THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



37 



The best would be to make some 

 fire in that cellar, and with a little 

 ventilation it would soon be dry. We 

 would put some straw or fodder over 

 that door.— Dadant & Son. 



The dampness of itself will do no 

 barm. Keep the temperature equable 

 at about 45°, Fahr. If you cannot do 

 that, your bees would be better off on 

 the summer stands.— J. E. Pond. 



I should put a stove in the cellar 

 and dry it out by a slow process— give 

 ventilation at the tops of the hives 

 until the bees are dry and quiet. 

 AVant of proper exhalation from the 

 bodies of the bees is the cause of all 

 uneasiness and disease in bees during 

 the winter months, and cold is at the 

 bottom of all this. Such is my ex- 

 perience in my apiary. — G. W. 

 Demakee. 



Perhaps plaster of Paris, or lime, 

 put in occasionally might help mat- 

 ters. Let in what air you can with- 

 out cooling the cellar too much. You 

 might try a hive or two with a little 

 more upward ventilation, or perhaps 

 better still, give very abundant air at 

 the entrance.— C. C. Miller. 



Dampness does no harm of itself. 

 It is cold and dampness that does the 

 mischief. A damp cellar should be 

 kept warmer than a dry one, because 

 at the same degree cold is more 

 severely felt in the former, owing to 

 the more rapid conduction of heat. 

 "We feel the cold on a damp day much 

 more keenly than on a dry day. If 

 the cellar is wet and cold, warm it up, 

 by all means. It is entirely practi- 

 cable to use a stove in a cellar where 

 there are bees, to warm it up and 

 drive out the dampness, the wet and 

 the cold, aud thereby save the bees. 

 The light may be closed in by any 

 safe and suitable means. A faint 

 light, especially in the evening, does 

 little injury.— G. L. Tinker. 



Put a fire into the bee-cellar at 

 once, and keep the temperature at 

 that degree which insures quietude to 

 the bees.— The Editor. 



ConTentioD Notices. 



Vf~ The Northeastern MlcbiKan Bee-Keeper8' 

 Association will bold its fifth ahnual meetlnK on 

 Wednesday. Feb. 2, 1887, in the Common Council 

 Rooms, at Bay City, Mich. 



W. z. Hutchinson, Sec. 



1W The next meetinv of the Hardin County 

 Bee-Keepers' Association will be held in Eldora. 

 Iowa, on Feb. 12, 1887. at G. W. Wards office, at 

 10 a.m. Our monthly meetings are yery interest- 

 ing, and we hope for a larfte attendance. 



J. W. Buchanan, Sec. 



I*" The Northeastern Ohio. Northern Pa. and 

 Western New Yoric Bee-Keepers' Association will 

 bold its 8th annual convention in Chapman's 

 Opera House, at Andover. <*., on Wednesday and 

 Thursday. Jan. ly and 20, 1887. First-class hotel 

 accommodations are offered at %\ per day to those 

 atlendintf the convention. A general invitation is 

 extended to all. M. E. Maso.v, See. 



VF Tbe Wisconsin State Bee-Keepers' ApsocI- 

 ation meets at the Capitol in Madi-^on, Wis., on 

 Thnrday, Feb. 3. 1887, at 9 a.m. All protrresslve 

 bee-keepers are earnestly Invited to attend, and 

 supply-dealers are requested to exhibit their best 

 Implements and inventions. The State Aifrioultu- 

 ral convention will be in session at the same time, 

 Commencine on Feb. I and closing on Feb. 4, which 

 will bean additional inducement for many to at- 

 tend. Hotel rates are from $1 to $3 per day. Re- 

 turn ticket* wilt very probably be given over the 

 principal railroads at reduced rates. 



F. Witcoi, Sec. 



®0rrcsp^crmXjeMCje, 



Explanatory.— The dgurea before the 

 Dames Indicate the number of years that the 

 person has kept bees. Those after, show 

 the number of colonies the writer had in the 

 previous spring and fall, or fall and spring-, 

 as the time of the year may require. 



This mark © iq^icates that the apiarist is 

 located near tne center of the State named ; 

 5 north of the center; 9 south; 0+ east; 

 *0 west; and this 6 northeast; *o northwest: 

 o^ southeast; and ? southwest of the center 

 of the State mentioned. 



ror the American Bee Jourmtl. 



Sections Filleil i itli Coinl). 



G. M. DOOLITTLE. 



When I first began bee-keeping I 

 found that one of the greatest hin- 

 drances to my being a successful comb 

 honey producer, was that of getting 

 the bees to work early in the season in 

 the boxes or surplus arrangement. 

