14 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



and wait until she becomes quiet before 

 the frame is restored to its place in the 

 hive. This precaution avoids all danger 

 of "balling " of the queen. All persons 

 who do not carry a steady hand, free 

 from nervousness, had better let some- 

 body else do the work. While holding 

 a queen fast I have often seen danger of 

 clipping off a leg, as she has a fashion of 

 manipulating her supple limbs peculiar 

 to her race. It is well to be on the look- 

 out for a legerdemain sweep of a leg 

 when the scissors are ready to snip off a 

 wing. — G. W. Demaree. 



Urgent Questions. 



Q,ueenless Colony. 



I have one strong colony of Italian 

 bees which drew out the queen dead on 

 Dec. 11. What is best to do with it? 

 Shake the bees off the frames on the first 

 fine day we have in front of other colo- 

 nies ? or let them remain until I can 

 furnish them a frame of brood ? They 

 are having a fine flight to-day, and it is 

 very warm here. John Sundermann. 



Huntington, Ind., Dec. 14, 1890. 



[It will be useless to give the queenless 

 colony a frame of brood until there are 

 drones in the Spring, or at least until the 

 drone-brood is capped. If the circum- 

 stances will permit, it would be desirable 

 to unite the bees with a colony having a 

 good queen. If not, then you will have 

 to risk their wintering without a queen. 

 —Ed.] 



Feeding Bees in the Cellar. 



Some of my neighbors have several 

 colonies of bees that are nearly destitute 

 of stores, can such colonies be fed with 

 any certainty of success in the cellar? 

 If so, give the modus operandi. 



C. P. McKlNNON. 



Bangor, Iowa, Dec. 15, 1890. 



[The feeding should have been done 

 in the Fall, when the bees would have 

 capped it over. Now, it will be more 

 risky. Sugar-candy may be placed over 

 the frames, or sugar syrup be given in 

 an inverted bottle, (with cloth tied over 

 the mouth), and placed over the frames. 



To make the candy, use 4 parts of 

 coffee A sugar and 1 part of water ; 



simmer until it becomes quite hard on 

 being cooled, mold it into frames 1 inch 

 thick, and lay it over the frames, using 

 sticks (3^ inch square) underneath. Or 

 you can mold it into brood-frames, tying 

 hemp twine around the frames to hold the 

 candy in place, and put it into the cen- 

 tre of the brood-chamber. — Ed.] 



Bee-Hives for all Purposes. 



I am, to use a Western phrase, a 

 "tenderfoot" in the bee-business. 

 Although I had kept bees in 1857 and 

 1870, in the Spring of 1890 I began 

 again by buying 2 colonies, which in- 

 creased to 8, one of which escaped to 

 the woods during swarming, and on the 

 last of August I bought 5 late swarms. 

 By feeding these I have been able to put 

 all my bees into the cellar for Winter in 

 a good condition, yet, in the late swarms 

 there seems to be a great many of them 

 dead. I use the 10-frame Langstroth 

 hives. What kind of hives are best for 

 general use ? I want to use them for 

 extracted and comb honey. 



Mark D. J. W^atkins. 



Osakis, Minn., Dec. 14, 1890. 



[For a beginner there is no better hive 

 than the one you are using — the Lang- 

 stroth. Experts use others to suit their 

 fancy and capabilities, but for all pur- 

 poses (and for novices especially) the 

 Langstroth is unsurpassed. — Ed.] 



Moving Bees. 



I wish to move my hives about 400 

 yards from where they formerly stood. 

 Will some one please tell me how to pre- 

 vent the bees from flying back to the old 

 place ? I have been very much pleased 

 with the Bee Journal, and Illustrated 

 Home Journal in the past, and when 

 the announcement came that the former 

 was to be enlarged and improved during 

 the coming year, I wondered how it 

 could be. Well ! who can tell what 

 stores of helpful knowledge one may find 

 in these periodicals next year. 



J. b. A. Fisher. 



Faith, N. C, Dec. 20, 1890. 



[Place a slanting piece of board on 

 something over the entrances, so that 

 when the bees come out, they will find 

 something new, and then they will 

 re-mark their location. — Ed.] 



