462 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



July 18, 



pensive to put in royal jelly and iarvse ; and then, worse than 

 all, we find that too large a percentage of them are rejected. 

 Completing the cells in the upper story of astrong colony with 

 a queen below, works sometimes, and sometimes not. The 

 uncertainty of the plan has caused us to abandon it for a good 

 strong colony of queenless bees. We save all our cell-cups, 

 and cells from first-elass breeders, and put the frame or 

 frames containing them into the queenless colony or colonies 

 on hand for that purpose. There is thus a certainty of results ; 

 and where we are selling as many queens as we now are, we 

 always have quite a number of partially completed cells from 

 choice breeders that have been sold out a few days previously. 

 By this plan our cells really cost us nothing, any more than 

 the time of taking out the frames with the cells thereon, and 

 putting them into one or two special queenless colonies, by 

 them to be completed. — Gleanings. 



EXPERIMENTER TAYLOR'S REPORTS. 



The editor of Gleauings owns up that he can't always 

 readily get the exact bearing on the tables and reports of the 

 experiments at the Michigan station as given in Review, and 

 hints that he would like to have Mr. Taylor give more dis- 

 tinctly his views as to the lessons to be learned, saying, 

 " Surely Mr. Taylor can interpret his own figures more cor- 

 rectly." 



It's quite a compliment to bee-keepers, as well as an indi- 

 cation of his own fairness, that Mr. Taylor is willing to set 

 before us tables of facts with very little comment, as if to say : 

 "There are the facts, gentlemen; you are intelligent enough 

 to make proper use of them ; just help yourselves to the facts, 

 and draw whatever conclusions you like." Yes, Brother Tay- 

 lor, we're a smart lot— don't think for a minute we need any 

 help from you ; but, then, if you don't mind, just do the same 

 as though we weren't so smart, and say over the lessons we're 

 to learn from those tables. 



SWEET CLOVER FOR FORAGE AND HONEY. 



Gleanings has always been conservative on the matter of 

 sweet clover, or at least has been rather quiet, but now comes 

 out in the following enthusiastic style : 



" There is no better honey in the world than that from 

 sweet clover, and there is no plant that I have ever found that 

 would grow with such thrift and vigor on the poorest, hardest, 

 unfertilized and uncultivated roadside. Besides all that, it is 

 a valuable forage-plant. We cut it for our horses, and they 

 eat it with more avidity now, since they have learned how, 

 than anything else in the line of green feed or cured hay. 

 Some people call it a weed ; but it is an exceedingly valudhle 

 weed. Let your stock get used to it and they will eat up 

 every bit of it, even the hard and dry seed stalks. I believe it 

 succeeds rather better on hard, dry clay, or gravelly clay, 

 than on sandy soil, for I never saw any of it in Florida — that 

 is, to amount to anything." 



WAS LANGSTROTH THE INVENTOR OF THE MOVABLE-FRAME 



HIVE ? 



An item is copied in (rleaiiings trying to show that Langs- 

 troth is not entitled to the credit he receives as an inventor. 

 The editor is inclined to credit the item to the pen of C. J. 

 Robinson, a pretty safe guess to make, as Mr. Robinson is 

 perhaps the only man living so pitifully destitute of fairness 

 as to want to pluck from the brow of Father Langstroth his 

 well-earned laurels. The sad feature in the case is that 

 papers are so ignorant on such matters as to be willing to 

 print what Mr. Robinson says. Gleanings says : " Such 

 kind of writing at this time is in keeping with the claims of 

 those who say Columbus did not discover America simply be- 

 cause he found men here when he landed, so the natives must 

 have been ahead of him." 



A SWARM-HIVER. 



B. Taylor illustrates in Gleanings a bee-hiver that he 

 thinks will work as well as any that can be made, and then 

 bluntly says he doesn't think it or any other swarm-hiver is 

 of praatical value to the honey-producer working for profit. 



WHAT ONE COLONY DID. 



A colony in a 10-frame hive stored 237 lbs. in 2-lb. sec- 

 tions — not by guess, but by actual weight. This is the largest 

 yield I ever got from a single colony. I also made four new 

 colonies from this one, and had them in first-class condition 

 for winter. It was done in this way : This colony, which 

 was a very strong one, got the swarming-fever just at the be- 

 ginning of the white clover fiow. I did not wait for them to 

 swarm, but removed all their brood, and gave them frames 

 with only narrow starters of foundation in them. Now, I be- 

 eve that according to theory, a colony thus treated should 



not store any or work in sections until the brood-nest is full. 

