I'HJiJ BEE-KEEPERS- REVIEW, 



369 



ter of the brood nest, beiug filled with em- 

 pty combs. Each nucleus is furuished with 

 a queen cell, a plenty of which can be found 

 in the overhauling of tiie colonies. These 

 empty combs that are placed in the center 

 of the brood nest are usually tilled with hou- 

 ey, but as soon as the flow begins to slack, 

 this honey will be removed and used in fin- 

 ishing up what sections may be on the 

 hives. It is astonishing how a colony so 

 treated will go on finishing up its sections 

 after the flow from basswood is over. 



With this management there is but very 

 little swarming, and, as the queens are kept 

 clipped, the swarm always returns, and 

 usually the queen gets back into her own 

 home. If she does not, the fact is shown at 

 the next examination. If he csn get around 

 and examine each hive as often as once in 

 a week or ten days there is practically no 

 swarming. Upon reaching an apiary, if 

 there is not time enough to go over the 

 whole number of colonies, the strongest 

 ones are selected for that purpose. Com- 

 paring one location with another and one 

 year with another, my friend Koeppen 

 thinks it is more profitable to keep not many 

 more than fifty colonies in one location. 

 None of his apiaries are nearer each other 

 than three miles ; and his principal honey 

 resources are white and alsike clovers and 

 basswood. One of his apiaries, however, is 

 near a river bottom, and, last fall, in this 

 apiary, there was an average of twenty-five 

 pounds per colony of fall comb honey 

 stored, while nothing was done in the other 

 yards. 



All of the foregoing is given from mem- 

 ory, and if I have missed any of the details, 

 or got anything a little twisted, my friend 

 will please correct me. 



A Condensed View of Current 



Bee Writings. 



W 



E. E. HASTY. 



•"E cannot always be starting big apicul- 

 tural game, and lug in a moose that 

 man never looked on before ; but we can 

 most any time get a bag of rabbits and 

 things, if we beat about hard enough. The 

 apicultural rabbits are the small things of 

 our vocation which may make all the differ- 

 ence between failure and success. Mr. 

 Doolittle, in Gleanings G78, goes for the 

 rabbit of paper trays to catch the leakage 



inside the honey cases. Get the right kind 

 of paper. Some paper will let honey go 

 right through, and some will hold it for a 

 year if you wish. Then the paper has got 

 to be cut ; and cutting paper in quantity 

 without paper-cutting machinery, is an 

 atrociously difficult and vexatious job — ex- 

 cept to a printer ; and he'll slice it oft" just as 

 easy with any old thing of a knife. Mr. D. 

 advises a saw. Don't laugh ; he doesn't use 

 the business edge, but the back. Get a long 

 saw with a straight back. Press it solidly 

 {flatwise, not by not by standing it straight 

 up and sitting on the teeth ) and learn the 

 trick of folding over and tearing smoothly 

 six sheets at a time. After you get your tray 

 made beautifully nice and tight, then per- 

 chance you will jam it to ruin by 

 slipping in the sections. To prevent this a 

 a slip of very thin tin is put down over the 

 edge of the paper, and pulled out after the 

 last section is in. Seems to me I should 

 prefer to have the " sleepers " on which the 

 sections rest so thick that the tray would not 

 not need to come up so far as to get mashed. 

 Prospective buyers will pull the sections up, 

 and ram them back again you know. O 

 yes, the tray must be made on a modeling 

 board, exactly true and properly sized. And 

 then putting it into its place is a fine art — 

 to learn which see the original article. 



The Southland Queen. 



The Queen needs little of characteriza- 

 tion this time, except to say that it is really 

 advancing and improving. At one time it 

 seemed as if it were a hard scrabble to keep 

 Northland writers from getting to big a 

 share of its space ; but later with two more 

 Southland men of world-wide reputation on 

 its string, it seems to be all right on that 

 score. Recently it has been giving the por- 

 traits of bee-editors. And if at last the 

 dove of peace should fly toward Beeville — 

 and Chicago — so gently that one more bee 

 editors's face would not look out of place in 

 the Queen — why then the situation would be 

 satisfactory to most of us I think. 



Where ants are distructive it often hap- 

 pens that the apiary can be located on 

 ground which can be flooded occasionally, 

 and their) nests drowned out. W. C, Gath 

 right, page 91. This is the more practical 

 as many such localities depend on irrigation 

 to raise crops. 



In hives with Hoffman frames, and others 

 of that ilk, wedge up your space-occupying 



