106 DR. miller's 



swing out of true at the bottom of the frame, so that it some- 

 times happened that at the bottom, the end-bars or bottom-bars 

 were glued together, a very unpleasant annoyance. 



Freezing of Bees. — Q. Do bees often freeze to death with 

 plenty of stores? 



A. No; unless the colony is too weak or a small cluster of bees 

 gets caught in a cold spell away from the main cluster. 



Fruit, Bees Injuring. — Q. Do bees injure sound fruit? 



A. No, they do not and cannot, since the mandibles of the 

 honeybee are rounding, and cannot pierce the skins of sound fruit. 

 Tests of this were made at the Ottawa Experiment Station in On- 

 tario, Canada. First, strawberries were tried, then raspberries, 

 neitlier of which were injured. 



The fruit was placed inside the hives, also in other places easy 

 of access to the bees. Inside the hive the fruit was exposed in 

 three different positions. 



(1) Whole fruit without any treatment. 



(2) "Whole fruit that had been dipped in honey, in one half 

 the super. 



(3) Punctured specimens in the other half the super. 



A second test of the same kind was made with peaches, pears, 

 plums and grapes. 



"The bees began to work at once both upon the dipped and 

 punctured fruit. The former was cleaned thoroughly of honey 

 during the first night; upon the punctured fruit the bees clustered 

 thickly, sucking the juice through the punctures as long as they 

 could obtain any liquid. At the end of six days, all the fruit was 

 carefully examined. The sound fruit was still uninjured in any 

 way. The dipped fruit was in like condition, quite sound, but 

 every vestige of honey had disappeared. The punctured fruit was 

 badly mutilated and worthless; beneath each puncture was a 

 cavity, and in many instances decay had set in. The experiment 

 was continued during the following week, the undipped fruit 

 being left in the brood-chamber; the dipped fruit was given a new 

 coating of honey and replaced in the super, and a fresh supply of 

 punctured fruit was substituted for that which had been de- 

 stroyed. 



",\fter the third week the bees that belonged to the two hives, 

 which had been deprived of all their honey, appeared to be very 

 sluggish, and there were many dead bees about the hives; the 



