754 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



June 1 



ular sides, as it is made of type metal, which 

 would hardly dull a knife. [The oft-repeat- 

 ed objection to metal spacei's, to the effect 

 that they will interfere with the uncapping- 

 knife, exists more in the imagination than in 

 fact. There are not wanting extracted-hon- 

 ey men who use metal spacers of various 

 sorts; and when we have talked with some 

 of them on the question whether they dulled 

 the uncapping-knife edge on these spacei's, 

 they ridiculed the very idea. One of them 

 in particular made the remark that "anyone 

 who would dull his knife on a small projec- 

 tion at the end of the frame must be a blun- 

 dering manipulator." Unless some one will 

 actually testify that the metal spacers make 

 uncapping difficult and annoying, let us 

 scatter this man of straw to the four winds. 

 —Ed.] 



I don't know whether worker eggs are 

 fertilized by the will of the queen or auto- 

 matically. But I want to enter a protest 

 against what is generally considered as a 

 knock-down argument against the automatic 

 theory. It's given something like this: "The 

 claim that the smaller size of the worker-cell 

 compresses the abdomen of the queen, auto- 

 matically fertilizing the eggs, is shown to be 

 groundless by the fact that, when a queen 

 lays eggs in worker-cells not more than ^ 

 inch deep, there can be no compression, and 

 yet the eggs are fertilized." Good friend, 

 you must know that there is no real squeez- 

 ing of the abdomen, either in a worker-cell 

 or a drone-cell. The worker cell is a trifle 

 shallower than the di'one-cell. May not that 

 difference in depth cause such a difference in 

 the position of the queen as to produce fer- 

 tilization in the shallower cells? And would 

 not fertilization be expe ted in a still shal- 

 lower ceU? Did you ever know drone eggs 

 to be laid in drone-cells only ^ inch deep? I 

 don't think I ever saw such a case; but I may 

 not have observed closely enough. [If any 

 one k7wws of actual cases where a queen has 

 laid eggs in shallow drone-cells, such cells 

 producing drones and not workers, let him 

 hold up his hand. With our over 30,000 sub- 

 scribers there ought to be some among the 

 number, if the thing has ever happened, who 

 can certify to the fact. — Ed.] 



E. E. Hasty, who has been trying the cura- 

 tive effect of honey in considerable quanti- 

 ties, complains that "the naughty founda- 

 tion-man " puts in soap in tastable quantities 

 — doubtless a serious bar to the eating of 

 large quantities when the appetite is skittish, 

 as invalid appetites are pretty sure to be." 

 If this be a just charge, ' ' the naughty f oun- 

 dation-man " should be strung up by the 

 thumbs until he promises to be good. [We 

 heartily subscribe to the doctor's statement; 

 but we do not believe that the charge can be 

 sustained. By the modern method of con- 

 tinuous sheeting, very little soap, compara- 

 tively, is used. But when one attempts to 

 make his own foundation, dipping the sheets 

 into short lengths, he finds it necessary to 

 use a large amount of soap in order to pick 

 off the numerous ends from the rolls when 



many short sheets are to be milled. There 

 is, therefore, a marked difference between 

 the amount of soap used in the factory-made 

 article and the home-made. We venture to 

 say there is no more soap on ordinary fac- 

 tory-made foundation now than there is on 

 an ordinary teaspoon that has been washed 

 in a strong soapy solution and then wiped on 

 a table-cloth that must necessarily have ab- 

 sorbed a considerable amount of liquid soap. 

 —Ed.] 



To TEST w^AX, says Deutsche Bienenzucht, 

 write on a cake with ink. If the writing is 

 clean, so is the wax. If irregular, the ink 

 bunching in little drops, some sort of fat is 

 present. I've just tried writing on wax. 

 While it isn't as good as paper, I was sur- 

 prised to find how well one can write on it. 

 [When we first read this over we felt inclin- 

 ed to believe we had an excellent test for 

 wax containing grease We accordingly 

 went over to our wax- working department, 

 where we keep small samples of various kinds 

 of beeswax adulterated with various ingre- 

 dients with which to compare doubtful speci- 

 mens that are sent in. We tried writing with 

 a pen and ink on pure beeswax, and, as the 

 doctor says, we were surprised to see how 

 well the ink tiowed. We then tested the 

 same pen and ink on a specimen half bees- 

 wax and half paraffine. The ink flowed 

 quite as well. We next tried it on a cake of 

 wax containing a large per cent of grease; 

 and, contrary to what we expected, we could 

 write about as freely on this as on the cake 

 of pure beeswax. If the grease were uneven- 

 ly distributed in the wax, then we could con- 

 ceive how there might be a break in the lines 

 of ink; but the test would be, according to 

 our experience, very unreliable. Wax con- 

 taining grease looks greasy on the outside. 

 It does not have that clean hard lustrous sur- 

 face like pure wax. Our boys have come to 

 be quite expert; and occasionally we get a 

 shipment from which we have to reject a 

 large part. — Ed.] 



Talk now is that the pure-food law will 

 run out of the market the present bleached 

 sugar, and give us a better article of un- 

 bleached at a lower price: also that, when 

 the same law prevents paraffine, ceresin, etc., 

 from being sold as beeswax, the price of 

 beeswax will go up. Now, if sugar goes 

 down enough, and wax goes up enough, and 

 there comes a year of failure, instead of let- 

 ting the bees lie dead idle why not set them 

 to turning cheap sugar into beeswax? 



[It is doubtful if white sugar can now be 

 driven from the market, even if it contains 

 injurious matter, as housekeepers generally 

 are prejudiced in its favor. But we bee- 

 keepers need not be prejudiced. Yellow su- 

 gar, excellent for bee-feeding purposes, can 

 be obtained for less money because not con- 

 trolled by the trust. It is refined but not 

 bleached. It has been proven by Huber, 

 Milne- Ed wards, and others that raw sugar 

 produces much more beeswax than white 

 sugar. This looks reasonable, as the sugar-' 

 cane plant secretes a very nice wax. What 



