348 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



October 



a pound and make more money than 

 the farmer does on his chickens. 



\ box 36 to 40 inches square and 

 l\ inches deep, with a tight cover, 

 of shingles or tar paper, a door about 

 18 inches square, covered with 

 strong screen wire 4 to 6 meshes to 

 the inch, and an inner box 16 inches 

 square for the hare to stay in, are 

 all that is needed, except that this 



box should be set two feet or more 

 from the ground. There are books 

 published which give detailed infor- 

 mation regarding breeding, color of 

 prize stock, markets, etc., which can 

 be purchased at nominal prices, and 

 these may be consulted. This article 

 is not intended to be scientific, but 

 to serve as a hint. 

 Buck Grove, Iowa. 



fr- 



DR. MILLER'S ANSWERS 



v 



=^ 



Send Questions eithe 

 He does 



; office of the American Bee Jo 

 C. Miller, Marengo, III. 

 iiswer beekeeping questions by 



Queens 



1. What is the average capacity of all your 

 Italian queens, as near as you can tell offhand, 

 expressed in number of frames of brood in 

 height of season? 



2. What should the brood-frame capacity of 

 a breeding queen oe? Of course this implies 

 that she has all other desirable traits. 



.; How soon is it possible for a virgin to 

 fly after hatching? That i 5 . if she is not the 

 first one to hatch at swan 



4. In your experience, 

 the youngest virgin that 

 secondary or afterswarm 



Seven 



vhat was the age 



i-er led off the fii 



l a given colony? 



MICHIGAN 



eight frames, 



only eight tram 



r they occupy mor 



the 



Answers.- 

 brood-chamber containing 

 during the harvest. Earli 



2. Maybe 15 frames. 



3. If she is not the first one she is likely 

 to be able to fly the minute she gets out of 

 the cell. Indeed, she may be able to fly before 

 that, since any virgin after the first is likely 

 to be held in her cell for some time. 



4. I don't know. My experience in that ie- 

 gard is exceedingly limited, having scarcely 

 ever had an afterswarm. 



Shade Boards 



Could you give me some idea of how to 

 make a hive-stand wit' a cover to keep off the 

 rays of the sun? WISCONSIN. 



Answer. — You can shade your bees by a 

 cover made on the shed-roof plan. Take a 

 piece of stuff long enough to reach from the 

 east to the west side of the hive-cover — this 

 piece to rest on the hive-cover at the north 

 side — and on this niece nail the ends of shin- 

 gles or cheap boards such as you may obtain 

 from, broken-up boxes. It will be better if 

 the shingles or thin boards project at the south 

 side so as partly to shade the south side of 

 the hive. Put a stone on top to prevent the 

 wind from blowing it away. Or, you can do 

 another way if you have some long gras* at 

 your disposal. Mow the grass and put a 

 small armful on the top of the hive weighing 

 it down with one or two sticks of stovewood. 



Wintering — Feeding 



1. I am trying to find out the best way to 

 winter bees on their summer stands. 1 read 

 in a journal, to place a hive on the bottom- 

 board, filled with empty frames, an inner 

 cover on top, with 2 holes bored in front for 

 ventilation, then the hive of bees set on that, 

 with a tray on top filled with dry lea 



idea is to drive lour stakes at the corners to 

 make a space of about 6 inches all around 

 and fill it with dry leaves, holding this down 

 with paper, tacked, but leaving the entrance 

 open in front; or would you winter in one 

 hive with tar paper around the same 5 



2. Is it best to feed in open, or feed in the 

 hive, or in what manner? Will it do to feed 

 them all they will take- NEBRASKA. 



Answi Ian you outline ought lo 



bring good results, provided outdoor wintering 

 in your region is best. 



ir bee-hooks should give you full in- 



struction about feeding, and this department is 

 not to take the place of books, but to supple- 

 ment them. Feeding in the open is a little 

 more like the natural gathering from the field, 

 and on that account is to be preferred if there 

 are no bees from other apiaries to share with 

 your own bees. It may be all right to feed 

 the bees all they will take, and it may not. 

 Sometimes they will continue taking feed until 

 the combs are so full that there will not be 

 room for the queen the following spring. But 

 there isn't much danger of that unless more 

 than 40 pounds of honey and syrup are in the 

 hive. It will be better if the bees have stored 

 enough honey so no sugar need be fed. If you 

 have a good cellar it may be that your bees 



vould do bette 



it than outdo 



Laying Workers 



Can you explain the presence of laying 

 workers in the super of a queenright colony? 



On August (i I killed the old queen of one 

 of my colonies, and at the same time intro- 

 duced a new queen in a mailing cage. August 

 17, I inspected the hive and could not find 

 the new cpueen. There were no eggs nor 

 young brood, but there was one ripe queen- 

 cell. I then inspected the super to see if the 

 queen could have squeezed through the ex- 

 cluder. I found drone-brood at all stages in 

 both drone and worker cells. Also many 

 dwarfed drones, which indicated that the 

 laying workers were present before the old 

 queen was disposed of. 



