WHEN PRICES ARE HIGHEST P The only book that really tells how to make money raising poultry. The book that has been cussed and discussed more than any other-but its sale is increasing daily. Why? Because it tells facts and not theories. Endorsed by poultry authorities and successful amateurs who are making money following the adIvice of the author, Milo M. Hastings, Ex-Commercial Poultry Expert for U. S. Government. The Dollar Hen" is sold in combination with the "Poultry Digest" to increase its circulation. It is a real book, 212 pages, with illustrations; not a paper bound pamphlet, explaining "Systems," "Secrets" or Methods." The book and Poultry Digest" one year, postpaid, $1.00. Satisfaction guaranteed. Order to-day

POULTRY DIGEST PUB. CO., 57-J ANN ST., NEW YORK CITY.

Bee-Keepers' Supplies.

Sold at reduced prices. Dovetailed Hives. Sections, and everything pertaining to beekeeping of the very best kept in stock. Large Warehouse on of L. S. & M. S. R. R. Wholesale and Retail. New price-list just out-Free. Let me figure on your wants.

Atf W. D. Soper, Jackson, Mich.

Please mention Am. Bee Journal when writing.

1030 Chicks From 1047 Eggs

N three hatches. That's what G. W. Ormsby, of Pierpoint, Ohio, did with a Standard Cyphers Incubator. He don't claim to be an expert-just a practical, money. making chicken-raiser. But he insists on the best hatcher.

Cyphers Incubators

are used by more Government Experiment Stations, more leading Agricultural Colleges, more well-known Fanciers and Practical Poultrymen than all other makes combined. Hot-air heat-no tank-troubles-a genuine non-moisture Incubator. Self-ventilating. Self-regulating. You can get Cyphers Patented fea

tures of superiority in no other machine.

Cyphers Incubators and Brooders are guaranteed to you-you have 90 days-4 hatches to prove their superiority.

Write today for our big, handsome Catalog for 1910, describing Cyphers Incubators, Brooders and Poultry Supplies.

STANDARD CYPHERS INCUBATOR. Fire Proofed:Insurable.

Address Nearest City. CYPHERS INCUBATOR CO., Department 83. Buffalo, N. Y.; New York City, N. Y.; Chicago, Ill.; Boston, Mass. Kansas City. Mo.: Oakland, Cal.

Please mention Am. Bee Journal when writing.

Closing Out Offer

We Have Some Copies Left of the Book

"Bees and Honey"

By Thomas G. Newman bound in cloth, that we offer cheap to close out. It contains 160 pages, and is bound in cloth. It used to be a onedollar book, but we will mail them, so long as they last, at 50 cents each; or with the American Bee Journal one year-both for only $1.20. Surely this is a bargain. The book is well illustrated, and has some good information in it, especially for beginners. Address all orders to

George W. York & Co., 146 W. Superior St., Chicago, IlI.

Blunder in Treating European Foul Brood

In Gleanings for 1905, where E. W. Alexander first gave to the public his treatment for European foul brood, he directs as follows:

"Go to every diseased colony you have and build it up either by giving frames of maturing brood or uniting two or more until you have them fairly strong. After this, go over every one and remove the queen; then in o days go over them again, and be sure to destroy every maturing queen-cell, or virgin if any have hatched. Then go to your breeding-queen and take enough of her newlyhatched larvæ to rear enough queen-cells from to supply each one of your diseased queenless colonies with a ripe queen-cell or virgin just hatched. Those are to be introduced to your diseased colonies on the 20th day after you have removed their old queen, and not one hour sooner, for upon this very point your whole success depends: for your young queen must not commence to lay until 3 or 4 days after the last of the old brood is hatched, or 27 days from the time you remove the old queen."

Dr. Miller comments on the foregoing thus, from his own experience:

Four years later, when I came to try the cure, instead of going back and looking up carefully just what Mr. Alexander had said, I made the inexcusably stupid blunder of understanding that it was a laying instead of a virgin queen. So with no thought of departing materially from the Alexander treatment, I introduced a virgin 10 days after removing the queen, with the idea that she would begin laying at about the time I understood that Mr. Alexander gave a laying queen. The strange part of it is that no one called my attention to the blunder until late in January, 1910.

While I offer my humblest apologies for thus blundering, and for misrepresenting Mr. Alexander's treatment, I may be allowed to say that, after all, the blunder is hardly regrettable, upon the whole, if it shall turn out, upon further trial, that others find the cure reliable.

The treatment I used was certainly successful in most cases, and it is entirely possible that the cases of failure were because the subjects under treatment were not strong enough. For an essential part of

treatment, as directed by Mr. Alexander, 'is to make the colonies strong. Please notice that it is not to have strong colonies, nor to make strong part of the colonies, but to make strong any colony that is to be treated; for it is doubtful if any colony badly affected is ever strong enough to be treated without being strengthened by the addition of brood or young bees, or both.

