ILLINOIS STATE BEE-KEEPERS' ASSOCIATION 



101 



neigrhborhood of $1,000 worth, of sugar. 

 It was fed in July and August and in 

 equal parts without tartaric acid; and 

 while it was a cold winter and late 

 spring I got hundreds of pounds of 

 nice honey and not a bit of crystalliza- 

 tion. 



Mr. Hershisher: I would like to ask 

 Mr. Holterman if he thinks it advisable 

 to add any honey to the mixture? 



Mr. Holterman: No. sir, I do not. 

 Now, I knew Mr. Pettit, my father-in- 

 law, who I always considered a careful 

 observer in bee-keeping, and I wrote 

 to him about this tartaric acid and'he 

 told me he had used it, but he had 

 given it up, finding it was unnecessary, 

 but said he mixed 25 per cent of honey 

 in with the sugar. 



I take this stand upon feeding back 

 honey, that there is not one of you 

 who knows that there are not germs 

 of foul brood in that honey. We may 

 not know of any foul brood in our api- 

 ary. We may not have a cell of dis- 

 eased brood in tlie brood chamber, al- 

 though that would be exceptional, and 

 still have foul brood in our supers, be- 

 cause the stock might rob it and put 

 it in the super and not feed it to the 

 larvae. So we do not know, any of 

 us, but what there may be foul brood 

 in that honey; and I have known of 

 some splendid bee-keepers who have 

 diseased almost their entire apiary at 

 one feeding by feeding back this 

 honey. 



Mr. Hershisher: I would like to ask 

 how you avoid that liability to foul 

 brood with your extracting combs? 

 Does the colony get the same combs 

 back that you extract from? 



Mr. Holterman: That is an old 

 chestnut I am met with on all these 

 occasions. When you are extracting 

 from one hundred stock of bees you 

 make it liable that there is some honey 

 from every one of those stocks in the 

 honey you are feeding back, because it 

 is going through the extractor and 

 running down the sides, and therefore 

 you can't guarantee any process of tak- 

 ing in and putting out that you are 

 not -going to have some honey of every 

 one of the one hundred there, and if 

 you have one diseased stock you run 

 the chance of diseasing every other 

 one. When I am extracting and have 

 combs out of four or five hives going 

 into one, that is bad enough, but I am 

 compelled to do that; but because I am 

 mixing- the combs of four or five stocks 



up in that way, that is a very different 

 thing from feedingjlback honey. 



(5). What fee is= right to charge per 

 colony for transferring bees from box 

 hives to modern ones making two 

 drives, twenty-one days apart? 



Depends altogether on circumstances, 

 the main circumstance being the value 

 of the time of the operator. In some 

 cases a man might afford to pay an ex- 

 pert a dollar an hour for his work, and 

 he might charge a bungler a dollar an 

 hour for the privilege of doing it. Pos- 

 sibly it might not be far out of the way 

 to say that the operator should be paid 

 the same as a skillful mechanic for the 

 same length of time. 



(6). Can bees be confined in the 

 What are you going to do? 

 that day, and it may be wash day. 



If that means all wash days through- 

 out the year, it is neither desirable nor 

 practicable. If it means at the time of 

 bringing bees out of the cellar, or the 

 time of the first cleansing flight, then it 

 should be answered that in some way it 

 should be managed that the two things 

 should not occur on the same day. It 

 is easier to change the day of the wash- 

 ing than to change the day of the 

 (J. H. Johnson, Bangor, Pa.) 

 hives wash days, and is it desirable? 

 cleansing flight, but in the case of a 

 near neighbor it is better the bee-keep- 

 er should pay for the washing than to 

 have any trouble. 



C. C. MILLER. 



Mr. Prance: I want to say it is not 

 because bees on wash days make so 

 much of a disturbance, but I have been 

 called on in my position by members in 

 over ten states this year to settle dis- 

 turbances between neighbors annd bee- 

 keepers about bees spotting clothes. 

 Some of you laugh about this, but it 

 is no fake or joke. 



Mr. Pressler: After the clothes were 

 spotted the first time in this case, the 

 bee-keeper went over and said: "What 

 do you have to pay for getting your 

 clothes washed?" And the answer 

 was, "A dollar." "Well, here is your 

 dollar." The neigbbor refused to take 

 the dollar. The bee-keeper came to me 

 and wanted to know what to do. 



Mr. Holterman: I have bees in dif- 

 ferent sections. Sometimes a day will 

 come where it is a nice day to set them 

 out and it is worth perhaps a good 

 many dollars to set your bees out on 



The President: Set them out. 



Mr. Holterman: I go over to the 



