120 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



April 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



=0 Established by Samuel Wagner In 1861 C= 



tar secretion than any other phase 

 of beekeeping. We feel that matter 

 of this kind should be of much inter- 

 est and value to our readers. 



The oldest Bee Journal in the English language. Consolidated with The 

 National Bee Journal in 1874. 



Published monthly at Hamilton, Illinois. 



Entered as second-class matter at the postomce at Hamilton, Illinois. 



SussctirTiON Rates — In the United States and THE STAFF 



Mexico $1 per year; three years. $2.60; five c p Dadant Editor 



years, $4. Canadian postage 15 cents, and 



other foreign countries 25 cents extra, per Frank C. Pellett Associate Editor 



* ear ' C. C. Miller Questions Department 



All subscriptions are stopped at expiration. Date _ r»._. .- t> >•„„„ ***„,„** 



at expiration is printed on wrapper label. Maurice G. Dadant Bus.ness Manager 



(Copyright 1919, by C. P. Dadant.) 



THE EDITOR* 



Cost of Honey 

 From Package Bees 



The Iowa College of Agriculture is 

 conducting some interesting experi- 

 ments in apiculture, under Prof. Wal- 

 lace Parks. The past season careful 

 weights were made to ascertain the 

 cost of wintering over colonies and 

 the surplus secured was compared to 

 that secured from package bees 

 from the South. One, two and three- 

 pound packages were used in the ex- 

 periment. The costs of honey se- 

 cured are interesting and while a sin- 

 gle season does not give any very 

 satisfactory data it is clear that un- 

 less better results can be shown in 

 favor of the packages, that it will not 

 pay to destroy our bees in the fall of 

 the year and depend upon replacing 

 them from the south the following 

 spring. Under this experiment the 

 costs per pound oi honey stored was 

 as follows: 



1-pound package $.28 



2-pound package .13 — 



3-pound package .13-|- 



Wintered colonies .08 



The difference in cost between the 

 i.l three-pound package is so 

 slight as to be surprising, and this in 

 the fai i " ' season. It would 



be expected that the difference would 

 favor the larger package, especially 

 in a poo] year. We understand that 

 the experiment will be continued, and 

 results will be watched with interest. 

 The one-pound package is too small 

 for immediate results, and little mori 

 than the establishment of a i i il< >n 

 can be expected from a singh pound 

 of bees, unless it be an exceptional 

 season. 



Honey Plants 



We are publishing in this issue 

 some interesting letters concerning 



S VIEWPOINT 



the climbing milkweed or shoestring 

 vine. This plant is of limited distri- 

 bution and is not generally known, 

 yet it is a very important honey 

 plant in the region where it grows. 

 W. L. Wiley, of Brunswick. Mo., 

 writes that it furnished most of the 

 surplus in that locality last year and 

 that strong colonies stored 100 

 pounds or more from this source. 



There are dozens of good plants 

 which are not widely distributed and 

 consequently little known. We will 

 be very glad if our readers will co- 

 operate with us in making a survey 

 of the honey plants of the entire 

 country. Whenever the bees are 

 found to be working freely on a plant 

 which is not generally discussed, we 

 will appreciate samples of the plant, 

 together with the blossoms and full 

 notes concerning the amount and 

 kind of honey secured, time of 

 blooming and any other interesting 

 information. We have been at work 

 for the past three years on a volume 

 of the honey plants and such infor- 

 mation will be of great help to us. 

 It is only through the co-operation 

 of the beekeepers of the whole coun- 

 try that we can hope to make the 

 volume complete enough to be oi real 

 value. Much has been written about 

 alfalfa, sweet clover, basswood, the 

 and a few others of great im- 

 portance, but we are anxious to get 

 information on the plants which are 

 important in a few localities and 

 which are seldom heard oi elsewhere 



In our last issue, and again in this, 

 are several letters about the corn 

 plant which serve to throw some 

 light on the question as to whether 

 bees get honej from corn. Although 

 our success depends upon the honey- 

 plants of our immediate locality, less 

 is known about the problems of nec- 



Shallow Brood-frames 



In the discussion of the proper size 

 for brood-chambers that will accom- 

 modate the most prolific queens, the 

 matter of shallow stories is drawing 

 the attention of a large number of 

 critics. One man writes that the lo- 

 cating of the hi" 1-nest in one, two 



or more separate bodies, has no in- 

 fluence whatever upon the amount of 

 brood that the queen will produce. I 

 am quite willing to agree that there 

 is a possible difference in the ex- 

 perience of different apiarists on this 

 subject, as mentioned on page 50 of 

 the February number. But that the 

 separation of the brood-chamber into 

 two or more stories should make no 

 difference whatever in the laying of 

 the queen, is an untenable proposi- 

 tion. 



Those of the readers who have the 

 revised edition of "The Hive and 

 Honeybee" are requested to turn to 

 page 143, Fig. 59. Those who have 

 only one of the original Langstroth 

 editions are requested to look up 

 Plate 1, Figs. 1 and 2. where the 

 same cuts are found. They will there 

 see that Mr. Langstroth at one time 

 used frames with a perpendicular bar 

 or partition in the middle. This bar 

 had a groove in it which was in- 

 tended for a "winter passage." As we 

 tried nearly every invention Mr. 

 Langstroth ever described, we also 

 tried these perpendicular divisions 

 and found that the queens would 

 often breed on one side of them only. 



The senior Dadant, who estimated 

 the value of pieces of worker-comb 

 very highly, was in the habit, before 

 the invention of comb-foundation 

 made broken worker-comb less valu- 

 able, of making horizontal partitions 

 in brood-frames, in order to more 

 readilj fasten in pieces of worker- 

 comb as small as 5 inches square. 

 Often the queens would lay on the 

 uppei oi 1' >vt er side of such partitions 

 to the exclusion of the other side. 

 We also used divisible frames for 

 making nuclei in queen-breeding. 



!,, :ame trouble exhibited itself. 

 Anyone who cares to do so may try 

 such experiments. Not in every case, 

 but in many cases, perhaps one- 

 fourth oi the time, the querns would 

 find such divisions an obstacle suf- 

 ficient to cause them to turn away, 

 for the time being, though they usu- 

 ally came back to them afterwards. 



