1895. 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



299 



I have tried. Get your colonies up in strong condition, never 

 letting the queen lack for want of room to lay. At or a little 

 before the time for swarming you will have from six to ten 

 frames occupied with brood. Take out two of them with ad- 

 hering bees, being sure you don't get the queen, replacing the 

 frames of brood with empty combs. Put three stories of 

 empty combs over the lower story, and' put in the upper 

 story the two frames of brood with adhering bees. Leave a 

 small entrance at the upper story, just large euough for one 

 or two bees at a time. In two or three days, when the bees 

 have started one or more queen-cells in this fourth story, cut 

 them out and give them a sealed queen-cell reared from your 

 pure queen. If your bees act like mine they will have a lay- 

 ing queen in due time in that upper story, she having gone 

 out of the upper entrance to be fecundated, although there is 

 nothing to hinder her going down through the lower entrance. 



I have, however, only tried this in a very few cases, and 

 possibly in the next case there might be collision between the 

 queens, so latterly I have put a queen-excluder over the first 

 or second story. 



When the queen is laying above, you can kill the old 

 queen below, and put down the upper story for the second 

 story. Or, if you prefer, you can leave the queen above until 

 a strong colony is there, and then move either the first or tlie 

 fourth story to a new location. Whichever one is left on the 

 old stand will be very strong, and the removed one correspond- 

 ingly weakened. I have left the two hives together in the 

 same pile till the close ot the honey harvest. If you want to 

 keep the forces divided, without weakening the one removed, 

 you can enlarge the upper entrance early in the season, and 

 as soon as the hive becomes well filled with brood and bees, or 

 any time later, up to the close of the harvest, put a bottom- 

 board under the upper story so as to stop all communication 

 between the two queens. 



Will Bees Freeze with Plenty of Honey ?— Taxing Bees. 



1. Will bees freeze to death in single-walled hives when 

 they have free access to all of the honey that they want ? 



2. Are bees assessed in other States the same as in Ohio ? 

 They are valued here at §1.50 per colony. 



A good many have lost their bees by not giving them any 

 protection. Soft maples are in blossom, and bees are working 

 nicely, gathering pollen and honey. They have commenced 

 brood-rearing well. W. L. R. 



Pioneer, Ohio, April 23. 



Answers. — 1. That might be answered with a plain no, 

 but still if the temperature should be low enough and contin- 

 ued for long enough time, they would use up all the honey 

 inside the cluster and then freeze and starve at the same time. 



2. I believe they are not assessed in all States, but I 

 <lon't know any good reason why they should not be. The 

 man who has .S 1,000 invested in bees desires the benefit of 

 government just as much as the man who has .Si, 000 in- 

 vested in cows or sheep, and should be as willing to pay for it. 



The Qualities of a Good Queen. 



What qualities go to make up a good queen? The reason 

 for this question is, that Mr. C. Davenport says, on page 231, 

 that he destroyed a queen that was equal to ten frames ; also 

 that his best ones are hardly equal to 8 frames. The veterans 

 probably know these things, but amateurs like myself find 

 that all the authorities, as I understand them, say : Have 

 plenty of bees when the honey-flow begins. Now, what is 

 'better than a prolific queen for accomplishing that result ? 



J. C. S. 



Answer. — I can answer that in very few words. The 

 best queen is the one whose workers will yield the most profit 

 to their owner. But when I've given that answer you know 

 just as much about it as you did before. I am not sure that 1 

 know enough to give the answer to which you are fairly en- 

 titled. I think Bro. Davenport ought to be hauled over the 

 •coals for leaving the matter just in the shape he did. Still, it 

 is possible he has done a good service by calling attention that 

 might not otherwise have been awakened. 



