Various

“ It is generally the man with a guilty conscience that fears to have his misdeeds ventilated.
A correspondent has written me to know what he should do with his surplus honey. The way I do when there is any surplus honey in our house, after we have brought home a jar of honey, and it is not all consumed at the first meal, is to put it aside until the next meal, when the surplus will surely disappear.
Never kick a hive of bees when you are down; wait until you are up and can run away. ”

“ If not, you had better see about it, as no bee-keeper in the world can reap a full harvest, and be behind with his supers, hives, frames, etc. It is always best to be ready, whether the harvest comes or not. But should it come, and find the tub bottom up, but little is caught.
It is not best to ask too many questions when you start out in apiculture. Remember that one idea learned yourself, is worth more than if two were told you.
Remember that you may read agricultural papers for years, and without any practice you are no farmer. It is the same with bees. ”

“ Although a number of queen-breeders of this country have been fairly successful in shipping queens to foreign lands through the mails, still, a few of these breeders, as well as many others who have not been favored with a foreign order, have been pretty unlucky in sending queens across the continent of America at certain times of the year. One would think that if a man who has been successful in shipping bees, say to Australia, would also send them every time to any part of the Pacific Coast without losing a single bee. ”

“ Where the bees of a neighborhood are two-thirds black, and you want to produce comb honey mostly, would it be best to breed from your best black queens, rather than to try to Italianize?
7. Don’t you think (of course the big queen-breeders don’t read this department) that if the black bees had been bred as scientifically, and as much care and study given them as has been bestowed on the Italians, in the last 20 or 30 years, they would have been to-day as good, if not better than the Italian? ”

“ Having this in view, last spring I invented a frame that will always hang perpendicularly, regardless of the position of the hive; will never warp or sag, and cannot be eaten by the moth-worms. The queen cannot hide on it anywhere. It will last a lifetime, and then will be just as good as new. It can be used with or without comb foundation, the same as any other frame. I tested nine of these frames the past summer, and got nice, straight combs, with the center of the comb on the center of the frame all the way around. I have extracted 71⁄4 pounds of honey from one frame. ”

“ As a last resort I turned the smoker in my ear full blast, and the bee came out, or I believe I would not be here to tell the story.
No person has any idea of the great terror it brings over one, without a trial. ”

“ There is nothing so successful for feeding bees for a journey across the United States as soft candy. The softer it is the better; the only trouble is that we cannot use it as soft as we would like to. This is owing to the fact that when too soft it is apt to run in the cage, and not only daub the bees, but also the mails, should any of it get outside the cage, as it will likely do if the bees do not eat it as fast as it shifts about. Then, when it is soft, there may be trouble by the bees that may happen to die during the trip, getting stuck in the soft candy, so-called. ”

“ Still, many that asked in good faith must be answered, as I have been at bee-conventions and met many bee-keepers, and always found them the cream of society, and as every bee-keeper in the land ought to have my method, no matter whether his bees have foul brood or not, for what Mr. McEvoy and some others caution bee-keepers against, I just recommend, and vice versa. ”

“ My best colony gave me 150 pounds of extracted honey, and my average of comb and extracted was about 20 pounds per colony, spring count. The increase was about 25 per cent.
I have some of the extra-light colored bees, and I like them. My queens are prolific, their colonies are just as populous as any of my dark ones—they are rustlers to work. If honey is left exposed, they will find it first, and get the lion’s share, too. I think they are just a little inclined to steal from the blacks. They are very easy to handle, stick right to the combs, and protect them from robbers. ”

“ Between you and me, I don’t think there has been such an immense amount of science squandered on the breeding of Italian bees. They are what they are, because of the surroundings in their native habitat. While some have taken great pains in breeding, I think a large number to-day would say that an Italian queen imported from Italy 30 years ago was just as good as the average queen in America to-day, and every year many queens are imported from Italy and sold at a high price, which would hardly be, if there was no advantage in it. ”

“ At the farther side, next the wall of the hive, the bees are not so likely to commence building, even if the space is an inch or more.
I doubt if any one would advise you to contract all summer. I think contractionists would tell you to hive a swarm on five frames, then after those five are well occupied, and the bees working well in the supers, to add the other frames. Some of them might perhaps tell you to take out part of the frames from an old colony, but I rather think that now-a-days contraction is mostly confined to swarms. ”

“ So we are glad to have this opportunity to also present to our readers another leading bee-keeper—one who has done so much for advanced apiculture in the State where he lives, and who takes such a deep interest in the prosperity of all. ”

“ For when the air is lighter, or the same as the particles of disease or odor, it simply moves or floats around, and woe be to the hive or colony that chances to be in its way!
Now here, in regard to that disease, I will give some food for thought. Why do not such colonies of bees, that rob foul-broody colonies, always become affected with the disease? I imagine I hear a long list of persons who answers “They do;” ”

“ Yes, put an empty frame into the middle of a brood-nest at a time when there was any likelihood of swarming, and I should expect a good share of the comb built to be drone, especially if there was no drone-comb in the other frames.
3. Bees having a young queen are not so likely to swarm as those having an old one, and rearing a queen in a hive in the fall would not interfere with the harvest as would rearing one before the harvest. ”

“ White, your argument that the blacks are superior to Italians because one can rear black bees from Italians under unnatural and unfavorable conditions, is about like the argument of the large queen-breeder that I before mentioned, who claimed that when he tried to rear queens from the eggs or larvæ just hatched, many of the larvæ sealed up were not larger than kernels of wheat. ”

“ When I tell you I take delight in robbing ordinary yellow jackets’ nests with my naked hands in the hayfield, with a crowd of men looking on at a safe distance, you will know I am not very timid around bees, either. ”

