THE BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW. 



96 



order to secure belief." Aud on page 214, 

 he accuses "the wise men who wrote the 

 American bee books, the serene philosophers 

 who wrote the British bee books, the pro- 

 found thinkers who wrote the German and 

 French bee books, .... of having 

 jumped to conclusions without reasonably 

 reliable experiments." 



Let us open the books of thf se writers, 

 so much condemned by Mr. Hasty, in order 

 to see whether they agree as to 20 lbs. of 

 honey to produce one lb. of wax. 



Huber, who was the lirst to experiment, 

 found from V.i to 17 ounces of sugar, accord- 

 ing to qualit;-, to produce one ounce of wax. 

 He says that honey produces less wax. 

 Donhoff and Berlepsch, in Germany, 

 found from 10 to 13 ounces of honey when 

 bees had pollen, and from 15 to 19 when they 

 were deprived of it. 



Langstroth wrote from 13 to 20 oz, Quinby 

 says : " I am satisfied, from actual experi- 

 ence, that every time the bees are obliged to 

 renew their brood comb, they would make 

 from ten to twenty-five pounds of honey in 

 boxes." 

 Cowan says, thirteen to twenty. 

 Prof. Cook says that, according to his ex- 

 periments, bees consume 20 lbs. 



Dumas and Milne Edwards, in France, 

 found 11) lbs. of sugar and 25 of honey ; but 

 as their experiments were made in winter 

 they are unreliable. 



Collins, in France also, found two or three 

 lbs. of honey for one of wax, but I have 

 demonstrated, in the French bee-journals, 

 that his experiments were of no value. 



In my Petit coiiHs d'apiculture, published 

 in France in 1874, I wrote that although it is 

 conceded that a pound of wax does not cost 

 the bees less than 10 lbs. of honey, it is about 

 certain that it does not cost very much more 

 than G lbs. The experiments of Messrs. 

 Viallon, Simmins and De Layens prove that 

 I was not far from the truth. 



These so diversified quantities do not prove 

 any agreement between the writers to sub- 

 stitute the ratio of 20 lbs : they do not prove 

 any more than that these experiments gave 

 a higher ratio than 20 lbs., but they show 

 that Mr. Hasty had relied more on his 

 imagination than on the facts, when he ac- 

 cused, not of error, but of falsehood, the 

 experimenters, the writers, and the manu- 

 facturers of comb foundation, 



I would have let all this matter rest, but 

 for some affirmations of Mr. Hasty, which I 



desire to review. He writes : " A swarm 

 is pleased to have their new home without 

 brood, pleased to begin comb-building with 

 all their might in an empty domicile, and 

 would be disjjleased to have things other- 

 ?«isf." 



According to my experience, if you hive a 

 primary swarm on comb foundation, bees 

 are so much displeased that, within an hour, 

 you will find honey and eggs in some already 

 lengthened cells. 



If the queen of the swarm is young and 

 not yet fecundated, the bees will follow her 

 when she flies out to mate, unless you 

 take the trouble of giving them a comb con- 

 taining unsealed brood. Is not that a proof 

 that they are far from being displeased 

 with the brood, as Mr. Hasty presupposes ? 

 No doubt, he saw some swarms leaving or 

 refusing to take possession of a hive in 

 which he had inserted a comb of brood, and 

 he came to the conclusion that a swarm dis- 

 liked to find comb in its domicile. I 

 have seen such occurrences, but I studied 

 the matter and discovered the cause of such 

 conduct. (See our Langstroth revised, page 

 216. ) When you take from a hive a comb of 

 brood, this comb always contains some cells 

 filled with honey, which, in time of scarcity, 

 attracts the robbers, and these, not the 

 brood, are unpleasant to bees. Hence the 

 precept that we give in our book, to give the 

 comb in the evening of the day when 

 the swarm was hived, not before. 



Mr. Hasty is a very agreeable writer, but 

 I think that, his character being too much in 

 conformity with his name, he does not take 

 the time to study his subject, and is a little 

 too hasty in drawing his conclusions. 

 Hamilton, 111. March 5, 1891. 



Queens may be Looked After if the Opera- 

 tor is Very Careful. 



JACOB T. TIMPE. 



tr FTER telling your readers so plainly 

 a ) how to introduce queens, and cover- 

 ing the ground so thoroughly, leaving 

 hardly any chance to "pick a crow," (by 

 your "but's" and "it's") you now wish us 

 to tell you what you have left out, or where 

 you were wrong. I shall differ with you 

 only in one part and it may be that the con- 

 dition of my colonies account for it but I think 

 I have introduced queens under all sorts of 

 conditions and have yet to find one cause of 

 complaint, 