It is perhaps a common error to suppose that the queen 

 that lays the most eggs is the best queen, and he is right in 

 saying that such is not always the case. For it is not merely 

 numbers that count. Longevity has been claimed as an im- 

 portant factor, and it is quite possible that there is a good 

 •deal in it. Six weeks is counted the lifetime of a worker, and 

 if we could have workers live twelve weeks, ought they not to 

 store twice as much ? Yes, and a good deal more. For if a 



bee does not commence field work till 16 days old, the one 

 whose life is six weeks will have 26 days left for storing, 

 while the one which lasts 1 2 weeks will have 68 storing days, 

 or more than two and a half times as many as the other. Even 

 a few days difference in longevity would make a perceptible 

 difference in the crop. 



Some bees are more vigorous and industrious than others, 

 working more hours in a day, and storing more in each hour. 



Just now the French are paying a good deal of attention 

 to the length of bees' tongues, and as it is a comparatively 

 easy thing to measure the tongues of each colony separately, 

 it is easy to understand that the bee with a long tongue might 

 get nectar from flowers having cups too deep for the common 

 tongue to penetrate. 



Of course I'm no mind reader, and 1 don't know what Bro. 

 Davenport had in mind, but I think you can see from what I 

 have said that a queen laying only 1.300 eggs in a day might 

 be worth more than one which laid 2,000 in a day, providing 

 the workers of the latter were short-lived, lazy affairs and the 

 others the reverse. 



After all, I am inclined to think that the general rule will 

 hold true, that the most prolific queen is the best. 



Bees Hanging Out While Others Work. 



I wrote you asking about my bees, on page 202, but I 

 should have told you that while my bees were hanging on the 

 outside of the hive, other bees right beside mine were swarm- 

 ing and storing honey. But mine just seemed to idle away 

 the time. They have wintered well, and I hope to have both 

 bees and honey this year. L. E. W. 



Hadley, Mich. 



Answer. — It is possible there may have been some tem- 

 porary conditions to account for their inactivity, and it is pos- 

 sible that the trouble was in the character of the bees. In 

 the latter case, supposing they show the same laziness this 

 year, the thing to do is to give them a queen of industrious 

 stock. 



Brightening Bark Honey. 



How can I get dark and brown honey bright and yellow ? 

 I had no extractor till now, and melted the honey witli the 

 fire, but did not boil it, and after getting cold I took off the 

 wax on top and put the honey in bottles through a close wire 

 net. People would not buy that honey — only a bit from nice, 

 white combSj gotten out yellow (of course, broken combs). I 

 sell white comb honey at 25 cents per pound. All the other 

 is dark. Is there any way to get that honey bright and 

 yellow ? Mexico. 



Answer. — I don't know of any way to make dark honey 

 light. If the honey was light before you melted it, it's a 

 pretty clear case that you used too much heat, even though 

 you did not boil it. Heat will spoil honey long before it comes 

 to the boiling-point. 



Mailing Drones with Queens— Evaporating Honey. 



1. Is it safer to send virgin queens with drones than with 

 workers ? I have never known that dron^l kill bees. 



2. Could 5-gallon cans be used as evaporating tanks, by 

 placing them in a warm room in the sun, by having them 45^ 

 or so, the screw top at the highest point and open ? There 

 seems to be air going in and out all the time. H. V. 



Paso Robles, Calif. 



Answers. — 1. I never heard of sending drones with 

 queens, but I'm afraid it wouldn't work. Drones are very 

 helpless beings, and I doubt whether they would stand a jour- 

 ney without having some of their sisters along to take care of 

 them. 



2. Evaporation would take place much more slowly than 

 If all were open, or even if there were two holes instead of one. 



Honey as Food and Medicine. — A new and revised 

 edition of this 32-page pamphlet is now issued. It has 5 blank 

 pages on which to write or paste recipes taken from other sources. 

 It is just what its name indicates, and should be liberally dis- 

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 honey. It contains a number of recipes on the use of honey as 

 food and as medicine, besides much other interesting and valuable 

 information. Prices, postpaid, are : Single copy, 5 cts. ; 10 copies 

 35cts.; 50 for SI. .50; 100 for $3.50. Better give them a trial. Send 

 all orders to the Bee Journal office. 