“ Becker, of Pleasant Plains, had 53 colonies in the spring, and increased to 62. He took about 700 pounds of honey. The bees are in good condition for winter. He grows small fruit in connection with bee-keeping. For extracting he uses three sets of full frames—supers full of comb to each hive. Induces the bees to go into the supers by placing partly-filled sections in the middle of the supers. He raises the hives from the bottom-board during the swarming season, and thinks it prevents swarming, and induces the bees to work in the supers. ”

“ I got a queen from Texas when the ice was an inch thick here; there was not a 58 dead bee in the cage, and I introduced her safely while the thermometer ranged from 20 to 25 degrees above zero.
I have Italianized nearly all my bees, and won’t I just enjoy manipulating those yellow beauties next spring? If any of the bee-keeping friends will do us the favor to call at Crystal Spring Farm Apiary, they will be most cordially welcomed. ”

“ The Stinger is not very well disposed toward those people who have the running of the Agricultural Experiment Stations in the United States. He believes that these Stations are, in the majority of cases, managed by persons who are not in all cases fitted for the places they are assigned to. There is a good deal of humbuggery about these matters; it is too often that they are used to give some political fellow a berth where he can draw down a good salary. ”

“ A bee-tree was cut in the early summer, the bees were put into a hive, but the queen was killed. The dead queen was suspended in the hive against the cover. The bees filled the hive one-third full of comb and honey.—M. Mahin.
1. Some irritable bees will swarm out, but they usually return and assume the same attitude of other queenless bees. 2. Yes, they store honey, but probably with not as much vim as with a laying queen, but usually they store more honey, as none is used in brood-rearing. ”

“ Should the air be heavy, or such that when smoke comes from a chimney it shoots upwards quickly, the disease does not spread as fast as when the air is light so that the smoke from a chimney comes to the ground and moves along the ground slowly, the air carrying the deadly odor from hive to hive. ”

“ Catclaw is very thick in places, so thick that cattlemen sometimes have to pay Mexicans a big price to go into the catclaw brush and “round out” their cattle. “Waheeah” is another sticky brush that is very plentiful, and a good honey-producer. “Wesach” is about the earliest bloom we have—now ready to bloom—and fine for bees. Then we have black and white chapparal, both good for bees. Mesquite is here in abundance, and also yields honey, and there are a great many other plants that yield honey that I know no name for. ”

“ The winter has been very mild so far, and bees are in fine condition. We expect a fine spring crop of honey, as we have had some nice rains of late. We have had hardly any ice yet, and the bees fly freely almost every day. ”

“ Now, it is a very easy matter for us bee-keepers to school ourselves, also easy to school the dealers, but schooling the public is a different thing altogether, and I yet believe that the simple figure plan is the best, such as No. 1, No. 2, No. 3, No. 4, etc. For to get the consumers to know what grade of honey they are buying, the grade should be on each section, the producer saying something like this: If you wish honey like this, buy my No. 1 or No. 2, as the case may be. John Smith, producer, Chicago, Ills. ”

“ The fourth season they cast swarms again, but here was another drawback: the fall was an extra open one, and they piled in so much pollen that they nearly ruined one-half the combs, and then having so much pollen they got the diarrhea before spring, and dwindled badly. But I demonstrated one fact, which I believe to be a fact, that one can rear long-lived queens large and prolific; also that their workers are longer lived than ordinary, else how could all those extra-large colonies that I have mentioned, both blacks and Italians, keep up their extra-large number of workers the entire year? ”

“ Ought I to contract all summer, where the bees get enough honey to breed strong all the time? Also, there is lots of pollen here all summer.
2. In Mr. Simmins’ essay on page 689 of the Bee Journal for 1893, he gives as one of his means of preventing swarming, the withdrawal of the two outer combs, and inserting near the center of the brood-nest two empty frames. Are not these empty frames apt to be filled with drone-comb?
3. On the same page he speaks of rearing young queens in the fall to requeen with, also as a means of preventing swarming. What is the object of rearing them in the fall? ”

“ My bees did very little this year. I got about 20 pounds of comb honey per colony. I had two colonies of Italians, and they did nothing in the supers, nor did they swarm. They are the meanest things to rob I ever saw. They kept me in “hot water” all summer. I am tired of the yellow rascals. Bees didn’t work any on white clover, and very little on buckwheat. The season was very dry here. I had some Alsike clover, and the bees worked on that for about three weeks.
S. M. Robertson.
Grey Eagle, Maine, Dec. 23, 1893.
Inventing New Things—A Frame. ”

“ In no case have I ever found that the food was anywhere near exhausted by the bees. More often the food would be hardly consumed; sometimes it was so hard that I would not be surprised but it would have required a good sized sledge hammer to break the so-called candy sent as food for the poor bees to exist on while in transit.
Then I would look to the ventilation. This I have considered an important thing in shipping queens; too often the shipper trusts to the ventilation provided by the manufacturer of the cages he uses. ”

“ Now we have demonstrated, at least to our own satisfaction, that bees can certainly be improved under judicious and intelligent management instead of retrograding; and the great wonder to me is, that they have held their own under the bad management of as large a proportion of queen-breeders as we formerly had. ”

“ I think it is just the way when the bees are not up to the required pressure for comb honey. If the farmers who keep bees would use the extractor, and give their bees plenty of combs at the right time, they would get more from their bees than they do. It requires a specialist to make a success at comb honey. ”

“ No bees in the world could live through such a trying time as they must necessarily be subjected to in a small compartment where each individual bee helps to 49 raise the temperature in a climate, which, as I have said, is already too hot. ”

“ Bananas do only moderately well, but I do not believe the people here understand their culture. There is hardly ever any ice here thicker than a knife-blade, but I see the people wrap up and protect the banana-trees. ”