I suppose the laying workers were the 

 cause of the bees not accepting the new queen. 



There was no sign of laying workers in the 

 brood-chamber. 



DISTRICT COLUMBIA. 



Answer. — This seems exceptional beyond 

 precedent, and I haven't the remotest i lea why 

 it happened. 



»ging 



Queens — Equalizing Weak- 

 lings 



I save all possible bees to rear brood for 

 the clover flow, then double up all the weaker 

 ones with stronger ones, then remove all 

 queens and form nuclei. This way there will 

 be no new larvae to eat up the surplus until 

 they rear a new queen, which will take them 

 safely beyond the honey-flow. I notice some 

 suggest caging the old queen for this same pur- 

 pose, until the honey-flow is over. 



1. Would the bees work as well while form- 

 ing a new queen as they would if the old 

 queen was caged in the same hive with them? 



2. When you double up a weak swarm with 

 another in the same apiary, will not the bees 

 go back to their old stand' 3 



S. Do you, in all cases, prefer "leaving it to 

 the bees"? 



4. Which covering for frames do you con- 

 sider the best, burlap, ducking or oil cloth? 



5. How about equalizing weaker swarms and 

 nuclei by giving frames of brood frenn stronger, 

 ones — is it advisable? OHIO. 



Answers. — 1. My guess would be- thru the 

 bees would work as well while rearing a new 

 queen as they would with an old queen caged. 



2. Yes, with no precautions the field bees 

 are apt to return to their old location. This 

 can be partly or wholly prevented by using 



the newspaper plan for uniting. Put a sheet 

 of common newspaper over one hive, and over 

 this set the other hive. The bees in the upper 

 hive cannot get out until a passage way is 

 gnawed in the paper, and by that time they 

 are reconciled to remain in the new place.- 



3. By no means would I always leave every- 

 thing to the bees. Indeed success depends 

 chiefly on knowing just what to leave to the 

 bees, and how to interfere with their notions. 

 To leave everything to the bees would spell 

 practical failure, for much of their strength 

 would be dissipated in swarming instead of 

 gathering 



4. Hard to say; but for many years I have 

 preferred to have neither, merely having an 

 air-space between the top-bars and the board 

 cover. 



5. It may be advisable, provided all can l.e 

 brought up to good strength for winter. 



Pasturage 



1. I am a beginner and have ten colonies of 

 Italian bees that will go In winter quarters 

 strong. I live in a little town and am the 

 only man who keeps bees here. I would like 

 to have about one hundred colonies or more, 

 and am quite sure there is not enough nectar 

 right here to make beekeeping a paying propo- 

 sition, but about one and a half miles from 

 here there begins a swamp full of vines, 

 lilies and other honey-producing plants. Do 

 you think my bees would go to that swamp, 

 and that it would be a paying proposition to 

 have one hundred colonies here? 



2. Is the water lily a good honey-producing 

 plant? 



LOUISIANA. 



Answers. — 1. You've picked out one of the 

 hardest questions in beekeeping. In the first 

 place, I'm hardly ready to take your word :or 

 it that 100 colonies could not find enough to 

 do at your home, without going as far as a 

 mile and a half away, although the probability 

 is that you are right. In the second place, 

 it's such a hard thing to find out that you will 

 probably never know to a certainty if you 

 keep bees for a hundred years. One year you 

 may get a good crop with 100 colonies, and 

 yet you cannot be certain whether you would 

 have had more surplus with 90 or 110 colonies. 

 Seasons change so that 100 colonies might do 

 well one year, and 60 starve the next year. 

 So no one can tell what number on the aver- 

 age would be profitable. But I should feel 

 safe in saying that your bees will work almost 

 or quite as well on pasturage a mile and a 

 half away as on the same field half a mile 

 away, and it is quite possible that 100 would 

 be none too many in your home apiary. 



2. I don't know. It is very fragrant, but 

 I've never heard of honey in quantity being 

 secured from it. 



Foulbrood — Queens — Moths 



1. What is foulbrood? 



2. What is meant by a virgin queen? 



3. In what way are queens changed, and 

 what effect does it have on the workers? 



1. l .hi comb be used more than one year in 

 succession if thoroughly cleaned? 



5. In what way can moths be avoided? In 

 what way may they be prevented? 



WISCONSIN. 



Answers. — 1. Foulbrood is a germ disease 

 that attacks bees in the larval state. If it 

 slips in on you without your knowing what it 

 is or how to handle it — good night. Better get 

 a good "bee-book that tells about it, or write 

 to Dr. E, F. Phillips, U. S. Department of 

 Agriculture, Washington, D. C, and ask for 

 free literature about foulbrood and its treat- 

 ment. 



2. A young queen that has not yet mated 

 with a drone. 



::. Tin- queen present in a colony may be re- 

 moved or killed, and another introduced 

 through an introducing cage. The effect on 