 Often the best part of the season 

 would pass away before a bit of work 

 would be done, save in the brood- 

 chamber, the result of which was 

 little surplus honey in marketable 

 shape, with the body of the hive over- 

 loaded with honey, and but weak 

 colonies of bees (owing to the honey 

 crowding out the queen) for winter. 

 This state of affairs worried me, and 

 I began experimenting earnestly to 

 see what could be done to overcome 

 the difficulty. I soon found that 

 wherever a frame of brood was placed, 

 if within a reasonable distance of the 

 main cluster, then the bees would 

 commence work on either sjde of 

 it, especially on the side between this 

 brood and the main cluster. 



Taking advantage of this fact which 

 I had learned, about ten days before 

 the main honey harvest commenced, I 

 would place an empty frame in the 

 centre of many of the colonies of bees, 

 leaving them there for 8 or 9 days, 

 when they were generally found full 

 of nice white drone-comb which con- 

 tained brood ill the egg and larval 

 form. I now cut these combs in 

 pieces about 3 inches square, and 

 fitted a piece into as many boxes as I 

 had colonies which refused to work in 

 the surplus apartment. As soon as 

 such boxes were placed on the hives, 

 the bees would take possession of 

 them, at once going to work, and in a 

 day or two work would be com- 

 menced in the rest of the boxes also. 

 As this was in the days of 6-pound 

 boxes, this piece of comb was all out 

 of sight so that the darker color of 

 this central comb did not show to in- 

 jure the sale of the honey. However, 

 I did not like the practicing of any- 

 thing that looked like putting the best 

 side out, so I kept on experimenting, 

 when I soon found that a few partly- 

 filled boxes left over from the pre- 

 vious season answered the same pur- 

 pose, only I had to use about three 

 times as many as I did of the brood. 

 As this took many more such boxes 



than I would have on hand as a rule, 

 I still used the brood to some extent. 



The next season I began getting 

 combs built during fruit-bloom, going 

 to each hive every five days and cut- 

 ting out the comb before any of the 

 larvse in the cells were large enough 

 to soil the comb. These combs thus 

 obtained were fitted into the boxes, 

 which, in addition to those left over 

 from the previous year, gave me all I 

 needed, so that the using of brood 

 was entirely dispensed with, except 

 occasionally on a very obstinate col- 

 ony which would scorn all my persua- 

 sion except brood. I have never 

 known brood placed in boxes to fail in 

 making the most obstinate colony 

 work in them, and I sometimes resort 

 to it now in these days of sections and 

 comb foundation, putting the sec- 

 tions, when finished, in the third 

 grade of honey. 



Upon the advent of comb founda- 

 tion, to supply my lack of poorly-filled 

 sections, I would place frames filled 

 with foundation in the centre of 

 strong colonies of bees prior to the 

 honey harvest, so as to get the foun- 

 dation drawn, feeding, if necessary, 

 to accomplish this object, so that I 

 might have all the sections filled with 

 comb which I needed. This latter 

 plan I have seen recommended by 

 many others since I adopted it, scores 

 having secured by its use crops of 

 nice white honey exceeding by far any 

 hitherto produced. 



After passing through all of this 

 experience, and becoming so thor- 

 oughly convinced that I was right, as 

 to write several times for the Ameri- 

 can Bee Journal and other bee- 

 papers, that I considered " sections 

 filled with comb left over from the 

 previous season better than money in 

 a bank," imagine my surprise on 

 reading the advice given by Mr. Dib- 

 bern, on page 774 or the Bee Jour- 

 nal for 1886, where he says that to 

 bring Mr. Thielmann's ideas up to 

 modern times, he should " after ex- 

 tracting cut out the combs, melt them 

 up, and burn the old sections." After 

 all these years of labor and experi- 

 ment to accomplish a thing which to 

 me and others seems the very heighth 

 of perfection, why are we now called 

 upon to " cut out the combs " and 

 "melt them upV" I have carefully 

 re-read Mr. Dibbern's article, and! 

 fail to find any reason given for such 

 a procedure; neither do I find any 

 reason given for the burning of the 

 old sections. 



With me, sections five years old are 

 as clear and bright as any. To be 

 sure, he says that sections " must be 

 scraped of every particle of propolis," 

 but there is no reason given for pre- 

 ferring new sections, after being so 

 scraped, to old ones. Many of us can- 

 not afford to purchase sections for the 

 fun of burning them up, even if Mr. 

 D. can. As I said of " modern trans- 

 ferring," so I say of this " modern 

 comb honey production," if any man 

 has plenty of money to " throw at 

 birds," I do not object to his doing so, 

 providing he does not cause his family 

 to suffer ; but I do object to having it 

 made to appear that if we would keep 

 abreast of the times, we, who cannot 



