of the boxes gave us three and four 

 laying queens, while the majority would 

 give us but one, two, and three. We tried 

 this method on a large scale — tried it 

 under all circumstances — tried it at all 

 seasons of the year, but the intermingling 

 of the bees is what prevents it from being 

 a success. To have queens mated with the 

 smallest loss possible, there is but one way, 

 and that is to give each individual queen 

 a nucleus to herself. H. G. OuiRiN. 



Parkertown, O. 



[Some two or three years ago Mr. Henry 

 Alley announced that he had a process for 

 keeping honey liquid indefinitely under all 

 conditions. He did not immediate!}' make 

 it public; but when he did, it was nothing 

 more nor less than keeping the honey in a 

 warm temperature for a period of thirty or 

 sixty days, and then sealing. 



Although I have had editorial charge of 

 this journal for a longer time than my fa- 

 ther, I do not remember to have seen the 

 method mentioned before it was given by 

 Mr. Alley; so if you sent it on to this jour- 

 nal it must have come before mv time. 



Whether it was published or not, I can not 

 say. 



Your experience in getting queens fertil- 

 ized in small boxes or nuclei is just about 

 like our own. Swarthmore, however, says 

 he makes it work, and has promised to 

 prove it to me if I will go and see him next 

 summer, which I have partly agreed to do. 

 —Ed.] 



another instance of formaldehyde 

 failing to cure. 



Last spring I discovered foul brood in 

 several of my colonies. After shaking the 

 same on new frames I found I had about 120 

 diseased combs. Having seen formalde- 

 hyde recommended as a disinfectant I de- 

 cided to try it. I sent to C. H. W. Weber 

 and got a generator and half an ounce of 

 the drug (solidified). By tiering up sever- 

 al hive-bodies of diseased combs on one of 

 3'our new Danz. covers, using one of the 

 same on top, and giving the whole some 

 three coats of paint, I secured a perfectly 

 air-tight receptacle. I gave the formalde- 

 hyde in bigger quantities, and kept on ap- 

 plying it for a much longer time than ad- 

 vised, but it proved a failure; in fact, a 

 cricket came through the process of fumiga- 

 tion apparently unscathed, and hopped out 

 in a lively manner frcm between the top-bars 

 as soon as I opened the stack of hives. I 

 also made an experiment to see whether the 

 drug would kill moth-worms when later 

 they attacked these combs; but while it de- 

 stroyed the })iillers the wonns were not in 

 the least aftected. In my opinion, formal- 

 dehyde is not as powerful as sulphur. 



Cantril, la. A. B. Tackaberry. 



[You will note that Prof. Harrison says 

 a great deal of the formaldehyde of com- 

 merce is very much adulterated; but he 

 also suggests that a stronger dose ought to 

 accomplish the result; but the mere fact 

 that a cricket came through the process of 

 fumigating apparently unscathed would in- 

 dicate, seemingl}', that the drug you had 

 was very, very poor. It certainly ought to 

 be strong enough to kill all living insects 

 before we would expect it to kill the mi- 

 crobes of a disease. — Ed.] 



S. S., Out. — You can easily Italianize 

 3'our bees in the fall. In fact, that is the 

 best season of the whole year to do it. If 

 the combs are built together your better 

 way would be to transfer by the directions 

 given on page 32 of the catalog we are send- 

 ing 3'ou. 



J. E. C, Col. — The standard sizeof sections 

 is A% square, 3^sX5, and 4X5. The thick- 

 ness varies all the way in the square sec- 

 tion from 2 inches wide to \-)i. The stan- 

 dard plain section, A% square, is IJ2 inch- 

 es wide. The standard 4X5 plain is \yi 

 wide; the 3,5s X5 is IVz inches wide. There 

 are some sections 4'i square, 7 to the foot; 

 but very few of them, comparatively, are 

 made. 



