THE BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW. 



8S» 



oee telegraph will be left to waste its sweet- 

 uess ou tlie desert air. 



The last number of the Canadian is most- 

 ly taken up with the Ontario Bee- Keepers' 

 Convention ; but has in addition articles on 

 Sweet clover, Bleaching Wax, and the death 

 of Mrs. Lyman C. Root. About sweet clover 

 friend Dibbern says ( page 749. ) 



* Farmers seem to be prejudiced aRainst the 

 plant, and we should trj' and teach them that 

 they are wrong." 



Perhaps. But then our success in the 

 teaching may not be very great ; and possi- 

 bly the labor of love may not altogether 

 conduce to our own peace of mind— too 

 much like trying to teach Orangeman that 

 the pope is a good fellow. 



It seems from E. B. Weed's article on 

 page 74S that strips of wax for bleaching 

 are made by running the melted material 

 through a row of small holes upon a cold re- 

 volving roller of wet felt. 



The Convention almost got stalled on the 

 question whether pails for extracted honey 

 should be returned or sold with the honey. 

 I find quite a difference between country 

 custom and city custom in that regard. My 

 country customers return pails so faithfully 

 that scarcely anything better can be asked. 



The essayist on .-he overstocking question, 

 C. W. Post, ( as per page 758 ) reports a 

 very practical experiment. Two colonies as 

 nearly similar as possible, one in a large 

 apiary and one in a small apiary not many 

 miles away, are weighed each day. That is, 

 fields being practically the same, how much 

 more honey will be gathered where the bees 

 are much less numerous ? The result for 

 several years has been that surprisingly little 

 difference appeared in the amounts gathered. 

 ( )ne year .^2.5 colonies were run in a single 

 apiary, and the three best days of the 

 season scored 80 pounds. Seven miles away 

 were 70 colonies, and their score was 81 

 pounds for the same days. Evidently in a 

 grand rush of honey it is hard to get over- 

 stocked — and in famine even 40 colonies 

 overstock the fi'='ld. Who knows but the 

 frequent removal of the nectar has the same 

 effect on a flower as milking on a cow — 

 tendency to go dry if not milked ? And we 

 must by no means forget the danger and 

 damage of overstocking in the brood rear- 

 ing season. 



The General Round-Up. 



In the last volume of the American Bee- 

 -Journal, page 648, friend Eugene Secor 



treats the plan of liiving i)rime swarms in a 

 shallow chamber for immediate section 

 building. A queen excluder is to be put 

 above of course. He finds that swarms de- 

 sert worse when hived that way, but does 

 not regard the objection as insuperable. 

 Much worse is their tendency to build queen 

 cells immediately, and swarm ten days 

 later — a trick he finds it very hard to pre- 

 vent. Still worse, and all the more so be- 

 cause it seems impossible to prevent it, is 

 thefact that sections crowded close down on 

 a shallow brood chamber are pretty sure to 

 gst more or less pollen stored in them. 



In Switzerland some of the public schools 

 give lessons in handling bees, with actual 

 hives for models. No wonder then that the 

 Swiss census reports a hive of btes to each 

 1;") inhabitants in the nation. There, at 

 least, the specialist idea has rather to take a 

 back seat, and give place to the idea of im- 

 proving the larder and fortune and mind of 

 everybody. A. S. Rosenroll in A. B. .J. (i48. 



Mc Arthur's bees which he is making at 

 Toronto island are from a Carniolan queen 

 crossed with select Italian drones. They 

 are pretty, and surprisingly gentle. If he 

 resists the temptation to " pretty " them 

 and " gentle " them until the get-up-and-git 

 is mostly bred out of them it will be the 

 most surprising thing of all. He also works 

 at stocking the island, once barren, with 

 honey plants. I am pleased to see that his 

 judgement of the goldenrod is the same as 

 mine. The very numerous species of gold- 

 enrod can be roughly divided into two divis- 

 ions, those with plume-shaped heads, and 

 those with heads more or less flat-topped. 

 The latter kind draw bees best at Toronto 

 island, as is the case with me. See A. B. .J. 

 !)r)8, for a very interesting article about the 

 whole matter. 



Scent the cage with which you wish to 

 introduce a queen, by keeping the old queen 

 in it for a little while. Cannot do any harm 

 and is supposed to a heap of good, by friend 

 Bartz. A. B. J., 0(5,5. 



To find queen« in the shallow, Heddon, 

 sections, set each section separately on a 

 wide board. Blow a plenty of smoke in at 

 the top. Then quickly lift the sections off, 

 and the queen will be found on the board 

 under the section she happened to be in. 

 Adrian Getaz. A. B. J., 7.58. I should con- 

 sider this tip top, except that now and tiien 

 a queen, perhaps one in ten, may be so bold 

 as to refuse to leave combs. 



