312 



TBE BEE-KEEPERS' REVIM^. 



against letting bees build between two fin- 

 ished combs, and declares that they usually 

 do bad work in that way. Our mentors told 

 us to do that way, and I never thought to put 

 on my doubting cap before ; but it kind 'o 

 seems as if such building has often been 

 poor with me. Perhaps there are conditions 

 to be looked to, after which all will be well. 

 Glad to hear him say, in column H, that wide 

 frames are better than the T super — 'cause 

 I've got a lot of them, and "keep all on" 

 using them. With my strain of bees double 

 tier wide frames are all right enough. With 

 bees that are reluctant to go above such 

 frames might perhaps cause serious loss. 



Proverbs seems to have been having quite 

 a revival of late, and Heddon gets off a 

 striking one occasionally. Witness this : 

 " One may be a poet without being a pau- 

 per." Alas, alas ! Proverbs are not always 

 the truth any more than other forms of 

 speech. And how's this for aphorism ? 

 " Fallacy and carefully studied oiliness * 



* twin sisters." And I hope Mr. H. will 

 not take it amiss if I advise lots of home 

 consumption of the following good one : 



" Let us ' hew to the line, letting the chips 

 fall where they may ; ' but let us be quite euro 

 we see the line plainly before we begin to hew." 



Buy when the price is low, and other peo- 

 ple want to sell ; sell when the price is high, 

 and other people want to buy. Mr. Heddon 

 says it is because he is confident of the wis- 

 dom of this that he is starting a journal and 

 making new investments in honey produc- 

 tion just now. 



Here's one that is not a proverb, but per- 

 haps true enough to be one : 



"The colony which develops the swarming 

 mania and then by some contrivance is foiled in 

 the attempt to divide, never does the good work 

 of one in which tlie swarming tendency has been 

 prevented." No. 2, Col. 1 



He advises prevention of drone rearing ; 

 yet candidly admits that colonies pushed to 

 rear excess of drones do not swarm. I think 

 the way of the matter is this. If bees vol- 

 untarily refrain from drone rearing it is a 

 good indication that they are not yet con- 

 templating a swarm ; but if you wrestle with 

 them in any way to keep them from drone 

 rearing, you'll be pretty sure to start their 

 contrariness, and bring about the very op- 

 posite of what you intend. 



Lots of foundation fasteners, but never 

 one equal to the Parker. Me too. 



"Upward ventilation in winter or summer, 

 has been superseded by lower ventilation." No. 

 2, (oJ, 19. 



Probably true in the fraternity at large, 

 but not of every individual, I got there 

 many years ago— and have been traveling in 

 the other direction recently. 



At swarming time, and with very abun- 

 dant smoking and jarring, Mr. H. had good 

 success with off-hand dividing, letting 

 queens go without finding, and the whole 

 job at the rate of 12 colonies per hour. No. 

 3, Col. 1. Small boys at A B C may look 

 a little out. 



In No. 3, column 7, he indorses R. L. Tay- 

 lor, and proposes to have feeding for only 

 two purposes, security against famine, and 

 finishing up sections. Here I am inclined 

 to buy two stoves and saveja^i the wood- 

 almost at the point of saying I would never 

 feed for any purpose. The section finishing 

 I doubt whether it pays often enough to be 

 generally recommended. Then, having a 

 location which is specially strong on the fall 

 yield, I can afford to put warm honey in the 

 combs myself, and hang it in the hive, in 

 the few cases where it is urgently needed. 



But brother Heddon saves all the wood in 

 another case in which I don't believe I could 

 — as per No. 3, Col. 8. 



" We have rows of hives in our apiary, con- 

 taining strong colonies of bees, which we haven't 

 opened— never taken off the honey board - for 

 all of five years. We haven't opened them be- 

 cause they haven't needed i', and wo have been 

 readily able to determine inside conditions from 

 outside appearances." 



I suppose I must grant that (as far as he 

 can) the busy man" who has fully learned his 

 trade is to be commended for judging from 

 the outside. 



He says tansy does drive off ants. I 

 thought it a hum, and never tried it. What 

 fools we are by being too much afraid of 

 folly ! 



Percolated syrup is well bespoken ; but 

 for himself he proposes to stick to the old 

 thick syrup made with heat— sugar 10, water 

 3, honey 4, and a teaspoonful of tartaric 

 acid. 



In No. .3, Col. 1!), we have a good word for 

 drone sized section honey as a shade pret- 

 tier than other kind. 



In tlie next column a fox is " digged out 

 of burrows." If a swarm with the parent 

 colony does make more honey than the non- 

 swarming colony, it still remains true that, 

 if the bees could only be got to refrain, one 



