200 



THE BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW. 



believe it would have been better for bee- 

 keepers if the general public had never 

 seen, or heard of, foundation. We may be 

 wrong, but such is our belief. While we 

 would always give bees an opportunity to 

 build comb, we would supply foundation 

 the moment it was needed, and we should 

 be glad to be able to furnish empty combs 

 when a honey shower came along. Of course 

 this may be done in raising extracted honey, 

 and this reminds us to ask why more extract- 

 ed than comb honey can be produced ? 

 Isn't it because the bees are furnished witli 

 drawn comb, hence are not delayed by lack 

 of storage 'i If we could furnish the bees 

 with sections of drawn comb, wouldn't we 

 secure as much comb as extracted honey ? 

 Yes, but can it be done ? Our English cous- 

 ins have a plan of securing an abundance of 

 drawn out foundation by feeding dry sugar 

 early in the season, before the regular honey 

 harvest opens. This drawn out foundation 

 is cut up and titted into sections. This 

 practice of feeding dry sugar seems to be 

 very much in vogue across the water. The 

 sugar used is soft and is called Porto Rico. 

 The bees seem to be able to liquify and use 

 it without any addition of water by the bee- 

 keeper. 



All these plans that have been mentioned 

 may seem like too much " fussing " to be 

 profitable, but let it be remembered that 

 many of them have not been tried enough 

 so that very much is known about them. 

 It is admitted that it is almost impossible to 

 find any decisive experiments upon many 

 of these points : in fact, it seems as though 

 the whole bee keeping world had gone 

 "foundation crazy," and would not stop to 

 learn if other ways were better. The object 

 of this discussion is to call a halt. If foun- 

 dation is profitable to use at all times and 

 in all places, let's know it and know we 

 know it. 



As much as we have said about the saving 

 of wax by allowing bees to build comb, we 

 do not think that, in our plan of hiving 

 swarms upon starters only in the brood 

 nest, the greatest profit arises from this 

 source, although the saving in foundation is 

 quite an item, but rather from the forcing 

 of the honey into the suviers and the cur- 

 tailing of brood production at the height of 

 honey gathering. To this might be added 

 the increased zeal with which bees work 

 when allowed to gratify their instinct for 

 comb building. 



We have' with this plan, had no trouble 

 from the building of drone comb, unless the 

 queen was old. With a young queen and a 

 contracted brood nest, one contracted so 

 much that the queen can keep pace with the 

 comb builders, and that will be filled with 

 comb before the workers from the first laid 

 eggs begin to hatch, almost no drone comb 

 is built. With so few frames (say five) in 

 the brood nest that combs are built in them 

 all simultaneously, perfect conabs are the 

 result. When the number of frames is in- 

 creased to eight or ten, and the swarm is not 

 large, the outside combs are often impefect. 



Hundreds of readers have put in practice 

 the methods advised in our little book on 

 comb honey, and we should be very glad 

 indeed to hear from them in regard to 

 results. 



]BXTRJ5:CXEO. 



Special Periodicals Necessarily High [Priced. 



MN THE report of the Keokuk conven- 

 tion, as published in the A. B. J., we 

 find the following credited to the Rev. 

 Wm. F. Clarke. 



" Good apicultural literature costs some- 

 thing. You cannot have first-class literature 

 without paying well for it. Some cheap, 

 new papers are offered at 25 cents a year, and 

 are dear at that. Bee papers cannot be pub- 

 lished as cheaply as metropolitan dailies. 

 Special lines cost more, because the patrons 

 are limited. Let our special periodicals be 

 high class in a literary point of view. Let 

 them discuss the live issues of the pursuit, in 

 the present day, that are of interest to all 

 practical bee keepers." 



Italians Turning Black, and Carniolans 

 Becoming Yellow. 

 ""E were not a little astonished to 

 find the following, by Bro. Alley, 

 in the October Apiculturist : 



"It is a fact which I have found in my 

 experience, that if pure Carniolan bees are 

 left to themselves a few years they will near- 

 ly all be yellow bees, while if the purest 

 Italians are left to breed and mate as they 

 naturally will, say four years or more, they 

 will degenerate to solid black bees. There 

 would, no doubt, be a few bees in the colon- 

 ies with a very narrow yellow band, but a 

 large majority of the bees would be black. 



Will some of our readers who have given 

 this subject study and serious thought give 

 the readers of the -4^*/. their ideas on this 

 point ?" 



Our idea is that if either race is isolated 

 nothing of the kind will occur. 