 But in actual practice a colony thus treated will, if the super 

 is put on with one or two bait-sections, and the rest filled with 

 full sheets of foundation, go to work in them at once — that is, 

 in a good flow. I took those frames of brood with but very 

 few bees on them, and divided thera up into four hives ; and 

 as soon as a few bees in each hive had hatched, I gave them a 

 laying queen, and then built them up by feeding and giving 

 thera frames with full sheets of foundation as fast as they 

 could use them. At this time of the year it is warm, and no 

 danger of robbing, and they will build up faster than one 

 would suppose. — C. Davenport, of Southern Minnesota, in 

 Gleanings. 



WIDE TOP-BARS IN D0UBLE-BR00D-NB8T HIVKS. 



An editorial in Gleanings says experiments show that 

 queens are loth to go back and forth from one chamber to the 

 other, the editor saying : " I feel more convinced than ever 

 that wide top-bars for double brood-nests are not the thing 

 ... .1 cannot but feel that the slightest barrier through the 

 center of the brood-nest is somewhat of an obstruction, and a 

 waste of brood-space. The narrower this barrier or top-bar, 

 the less the obstruction." But he thinks wide and deep top- 

 bars are no hindrance to the worker-bees. 



EUCALYPTUS HONEY IN AU.STRALIA. 



" Honey from box is generally considered the best, though 

 that from iron-bark, shiny-bark, and some of the gums is ex- 

 cellent." 



'^ Not a single variety of eucalyptus yields a honey that has 

 ■what is known as the eucalyptus flavor. A few years back 

 some bright genius mixed a small quantity of eucalyptus ex- 

 tract into a quantity of honey, and tried to sell it in England as 

 Australian honey for its medicinal properties. Of course, it 

 was unfit for the table, and of course it gave Australian honey 

 a bad name. It would have been all right if sold as a medi- 

 cine, and labeled ' Eucalyptus and Honey.' " 



" Eucalyptus extract is a volatile oil, double-distilled from, 

 I believe, the blue-gum only, though I have no doubt it could 

 be obtained from other eucalypti. It is used here very largely 

 in the treatment of colds, sore throats, etc." — J. D. Ward, in 

 Gleanings. 



EXTRA COMBS IN SPRING. 



Emma Wilson says in Gleanings : "We have decided most 

 emphatically that eight frames are not enough for some of our 

 queens, as some of our strongest colonies have 10 and 11 

 frames of brood. In the spring, as soon as a colony gets 

 pretty strong, say with about five frames of brood, we put an 

 extra story of brood-combs under the colony. We have two 

 objects in view in doing this. First, if the queen feels crowded 

 and wants more room, she can enlarge the brood-nest at her 

 pleasure. Second, the combs are nicely taken care of by the 

 bees, and, if not needed, no harm is done. 



" We hoped that, by giving our strong colonies that extra 

 story of combs under, it would do away with the swarming- 

 fever ; but I am sorry to say I cannot see that it makes much 

 difference. Nearly always we find queen-cells in these colo- 

 nies first, not because of the extra stories, but because they 

 are the strongest colonies. Now, we know that the Dadants 

 have little or no swarming because they use large hives and 

 give the queen plenty of room. What's the trouble with our 

 colonies ? Are not ifi frames enough for the queen ? That's 

 more room than the Dadants give. Is it because they are in 

 two stories ? The queen seems to go readily from one story 

 to another, and we find five and six frames of brood in each 

 story, and queen-cells started. What's the trouble ?" 



The McEvoy Foul Brood Treatment is 



given in Dr. Howard's pamphlet on " Foul Brood ; Its Natural 

 History and Rational Treatment." It is the latest publication 

 on the subject, and should be in the hands of every bee-keeper. 

 Price, 25 cents ; or clubbed with the Bee .Journal for one year 

 —both for .$1.10. 



■*-'-»• 



Honey as JPood aii<l 5le«lioiiie. — A new and revised 

 edition of this 3'2-page pamphlet is now issued. It has n 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- 

 tributed among the people everywhere to create a demand for 

 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 ets. ; 10 copies 

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

 all orders to the Bee Journal office. 



