1895. 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



599 



Mr. Hall — I have hived swarms the 13th of June, and 

 taken off 225 pounds of surplus, and yet there would be 

 enough honey in the brood-nest for winter. It isn't the cost ; 

 it isn't the work ; it isn't any of these things that makes ob- 

 jectionable the feeding of sugar for winter stores, but it is the 

 suspicion that attaches to our product if sugar is fed. 



A. E. Hoshal — I don't try to conceal the fact that I feed 

 sugar for winter stores. I tell everybody ; and Mr. Hall can't 

 come down and sell honey under my nose, unless he sells it 

 cheaper than I do. 



(Continued on page 613.) 



Cot;)tributed /Vrticles^ 



Ou. Zmportant Apiarian Subjects. 



A House for Fumigating Combs. 



BY DB. E. GALLUP. 



I now will endeavor to tell how I would build a fumigat- 

 ing house. 



Make a light frame of 2x3 scantling for posts, about 6 

 feet high, and just the right width one way to hold three or 

 four lengths of combs, according to the amount we would be 

 likely to have. Cover the frame with building-paper, so as to 

 have it tight. Perhaps tarred paper would be best, if it 

 would not scent the combs to injure them. Let the paper go 

 over the roof and all. Outside of the paper any kind of 

 boards will answer. Either shingles, shakes, or board will 

 answer for roof. (A Californian will undtrstand what 

 " shakes" are). Four feet and 9 inches will be wide enough 

 inside of the posts, to hold three 18-inch long combs or 

 frames, and strips to hang them on. Then you can make the 

 building 5 feet the other way. 



Nail one strip at each end, one inch by two, near enough 

 to the top of the building to hang the first tier of combs on. 

 Now you want four strips to go lengthwise of the building. 

 The two outside ones can be nailed to inside of the posts, and 

 the center ones loose, so they can be taken down when not in 

 use. Now you have a place for the first tier of combs. 



The strips to hang combs on will be strong enough if they 

 are 1 inch by 13^, I think. Hang the next tier just below the 

 first, and so on until you have the house full. You want a 

 narrow door at the end, and low enough to open below the top 

 tier of combs, or you can open it outside. All after the top 

 tier wants to be shorter, so you can have room to stand inside, 

 or you can leave out the center tier of combs, just whichever 

 way suits, or a part of it can be left out. 



Now you want a short trench extending from the inside 

 of the building out three or four feet, and covered with a 

 strip of sheet-iron, with a trap-door at the outer end of the 

 ditch or trench to put in the burning sulphur. I like the sul- 

 phured rags the best. If you put fire directly under the combs 

 inside the house, you might have the whole cremated before 

 you were aware of it. 



Now the whole is fixed to suit me, and with a quantity of 

 rags always on hand saturated with melted sulphur and kept 

 perfectly dry, one can light some of the rags with a match at 

 any time, and fumigate the combs as often as required, by 

 placing the lighted rags in the trench and closing the trap- 

 door. You now understand the theory, and one can even 

 fumigate a few combs in an old dry-goods box, or a cloth tent. 



It may be interesting to know that we fumigate large 

 orange trees, 20 feet high, under a cloth tent. The cloth is 

 painted black, and they fumigate at night to kill the different 

 kinds of scale that infest the trees. They use such strong in- 

 gredients that it kills all the young and tender growth of the 

 trees if they fumigate in the daytime, and allow the hot sun 

 to shine on the trees at once. Two men manage several tents 

 at once, by having them properly arranged with light poles, 

 ropes, pulleys, etc. Before they discovered this method of 

 killing the scale, whole orange and lemon orchards were en- 

 tirely destroyed, and others badly injured. 



Now if any one has a better method than the above to 

 preserve combs from the moth, trot it out. In hanging up 

 the combs they must not be hung so close together as to touch 

 each other. Fumigating will not destroy the miller's eggs, so 

 if there should be eggs at the time of fumigating, it would be 

 well to fumigate the second time in a few days after the first 

 fumigation. 



don't be too sube. 