A comparison of the two methods will show that if the plan I used proves to be generally successful-always keep that "if" in mind-it has a very material advantage over the regular Alexander treatment. As compared with the regular Alexander plan, the period of queenlessness is cut exactly in two by the Miller plan-if I may be pardoned for thus naming it, not for the sake of taking away any credit due Mr. Alexander, but for the sake of brevity. For small credit is due me for any improvement that may have been made by sheer stupidity. Moreover, there is this notable difference: By the Alexander treatment the bees are hopelessly queenless for 11 days; never for an hour by the Miller treatment.

Cutting out 10 days of queenlessness, and relieving the bees of 11 days of listlessness when without hope of ever having a queen, with the possibility of laying workers upon the scene, and that in the midst of a harvest, ought to make no little difference in the work of the season; so much difference, indeed, that it may be well worth while to give the plan a fair trial. C. C. MILLER.

Drone-Laying Queens and Laying-Workers

When the work of egg-laying has gone wrong, and only drone-brood is found, one can tell pretty well by inspection of the combs whether it is a case of a drone-laying queen or of laying-workers. If there is a drone-laying queen, she seems unconscious that anything is wrong with her laying, and lays just as she would if all her eggs produced workers. The eggs are placed compactly in worker-cells, drone-cells generally being avoided, even if dronecells are plenty. On the other hand, laying-workers make irregular work, skipping some cells and perhaps laying

Vol. L---No. 3

more than one egg in each of other cells. If drone-cells are within reach, they are preferred. The most reliable sign, however, is their preference for queen-cells. If you find a queen-cell with more than a single egg in it, you may be pretty certain it is the work of laying-workers. Sometimes you will find half a dozen or a dozen eggs in a queen-cell, some of them generally looking not plump but withered, and perhaps there may be several such queen-cells in the hive. You may be sure no queen was ever guilty of such work.

Distance for Pure Queen-Mating

F. W. L. Sladen says in the British Bee Journal:

"I would not rely on isolation for pure mating anywhere in Britain, except on an isolated island. Supposing 3 miles were the limit of flight of queens and drones, one would have to ascertain by careful inquiry that no bees were kept within a radius of over 6 miles, and then one could not be sure that no colonies existed in hollow trees or in buildings, or that swarms might not settle in the district."

On the next page the editor goes still farther:

"It would be difficult to prevent crossbreeding by removing the bees unless you can make sure that there are no other bees within 10 or 12 miles of you."

While there may be no entire security except at such distances, some think that the majority of matings occur between queens and drones whose respective homes are not more than a mile apart.

Comb Versus Extracted Honey

"It seems to me that during the last few years many bee-keepers are given over entirely to producing extracted honey, and too little is being written on the subject of expertly running apiaries great and small for comb, quantity and quality. I would like to see the bee-papers classify their articles, and have a thorough department each time for comb, and one for extracted honey. We could then read and study all, but quickly consult, if we wished, the portion devoted to that we were chiefly interested in."-A CORRESPONDENT.

In some respects the interests of beekeepers are the same everywhere, and in other respects their interests are quite diverse. It is natural and right that each one who subscribes for a bee-paper should desire to have his own interests fairly considered, and the man

who is interested in comb honey alonet does not care to read through an entire article only to find when through with the article that it is of interest only to the man who works for extracted honey. Especially in a crowded time it would be a convenience if the combhoney producer could have a department to himself, and also the producer of extracted honey. But when it comes to putting such a plan into actual practice, it is not so easy as might be supposed. In reality, the number of articles that are of interest only to one or the other class of producers is very small, and it is to be feared that if all the other articles in any one number were to be assigned to one or the other departments the one who did the assigning would have a rather impossible task.

Take the January number of the American Bee Journal. About 88 percent of the items and articles are of equal interest to both classes of producers, and it would be impossible to say whether they should go under the head of production of comb or of extracted honey. Of the remaining matter, the bulk of it refers to bulk comb honey, and while this belongs to comb rather than extracted, still there is some extracted honey in the case. Only one article can fairly be said to belong exclusively to the extracted department, and although a larger number refer to comb than extracted, they are not entirely without interest to extracted men.

This leads to a question whether really more attention is given to extracted honey than to comb. Possibly the January number is exceptional, but the likelihood is that there are not lacking those who think comb honey gets the lion's share of attention.

The foregoing count is without reference to the Question-Box, which stands in a class by itself, there being no rejections, but all questions sent being answered, and these questions ought to show pretty clearly in what the questioners are interested. It so happens that only two of the letters could be assorted as belonging exclusively to one department, and they both belong in the comb-honey department.

On the whole, it is perhaps not practicable to do more than to indicate so far as may be by the heading, to which class an article belongs. This has generally been done, but it may do no harm to have it even more especially in mind hereafter.

