i'HE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



229 



on the war-path at the time.— James 

 Heddon. 



The " better way " is to use open- 

 top sections, and drive the bees out 

 by the judicious use of the " smoker." 

 — The liDiTOE. 



Destroying Inyertei Oneen-Cells, 



Query 405.— What Is your actual experi- 

 ence in r("t::ti'il to bees tearinR down queen-celis 

 when Ibe cells ure inverted ?— Missouri. 



have none. — G. M. Doolittle. 

 have had no experience. — C. C. 



MiLLEK. 



I have never watched to see if cells 

 were torn down after inversion — W. 

 Z. Hutchinson. 



As I do not invert queen-cells, 1 

 have no experience in regard to bees 

 tearing them down.— J. F. H. Brown. 



My experience has been that they 

 will, and that they will not. I could 

 give numerous experiments causing 

 me to believe that inverting will not 

 settle the swarming question. —James 

 Heddon. 



They do not tear them down if they 

 are yell under way of completion ; 

 but if inversion is employed in season, 

 they will abandon the work and begin 

 anew, t'other side up.— C. W. Day- 

 ton. 



My experience is with only 3 colo- 

 nies. I inverted the brood-nest each 

 week, and had no swarming, but got 

 a tine lot of surplus comb honey.— A. 

 J. Cook. 



I have given the matter only some 

 attention to gratify my curiosity, and 

 I am satislled that while such un- 

 natural manipulation will cause the 

 bees to destroy some of the cells, the 

 plan will not work as a rule. I proph- 

 esied some years ago in the columns 

 of the AsiERiCAN Bee Journal that 

 reversing hives, etc., would " play 

 out " when put to practical test, and 

 the prophecy is coming to pass sooner 

 than the "prophet" himself had any 

 idea of .— G. W. Demaree. 



Both. I have found them torn down 

 at once, and also allowed to remain. 

 As yet an inverted queen-cell has 

 never produced a queen for me. My 

 experiments in this direction, how- 

 ever, have been few, as the idea 

 proved itself to me to be unnatural 

 and impracticable, after a brief trial. 

 — .T. E. Pond. 



Plant Alsike Clover. 



Lieaflet No. 2, entitled "Alsike Clover 

 lor Pasturaire and Hay," ia now ready for 

 delivery. This should be scattered into 

 every nelKhtiorhood, In order to induce 

 farmers to plant Alsike, tliat the bees may 

 have the advantage of it for pasturage. We 

 send thenj by mail .iO copies lor 30 cents ; 

 100 tor 50 cents ; 500 for $2.25— all post- 

 paid. It will pay beekeepers to scatter 

 these Leaflets, even if 9 out of 10 avail 

 nothing. It ten farmers out of a hundred 

 plant Alsike in any neighborhood, the bees 

 will reap a very substantial reward. 



^ovxtspantitnu. 



This mark © Indioates that the apiarist is 

 located near tne center of the State named ; 

 5 north of the center; ? south; O* east; 

 K3 west; and this 6 northeast; >3 northwest; 

 o» southeast; and P southwest of the center 

 of the State mentioned. 



For tbe Ametloan Bee Journal. 



"TlieProdnctlon Of Comli Honey.' 



WM. F. CLARKE. 



Long ago, one remarked, " Of mak- 

 ing many books, there is no end," and 

 it will probably be so to the end of 

 time. It is remarkable how soon some 

 books become obsolete. They are left 

 behind in the march of progress, and 

 remain, like mile-stones, having only 

 one function, that of marking the 

 headway that has been made. Look- 

 ing over my library the other day, I 

 was struck with the number of books 

 valued in their day, that are now 

 nothing but beads on a wire, mere 

 counters and markers, keeping record 

 of how the gauie of thought has 

 gone on. 



Mr. Hutchinson's modest little book 

 certainly marks an epoch, but I 

 scarcely think will be ephemeral, be- 

 cause it brings out someof those great 

 apicultural principles which we are 

 slowly discovering, but which when 

 once they have arrived within our 

 field of vision, are there to stay. One 

 of these is the necessity of using 

 means to multiply workers in time for 

 the honey harvest. Of course this is 

 not new with Mr. Hutchinson, but he 

 has emphasized one of those means, 

 viz : warmth, in a more forcible way 

 than common. He proposes to pack 

 bees after their removal out of the 

 cellar, in order to protect them from 

 the cold snaps of early spring. This 

 packing he would retain until the 

 time has arrived for putting on supers. 



