HE BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW 



273 



fairs. It may he that the conditions nn- 

 (ler which the spores were placed in the 

 nutrient media were much more favorable 

 to their growth than are any set ol con- 

 ditions in which they could find them- 

 selves in the course of nature. Practical 

 experience, at least, seems to sustain this 

 view. Doolittle related recently how his 

 bees once happened to test the point 

 pretty thoroughly. He had a quantity of 

 honey affected with foiU lirood and de- 

 siring to prepare it for feeding to the 

 bees he placed it over the fire, and when 

 it was near the boiling point something 

 called him away, with the usual residt 

 that the honey forthwith boiled up and 

 ran over upon the floor. A combination 

 of circumstances prevented his gather- 

 ing it up until his bees undertook the 

 job, when he found it convenient to let 

 them finish it. The bees of his entire 

 apiary joined in the work, and yet with- 

 out a single colony contracting foul brood. 

 Mr. McEvo)-, inspector of apiaries for 

 Ontario, has also had large practical ex- 

 perience, and he holds that such honey 

 is safe to feed to bees if just made to boil 

 sharply. In my own experience I have 

 fed a good deal of such honey to bees 

 after boiling, making it my aim to boil it 

 fifteen minutes, without finding in a sin- 

 gle case any indication of foul brood as a 

 result. I am strengthened in my opinion 

 that such boiling renders honey safe to 

 feed bees by the results of an experiment 

 I made during the present season in feed- 

 ing foul broody honey which was never 

 boiled at all. The experiment was this: 

 I procured some combs containing some 

 honey and much brood dead of foul 

 brood. These combs I placed in a solar 

 wax-extractor where they remained un- 

 til both the wax an<l honey were pretty 

 thoroughly extracted. The temperature 

 in this extractor sometimes reaches 180° 

 l".,but I believe I never found it to go 

 higher than that, .\tter the honey was 

 ready, just at the close of the basswood 

 x;ason when no nectar was coming in 

 from the fields, I took a virgin queen with 

 two or three pints of bees and put them 



on frames with starters and gave them 

 the hone}' just mentioned, amounting to 

 one or two quarts. The bees took the 

 honey readily, and built comb amounting 

 to more than a square foot, in all, storing 

 therein a considerable portion of the hon- 

 ey. In due time brood appeared and I 

 looked carefully for signs of foul brood, 

 expecting, naturally, to find them, but as 

 yet I have not done so; at least, I have 

 not according to the accepted canon on 

 that point. There has been, indeed, 

 some dead brood; but none of it has been 

 found viscid, and the bees have removed 

 it all without difficulty. There thus ap- 

 pears, so far, a considerable interval be- 

 tween practical results and the scientist's 

 results. It remains for future investiga- 

 tions to explain and harmonize these ap- 

 parent differences. 



.\T WHAT .\GE MAY OUEENS M.\TE ? 



A questioner (American Bee Journal, 

 470) is troubled because his queens take 

 so much more time to mate than is al- 

 lowed by the authorites. In reply Dr. 

 Miller quotes Huber as placing the limits 

 of possible fertilization at 21 days from 

 the time the queen emerged from the 

 cell. At one time I gave a virgin queen, 

 which I had preserved in a large cage for 

 about four weeks, the time not varying 

 more than a day or two either wa}' from 

 that, to a queenless colon\-, and she, 

 nevertheless, was fertilized and began lay- 

 ing very soon. During the present sea- 

 son an unusual case came under my ob- 

 servation. A colony which cast a prime 

 swarm toward the last of June afterwards 

 cast two or three after-swarms, the last 

 one issuing on the 2nd of July. All of 

 the swarms w;re returned, minus their 

 queens. On the 21st of August the 

 first eggs were discovered, the oldest of 

 which were just beginning to hatch, so 

 that the queen could not have begun to 

 lay before the i6th of .\ugust — forty-five 

 days after the time when she probably 

 emerged from her cell. This would per- 

 haps not appear so strange had there been 

 an entire dearth of honey during the 



