THE BEE-KEEPERS REVIEW 



215 



sold at a correspondingly lower price. 



If 1 can't make a success of the Review 

 on these grounds, 1 shall simply drop it. 

 and turn my whole attention to honey 

 production. However, as its subscription 



list steadily increases as the years roll by, 

 1 am led to believe that bee-keeping is 

 gradually passing into the hands of spe- 

 cialists, and that they are learning to ap- 

 preciate the Review. 



COMBS NOT IN U5L. 



The Dangers that Menace Them and What 



Should Be Done for Their 



Protection. 



There are three things that are a men- 

 ace to empty combs, away from the bees. 

 They are mice, mould and moth's, or, to be 

 more exact, the bee moth's larvae. 



Mice seldom trouble them except in the 

 winter, and the only remedy, or positive 

 preventive of trouble, in this direction, is 

 to shut the combs up tight in hives. It is 

 possible that some men have mice-proof 

 honey houses, but they are very scarce. 

 Of course, mice may be trapped or poi- 

 soned, but the safest, surest way is to shut 

 up the combs so that the m.ice can not 

 gain access to them. 



Mould will not trouble combs if they 

 are kept dry. Moisture causes the pollen 

 in them to mould, and, sometimes, even 

 the surface of old combs will mould to a 

 certain extent if the combs are exposed to 

 dampness a long time. I had something 

 of a lesson in that direction last winter. 

 Perhaps 100 sets of combs were stored 

 in the woodshed here at home. The fami- 

 ly washing is done in this room, and there 

 was enough dampness from the steam to 

 cause many of the combs to become 

 mouldy to an unprofitable extent. Then 

 one of our honey houses in the North is 

 built over the cellar in which the bees are 

 kept in the winter. There is a hatchway 

 up through the floor from the cellar, and 

 the dampness from the bees came up 

 through this opening, but no outlet had 



been provided, aside from the cracks in 

 the walls and roof. Sometimes the frost 

 was an inch thick on the roof and walls. 

 Nearly all of the surplus combs for the 

 apiary were stored in hives in this building, 

 yet the dampness affected them and 

 caused a large share of them to mould. 

 Another fall we will build a ventilator to 

 carry the moisture off up through the roof. 



More difficult, however, than all, to 

 guard against, are the ravages of the bee 

 moth's larvae. If the combs are sub- 

 jected to a low temperature during the 

 winter, there is little danger of loss from 

 this source. Combs from colonies that 

 have died in the spring usually contain 

 eggs that will hatch and give trouble. 

 One remedy is to fumigate either with 

 sulphur or with bi-sulphide of carbon, but 

 it is usually possible to so manage as to 

 avoid this. Mr. R. F. Holtern.ann, in an 

 article in Gleanings, gives the particulars 

 for this management, which are as fol- 

 lows: — 



Every summer valuable combs — yes, 

 even frames — or hives are destroyed by 

 the larvae of the wax-moth. I do not 

 look upon the wax-moth as entirely an 

 enemy to bee-keeping, as there' is no 

 doubt that they render harmless many a 

 bee-tree, hive, or other repository in 

 which the bees have built combs and in 

 which the disease foul brood lingers. 



When the farmer wishes to destroy a 

 weed he studies its life-history and strikes 

 at the vulnerable points. In the butterfly 

 we have an insect which loves light and 

 air — it is of the day. In the moth we 

 have illustrated to us a creature in many 

 respects the opposite of the butterfly. It 

 loves darkness, quiet, it does not like a 

 free circulation of air. In colder or more 

 northerly districts the eggs, larvae, and 



