1907 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



547 



alcohol whatever in it. His reply below is 

 interesting, and his advice is safe to follow: 



Bear Wallie:—Vxa loaded on the question of honey- 

 drinks, but am just a little afraid to fire. As you in- 

 timate, there is much in foreign journals— in some 

 French journals page after page— about drinks from 

 honey, and I think always intoxicating; but I may be 

 mistaken. But I think a delightful drink can be 

 made from honey that is non-intoxicating. Whether 

 we are right to keep entirely quiet about it is a 

 question. 



Sweet cider is good and non-intoxicating, but many 

 think it is better not to drink it, because it is very 

 hard to draw the line between sweet cider and hard 

 cider. If it's the same way with honey-drinks, then 

 we'd better continue silence. 



On the other hand, the experience of my boyhood 

 with small beer or spruce beer was extensive, and I 

 think never the slightest harm came from its use. It 

 did not change, as cider, to a dacgerous drink— merely 

 became insipid, flatly sour, after a time. I think the 

 same may be said of Hires' root beer. But I think 

 there was alcohol; and is alcohol in any of the soft 

 drinks made effervescent by yeast and sugar. You 

 say that year-old drink the Hungarian boy gave you 

 ' Certainly had no alcohol in it." I feel very much 

 like saymg, " Certainly you are mistaken." You will 

 find that, wherever yeast grows, if I am not mistaken, 

 that from the sugar or starch it produces alcohol and 

 carbon dioxid. The latter is the gas that makes the 

 soft drink sparkle and nip, and that makes bread 

 porous. You can't raise bread yeast without produc- 

 ing alcohol, although the alcohol may become dissi- 

 pated. But in kumiss and the small beers I think 

 there is not more than 1.5 per cent of alcohol, and we 

 ignore the alcohol and note only the harmless gas. 

 In the beer of the saloons there is about 4 per cent of 

 alcohol. 



Now I think we may have a good drink with no 

 more danger of cultivating the liquor taste than by 

 drinking kumiss; but it would be a terrible thing to 

 make any mistake in the matter, and I'm just a little 

 afraid to say in print what I think. On the other 

 hand, if we can have from honey something just as 

 good and safe as kumiss it migit be wrong not to 

 make it known. 



Yes, I think I know the minutlffi. The essential 

 parts are honey, water, and i east, and spices of any 

 kind may be added. In five quarts of boiling water 

 put one pound of honey and some lemon-peel. When 

 cooled to blood-heat, add half a cake of compressed 

 yeast; let stand open two days, and then keep bottled 

 three days or more. The bottles must be very strong. 



Marengo, 111., March 5. C. C. Millbb. 



Pointers frdititlie rear end oi 

 the Bee 



T0LDBYTHE41 



SOME THINGS I HAVEN T DONE; HATCHING 



CELLS ABOVE PERFORATED ZINC; THE 



SWARTHMORE SWARM-BOX FOR 



CELL-STARTING A SUCCESS. 



I've been trying the dual-queen system. It 

 worked to perfection. The dual was fought 

 as soon as 1 put the second queen in the hive. 

 I acted as second; didn't have to act many 

 seconds, either, till the queen and my plans 

 were balled up together. Mr. Alley inform- 

 ed the bee-keeping public that bees do not 

 tear do\vn queen-cells till the queen starts 

 the game. 1 knew better than that; but when 

 a man like Mr. Alley speaks I have a habit 

 of believing it, even if I know it is not so. 

 So after reading that, I decided to forget the 



past and begin life anew. I raised a fine 

 batch of queen-cells. Four I put into four 

 two-story hives over queen-excluders with 

 laying queens below. Two I gave to other 

 colonies, removing their queens just before 

 giving the cells. Results; The real young 

 tender queens in the cells just sealed, they 

 ate. The older tougher ones they just 

 "chawed up" and spit out. The cells in 

 both queenless colonies were torn down. 

 All in upper stories were torn down but one. 

 This one they nursed with the greatest of 

 care. They trimmed off all surplus wax, 

 and stuck it fast all around so that it would 

 be sure to hatch. Just as soon as the queen 

 hatched they killed her and dragged her out. 

 What on earth was their idea'? Did they let 

 her hatch and then kill her just for fun, or 

 to let me know how little I know'? Locality 

 can hardly account for the different actions 

 in Mr. Alley's bees and mine. Is it not pos- 

 sible that the race of bees had something to 

 do with it? 



I believe the new swarm-box, as used by 

 Swarthmore and recommended in the gov- 

 ernment bulletin on queen-rearing, to be the 

 best thing ever given to the queen-breeder 

 for the purpose of getting bees to accept cells. 

 Italian bees seldom accept more than six or 

 eight cells in the ordinary way. With the 

 swarm- box they accept forty or fifty just as 

 readily. I pour the bees into the swarm-box 

 with ai big tin funnel having the cells in place, 

 so that not a single bee can get out. For 

 about an hour they hang in a cluster to di- 

 gest the honey they devoured in the "shook " 

 up. Then they begin to buzz, and try to get 

 out. I find this the best time to give them 

 the grafted cells instead of waiting six hours 

 as recommended by Swarthmore. Cells once 

 used must be thoroughly cleaned by the bees, 

 which takes from four to eight hours. They 

 will not accept them till they are thoroughly 

 cleaned. I succeed best with new cells. I 

 use no royal jelly. I have frequently graft- 

 ed fifteen cells in about six minutes, and then 

 examined the first one and found that, in 

 that short time, the bees had fed the larvte 

 with considerable thin jelly. A queen raised 

 in the natural way could not have better care. 



I thought I would improve on this box a 

 little, but haven't done so yet. I thought to 

 make this swarm-box a permanent affair, so 

 as to save the work of loading it with bees 

 every time I wanted some cells. I filled it 

 with bees as usual, and made a flight-hole, 

 and thought in this way I could keep them 

 accepting cells all the time. I grafted one 

 row, and then looked at the first cell. They 

 had eaten up the larva and drank its broth; 

 the next the same, and so on all down the 

 row. I found they were within three cells 

 of being caught up with me. I started afresh 

 to graft some more, but they just wouldn't 

 allow that graft to be worked on them. We 

 played tag three times around the box, the 

 bees eating up the larvie as fast as I could 

 dish them out, till I got tired and would not 

 play any more. Strange why they will ac- 

 cept cells so much better when they are shut 

 in and are frantic to get out. 