Delayed Fertilization and Laying Workers

A bee-keeper reported in Praktischer Wegweiser a case in which a virgin began work as a drone-layer, and then when 6 weeks old began laying workereggs. From this he concluded that after she failed to be fertilized promptly she began laying drone-eggs, and after laying thus for a time she was then fertilized. Herr Dobbratz explains that a wrong conclusion was drawn from the facts. Under special circumstances fertilization may be long delayed. He has known cases in which virgins were still capable of fertilization when 6 weeks old. Only in the rarest cases will a virgin become a drone-layer under that age. If within

his time one finds drone-brood present, and then later-say at the end of the 6 weeks-the queen turns out to be laying worker-eggs all right, it is a clear case that the drone-eggs were not laid by the queen. He and others have had cases in which workers laid eggs while a virgin or a queen-cell was present, and these laying-workers continued until the queen was fertilized and began laying.

Comb-Honey Production

EDITOR YORK:-Do you think it would be of sufficient interest to enough of those who read the American Bee Journal, to have an article by some suitable person telling how he handles his 'comb honey from the time it is taken off the hive until it is sold? In other words, how he cleans the sections, grades the honey, what kind of shippingcases he uses, who buys the honey, etc.

Most of my honey is sold to people that come here to spend the summer, and I want to know how to prepare it in the best way for market.

The American Bee Journal is all right, and I value the articles by G. M. Doolittle enough to take it for those articles alone, even if there was nothing else.

Benzonia, Mich. JOHN A. VAN DEMAN.

This letter voices the desire of every ambitious beginner who desires to produce honey of the very best grade. The demand has been met more than once in the past, and will no doubt be met more than once in the future. But in the nature of the case it must be seen that if an article or a series of articles of the kind should be published each

time a new member joins the American Bee Journal family, the repetition of such article or articles would be so frequent that there would be serious complaint of room thus used to crowd out fresher matter. Unless something at least partly new can be given, there is hardly justification for the publication of such articles. In reality, their place is rather in bee-books than beeperiodicals. The information desired by Mr. V. is amongst the fundamental matters in bee-keeping-matters that all bee-keepers are sure to need, and so are discussed in the text-books on beekeeping.

are

66

As already said, the likelihood is that something will be given in the desired line whenever anything new is to be had, and in the meantime it may be mentioned that there are at least two books written especially to tell the whole story of the production of comb honey from beginning to end. They Forty Years Among the Bees," by Dr. C. C. Miller, and "A Year's Work in an Out-Apiary," by G. M. Doolittle. Our correspondent will find them exactly what he asks for, with such full details as could not so readily be given in the columns of a periodical. Dr. Miller's book is mailed for $1.00, or with the American Bee Journal for one year-both for $1.75; the Doolittle book is mailed for 50 cents, or with the American Bee Journal one year-both for $1.40.

Miscellaneous Clews Items

Our Front Page Pictures

The picture shown in the upper lefthand corner was sent us by F. Greiner, of Naples, N. Y. It shows his apiary after a heavy snow-storm; the snow being piled up on the hives, and hanging on the trees like so much cotton. It is a beautiful midwinter picture, we think.

The upper right-hand picture is a view of the apiary of Chas. T. Dennis, of Lake Preston, S. Dak. It was taken from the rear, and does not show the first rows. The hives on the right are "empties." Mr. Dennis reports having had good success with bees at his location, up to last year.

The large lower picture s hows Mr. Wm. Stolley and his shed-apiary. On another page of this number will be found Mr. Stolley's report for last year, and also something about his experience in using bee-stings as a remedy .or inflammatory rheumatism.

The hives shown on the top of Mr. Stolley's shed-apiary are decoys for catching stray swarms. We understand that he has caught quite a number of runaway swarms in those roof-hives. Mr. Stolley himself seems to be taking it easy in a rocking chair in the center

of the picture, seemingly to be "monarch of all he surveys." Just now, he and his wife are spending a few weeks of the cold winter weather down in Florida, where he reports having a good time. Mr. Stolley is one of those jolly Germans one often meets in the wild and woolly West. We have had the pleasure of seeing him at one or two of the National conventions of beekeepers.

Dr. Lyon's Lecture on Bees

Rev. D. Everett Lyon, Ph. D., of New York, delivered his illustrated lecture on The Story of the Honey-Bee," before the Unity Club of Cincinnati, Feb. 13, 1910. Dr. Lyon is an enthusiast on bees, and while he fills his pulpit at home, he has traveled much to study bees and bee-keeping. His stereopticon slides are made from negatives of his own taking, and show most clearly the activities and habits of bees.

Mr. Fred W. Muth, who heard the lecture, and was instrumental in securing Dr. Lyon, has this to say about both Dr. L. and his bee-lecture:

Dr. Lyon's lecture was everything that could be desired; in fact, we have heard lectures on this platform for 10 years, and