Mr. Hutchinson anticipates this ob- 

 jection : why not practice out-door 

 wintering, then winter protection will 

 answer for spring y His reply is that 

 the saving of stores by cellar winter- 

 ing will pay for the expense of spring 

 packing four times over ; also, that it 

 is only by cellar wintering that the 

 thing can be reduced to a system ; the 

 system being one of uniform food and 

 uniform temperature. Uniform food 

 means sugar, which many of the best 

 bee-keepers eschew ; and uniform 

 temperature is a delusive idea, though 

 clung to with much pertinacity by 

 Mr. H. and others. Let me endorse 

 most emphatically spring protection, 

 no matter how you get it, and at this 

 point risk a piophecv to the effect 

 that we shall yet find a clue to the 

 mastery of this difficulty in some style 

 of all-the-year-roiind protection, pro- 

 tection against both cold and heat, 

 and I rather think we shall discover 

 it in the house-apiary. Personally, I 

 would give considerable if Messrs. 

 Vandervort and Oliver Poster would 

 tell us all they know on this subject. 



I am sure that in these days of cheap 

 honey, we must find a cheaper ana 

 less laborious way of bee-manage- 

 ment than to feed sugar in the fall, 

 remove hives to the cellar, put them 

 out in the spring, provide outer cases, 

 pack our bees, unpack them, and 

 store away cases. 



I think that Mr. Hutchinson ex- 

 aggerates the difference between the 

 stores required in the cellar and out- 

 doors, when he says it will pay the 

 extra cost of spring packing four times 

 over. Let Cyula Linswik, A. G. Hill, 

 A. I. Root and other successful out- 

 door winterers give us their figures, 

 and I do not think they will sustain 

 this strong assertion. But, I say 

 again, let us have the spring protec- 

 tion, anyhow, and at whatever cost. 

 I am inclined to think we shall yet 

 find a way of adding to spring pro- 

 tection artmcial heat a? a help to 

 early brood-rearing. Market garden- 

 ers are ahead of us with their hot-bed 

 methods of forcing spring vegetables. 

 We must discover a method of forc- 

 ing young bees. We have found out 

 that we cannot do it by stimulative 

 feeding. What we want is a hive in 

 which heat can be maintained in early 

 spring at the brood-rearing tempera- 

 ture. Something more is required in 

 the line of hive invention. I can 

 plainly discern the desideratum the 

 exigency calls for, but alas ! I have 

 no inventive faculty. If I had, I 

 should have made my fortune long 

 ago, not as a hive inventor, but as a 

 novel writer. I have the faculty of 

 composition, but not that of invention. 



The main object of Mr. Hutchin- 

 son's book is to give prominence to 

 the principle of comb-building in its 

 relation to honey storing. He be- 

 lieves there is a " balance of power " 

 to be maintained between these two, 

 and I think he is right. He is of the 

 opinion that we have deranged this 

 balance by a too large use of empty 

 combs, and of comb foundation. He 

 does not give us theory, but the re- 

 sult of careful experiment. I will not 

 attempt to condense his system in 

 this review. It is clearly and forcibly 

 stated in his book. Let me advise all 

 bee-keepers to get the book, study it, 

 and practice along the lines it so 

 plainly marks out. Mr. Hutchinson's 

 candor and modesty are conspicuous 

 in his closing sentence : " I desire 

 and request the freest of criticisms ; 

 and let those who, for the first time, 

 adopt the methods herein advised, do 

 so upon no larger scale than that on 

 which they can afford to meet failure; 

 and if failure comes let them report 

 it, together with the accompanying 

 circumstances, and all will find me 

 ever ready to explain and defend my 

 views ; or, if necessary, acknowledge 

 my errors." Nothing can be fairer 

 than this, or more likely to elicit the 

 truth. 



Mr. Hutchinson's book is a step in 

 advance not on the new Heddon hive, 

 but along with it, and this fact will 

 doubtless expose him to the criticisms 

 of those who think they have dis- 

 covered in it "the sum of all vil- 

 lainies." lie may expect to be ridi- 

 culed as a copyist, to have every old, 

 obsolete bee-book ransacked for some- 



