1919 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



421 



A Useful Hive Cart 



By H. W. Sanders 



THE illustration shows a handy 

 two-wheeled vehicle used in our 

 apiary and found to he of great 

 service. The actual gears and low 

 platform are designed and sold for 

 use of dairymen for the transfer of 

 filled milk cans, and are of solid con- 

 struction. The platform stands only 

 a few inches from the ground and 

 rests on a dropped axle, which in 

 turn is borne by the large iron 

 wheels. The handle for pulling or 

 pushing is clearly shown in the pho- 

 tograph, and two small feet at the 

 same end support the cart when at 

 rest. A neighboring dairyman sold 

 his stock last spring and we bought 

 the cart at the sale, thinking it might 

 be useful in the garden. Then when 

 the time came for carrying around 

 supers it seemed a bright idea to use 

 the new outfit. The supers keut 

 falling over and getting mixed up 

 with the wheels whenever the cart 

 went over a bump, so a few old 

 boards were nailed around, forming a 

 kind of box. .(The less said about 

 the carpentry the better — but it 

 works). In this, supers are piled and 

 it will take as many as seven at a 

 time. A rope is fixed to the far end 

 of the platform and brought over the 

 supers. It is held in the hand as the 

 cart is pulled along and prevents 

 the supers from falling out of the 

 rear of the cart which is not boarded 

 up. The iron frame is designed to 

 carry great weights and will take a 

 barrel of water, if needed. We have 

 taken six heavy supers at a time to 

 the honey house and find it a great 

 improvement over a wheelbarrow. 

 For next season we are planning to 

 rebuild the body and to make it bee- 

 tight with a bee-escape for use when 

 robbers are troublesome. This year 

 we took most of the crop before this 

 time, and for the last few supers 

 used the wheelbarrow. 

 Sturgeon Creek, Man. 



she was quiet and settled, i. e., about 

 twelve hours. His practice was to 

 introduce the virgins near nightfall, 

 close the entrance with coarse 

 weeds that would shrink much in 



Bee Behavior and Queen Introduc- 

 tion 



By Arthur C. Miller 



IT is getting rather late to talk 

 about queen introduction, at least 

 for the northern part of the con- 

 tinent, but some of the recent arti- 

 cles on the subject have called to my 

 attention the fact that there seems to 

 be a decided lack of knowledge of the 

 laws of bee behavior in their relation 

 to a change of queens. 



In the introduction of virgins the 

 chief cause of loss lies in the queen 

 herself, and the older she is the 

 greater the chance of loss. A virgin 

 put into a strange colony is prone to 

 run out as soon as she is free to do 

 so, and very often, if not usually, she 

 fails to take her location, and so 

 either is lost or wanders into some 

 other hive, not infrequently super- 

 seding the reigning queen. 



Long years ago Henry Alley got 

 onto this ami his invariable rule was 

 to confine the virgin to the hive until 



Sanders' hive cart. 



wilting and so automatically release 

 the colony by the following morning. 

 In his "baby nuclei." with a half-inch 

 auger hole for an entrance, he closed 

 it with a crumpled up plantain leaf, 



an abundance of which were to be 

 found in his yard. 



With laying queens the results are 

 largely dependent on the condition of 

 the receiving colony. If it is only re- 

 cently dequeened, say a few minutes 

 to two days, a laying queen taken 

 from a nearby hive can be successful- 

 ly introduced in most any way. If the 

 queen has been long caged she is 

 often lost the same as a virgin — by 

 running from the hive. If the colony 

 has been queenless long enough to 

 have queen-cells well started, the re- 

 sults are quite variable, in fact im- 

 possible to prognosticate. Therein 

 lies the variability of the results by 

 the sundry cage systems of introduc- 

 tion. If the new queen is released 

 within about three days after the re- 

 moval of the old queen — not three 

 days after putting the cage into the 

 hive — the new queen is rarely lost. If 

 it is longer, the bees very often con- 

 tinue with their queen-cells and "sa- 

 persede" the new queen. If the cage 

 is of the type pushed into the comb, 

 giving the queen a chance to lay as 

 the young workers emerge, the 

 chance of supersedence is less. Or 

 if the introduction takes place in the 

 height of the flow — a wretched time 

 to swap queens — the bees may con- 

 tinue the cells and swarm. 



Just keep in mind the "behavior of 

 the bees' and queen introduction, as 

 well as many other operations, be- 

 come simple. 



Providence, R. I. 



fr 



^ 



DR. MILLER'S ANSWERS 



^ 



Feeding 



I have 18 colonies which have not enough 

 food to winter. As the season is very late, I 

 can hardly give thern syrup. Would you oe 

 kind enough to tell me which would be the 

 best way to give them food for winter? Do 

 you think that I should wait till I put th m 

 in the cellar and then put a cake of sugar 

 mixed with a little cream tartar on frames and 

 cover all with bags? QUEBEC. 



Answer. — It is quite probable that as far 

 north as you are, it would be too late to give 

 the bees syrup now. The method which you 

 suggest, to put candy over the combs, will be 

 right. 



To make the sugar candy, take best granu- 

 lated sugar and stir into it a little hot water, 

 in a dish on the stove. Don't let it burn, lor 

 burnt syrup is death to bees in winter. Keep 

 trying it, and when you find that a little 

 stirred in a saucer will grain, take it off quickly 

 and pour into dishes, making cakes three- 

 fourths of an inch to an inch and one-fourth 

 thick. This L-nu be used right over the brood- 

 frames in winter. In this part of the country 

 every girl knows how to make this sugar can- 

 dy, and they call it "fudge." It is not hard, 

 and the bees suck it readily. If it is prop- 

 erly made, it will be of a pale yellow color 

 and fairly soft. There is no need of using 

 tartaric acid in it. The tartaric acid is used 

 only in sugar syrup, to keen it from crystal- 

 lizing into a hard cake. 



and the ground was almost covered with dead 

 bees in a short while. I smoked them well, 

 which caused them to go into the hive, and it 

 also stopped their fighting. Did I do the right 

 thing? 



Some have said that this was the parent 

 colony; I do not believe it. What is your 

 idea about it? OKLAHOMA. 



Answer. —You certainly did what we would 

 have done in your place. The smoking bewil- 

 dered them and acted upon them just as when 

 we smoke them to keep them from fighting us. 

 We do not believe it was tne parent colony 

 that they joined, for they would certainly not 

 have fought them. It is quite likely that ^hat 

 swarm came from some other apiary, if you 

 could not find the colony from which they 

 emerged in your own yard. Very often bees 

 from away are attracted by the bees of an 

 apiary and settle there, especially when they 

 are in abnormal condition. 



Bees Fighting 



A very small swarm of bees emerged from 

 one of my colonies. Not knowing which one it 

 was, I let them go. After settling on a tree 

 they returned and settled on a hive. The bees 

 in the hive immediately began fighting them, 



Did Dr. Bonney Move His Bees? 



Some time ago I saw that the authorities 

 were going to make Dr. Bonney remove bis 

 bees, and he was going to fight it. Did the 

 cast i irer come to trial, and if so, what was the 

 outcome? PENNSYLVANIA. 



Answer. — Replying to the above: As soon 

 as I heard of the action of our town council 

 I went to the Mayor, and as I have a gun- 

 powder temper, and it was at the explosion 

 point, I said to him: "You tell the council to 



go to with its resolution." There never 



was a move made to make me move. I did 

 build an 8-foot fence 40 feet long, in front of 

 the honey house and part of the yard, as a sort 

 of sop, but was not called on to do it, and did 

 not feel obliged to. The most of this has now 