Mr. McEvoy, on page 510, says he would have to travel 

 over a line that no man ever took before. I have never seen 



a case of foul brood ; I took the trouble years ago to go 30 

 miles on purpose to see a reported case of foul brood, but 

 found the case starvation. About that time I was asked for 

 my opinion of foul brood, in the old American Bee .Tournal ; 

 Mr. Wagner was then editor, and I went over the same line as 

 Mr. McEvoy described, and it was published by Mr. Wagner, 

 though perhaps not in so minute detail as Mr. McEvoy's. 



Santa Ana, Calif. 



What Dr. Miller Thinks. 



Flagstones for Underground Bee-Cellars. — On page 

 566, in his excellent article about caves or bee-cellars, Friend 

 Doolittle advises for roofing to be covered with earth, flag- 

 stones in place of wood. I suspect there may be a difference 

 in flagstones, but I think I'd rather use plank than such flag- 

 stones as we have in Marengo. I covered a cistern with flag- 

 stone, and it seemed to become rotten, and flaked off with 

 dampness. 



Getting Out Wax with Steam. — I have read in Glean- 

 ings about getting wax out of old combs with steam, but it 

 always seemed to me an aggravation to be told of such a thing 

 when we had no apparatus such as they have at Medina. I 

 never thought of such a thing as going to the water-works or 

 other place where steam power was used. John Clark solves 

 the problem nicely on page 568. Thanks, John. 



Good Advice. — I wish all beginners would heed the ex- 

 cellent advice of Wilder Grahame, on page 568. Get a good 

 bee-book and study it thoroiighly, then what you read in the 

 bee-journals will be worth double as much, and you'll not be 

 groping in the dark. You'll probably have as many questions 

 as ever to ask, but you'll get more good out of the answers. 

 If you can't afford both, stop your subscription to your bee- 

 journal for a year and buy the text-book. Then study it. [See 

 book offers on page 611. — Editor.] 



Buckwheat Swarms. — Bees do not often swarm after the 

 white honey harvest. Sometimes, however, they do, and I 

 suppose for the. same reasons that they swarm earlier in the 

 season. Such late swarms are usually called "buckwheat 

 swarms," and that's the kind of swarm Geo. McCuUoch had, 

 as mentioned on page 569. 



Clipping Queens' Wings.— "The point made is that clip- 

 ping deprives queens of the power of flight, and that organs 

 not used are likely to deteriorate." See page 569, first para- 

 graph. I did admit, and do admit, my Canadian friend, the 

 two points you make, but I don't see the close connection be- 

 tween them that you seem to think you see. If it were true 

 that clipping deprives queens of much flight that they would 

 make if undipped, then it might be worth while to talk about 

 deterioration. On page 519, I referred to cases in which the 

 queen never flies after her wedding-flight. Now will you 

 kindly answer this question : If a queen is clipped, and lives 

 two or three years thereafter, is there any more deterioration 

 than if she lived those two or three years with whole wings, 

 and never during that time made the attempt to fly? 



If you are correct in your views, the matter is a very im- 

 portant one, and it is only fair that it have very serious con- 

 sideration. I think we are agreed that disuse, as a rule, 

 causes deterioration. I doubt whether the rule can be rigidly 

 applied in the case of queens. No matter, admit that it does, 

 and I take the ground that clipping does not cause disuse — at 

 least, that it has very little effect in that direction. With a 

 queen in a colony that never swarms, of course it can have no 

 effect whatever. The Dadants have not more than three to 

 five colonies swarm out of 100. It is probably safe, then, to 

 say that 40 out of every 100 of their queens never fly after 

 the wedding flight. Do you think there is any deterioration 

 with that 40? Or, to put a question more directly to the 

 point, do you think it can make any possible difference with 

 that 40 whether they are clipped or not? 



But take the case of bees that swarm regularly every 

 year. How much disuse is caused in their case by clipping ? 

 or, in other words, how much flight do they lose by clipping? 

 At the time of fecundation the young queen makes several 

 flights, circles about and marks the location, her flights last- 

 ing perhaps from three to 15 minutes. In all, she probably 

 flies several miles before commencing to lay. Then she is 

 clipped, and loses the flights she would make in swarming the 

 two following years. How much does that amount to? She 

 flies to a point perhaps five rods distant from her hive each 



