THE BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW. 



159 



Involuntary Wax Secretion. 



E. France says, in Gl('a)ii)igs, that bees se- 

 crete wax whenever they have more honey 

 than they have combs in which to store it 

 away. At such times they have to hold their 

 honey in their sacs — they have no other 

 place to put it. The wax is secreted as a 

 consequence of holding the honey in their 

 sacs. This is the whole sum and substance 

 of wax secretion. Mr. Doolittle, in a later 

 issue of (HeanLnfis, says: — 



"Exactly. That is as I have always ar- 

 gued. Now, if Bro. F. will closely watch a 

 single-comb observatory hive, he will see 

 that the old bees, on returning from the field, 

 give their loads of honey to the young bees, 

 and that these young bees hold these loads 

 of honey till they are sulhciently evaporated 

 to be deposited in the eelis: hence it comes 

 about that it is the youny bees, very largely, 

 which secrete wax, and that wax must be se- 

 creted to a greater or lesser extent, from the 

 standpoint of Bro. F. and myself, whenever 

 there is a flow of honey of any great amount. 

 Prof. Cook might as well haul down his flag 

 when such 'weighty' men (avoirdupois) get 

 after him." 



Spacing Loose Frames. 



In order to prevent, by accurate spacing, 

 the building of brace combs, it has been 

 thought necessary to use fixed frames, or use 

 some device for spacing the loose frames. 

 Mr. B. Taylor, of Forestville. Minn., recent- 

 ly sent me a model of the rabbet to a hive 

 having little "gains" cut upon the upright 

 side of the rab jet. Each "gain" is exactly 

 the width of the space to be left between 

 frames, and the space between any two 

 "gains" is exactly equal to the width of a 

 top-bar. With such an arrangement there 

 is little diflBculty in spacing the frames ac- 

 curately. Mr. E. H. Whitaker tells, in 

 Gleanings, how he manages this business; it 

 is as follows: — 



"Some five years ago 1 conceived the idea 

 of spacing by pencil-marks across the edge 

 of the hive, just above the frame-rabbet, 

 said pencil-marks to coincide with the cen- 

 ters of the frames. I still use this method, 

 and can space the frames quickly and accu- 

 rately thereby." 



of an apple tree in front of each hive. Com- 

 menting upon this, Mr. Jones, in the C. B. J., 



says: — 



"We have frequently had queens running 

 up sticks and little bushes set in front of 

 hives in that way; and if the swarm is issuing 

 sometimes they stayed on the stick, but if 

 the swarm got fairly into the air, and there 

 were few or no bees Hying around, they 

 would run up the stick and try to fly off and 

 then flutter to the ground again. If the 

 bush stuck down is sufiiciently high, with 

 plenty of twigs on it, some of the bees will 

 climb it with the queen, and others if they 

 wish to rest after flying, will light on it, so 

 that the queen will soon have an escort, and 

 in that way will remain on the bush. We do 

 not like the short stick principle, but the 

 bushes may be from 3 to G feet high, and 

 will stand from 3 to F> feet in front of the 

 hive. A narrow strip of thin board running 

 from each corner of the hive to the butt of 

 the tree is an improvement, as it guides the 

 queen directly to the bush where she 

 climbs." 



Catching Swarms on Sticks. 



Awhile ago the Revikw gave a plan of 

 catching swarms by having the queens clip- 

 ped and then driving a short stake or branch 



When Queen Excluders are Necessary in 

 Raising t'omb Honey. 



The following is from Gieaninxjs of .June 

 1:— 



"On page 380, May 1, you state that queen- 

 excluding honey-boards are entirely unnec- 

 essary in the production of comb honey. I 

 have just gone over r>0 hives from which I 

 left the queen-excluding zinc. On the .W 

 stands I secured 3 good sections. All of the 

 others had more or less brood. I cut out the 

 brood, returned the supers, and the bees 

 have since cleared out all of the remaining 

 honey in the sections; so I lost my first crop 

 of honey through not using queen-excluders. 

 My supers were of the T pattern, tilled with 

 2-lb. V-groove sections, with }i to ^A inch 

 space between frames (8), and the bottom of 

 the sections. E. H. Sohaeffle. 



Murphy's, Cal., May 11. 



[Your experience is peculiar and phenom- 

 enal — especially so when those extensive 

 bee-keepers, Hetherington, Elwood, Dr. 

 Miller, and, I believe, J. F. Mclntyre and L. 

 E. Mercer, of your own State, produce good 

 clean comb honey without queen-excluders. 

 Two-pound sections would be a little more 

 inviting for the queen to enter than the one- 

 pound. Either you contract your eight 

 frames down to three or four, or else you 

 have queens more prolific than we usually 

 have. There is some screw loose somewhere. 

 Will some of our large comb-honey-pioduc- 

 ers who do not use queen-excluders please 

 tell where it is?l E. R." 



With established colonies in eight-frame 

 Langstroth hives, I have had no trouble from 

 the queen entering the sections. I have 

 never used a queen-excluder under such con- 

 ditions and see no use for it. But when a 



