46 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTUEE. 



Jan. 



ceived. Well, I wish to call your attention 

 to just one clause in it at the end : — 



A fortune awaits any man who secures control of 

 ozone in any township or county. The most valua- 

 ble article in the world. The $2 you invest in a test 

 package will surely lead j'ou to secure a township or 

 county, and then your way is absolutely clear to 

 make from f 2UU0 to $10,000 a year. 



You can safely set down any man as a 

 swindler, who makes any such otter or state- 

 ment, verbally or by advertisement. Now, 

 friends, how would you feel toward the edit- 

 or of your family paper, who, after he had 

 inserted " ozone," for which he received a 

 good roiuid sum of money, should coolly tell 

 you that everybody must look out for bogus 

 advertisements themselves, and in actions, 

 if not words, should say that he was in no 

 way responsible for the money you had lost? 



LETTER FROM SCOTLAND. 



SOMETHING ABOUT BEES THAT WON'T RAISE A 

 QUEEN. 



BEAR SIR:— I beg to send you our subscription 

 to Gleanings for another j'ear, and to say 

 that we consider it the most valuable, and, at 

 the same time, the cheapest treatise on the subject 

 of apiculture that we have ever had the pleasure of 

 perusing. I do not mean to make any exception of 

 the ABC, because of it I consider Gleanings to be 

 part and parcel. Apiculture is not in Scotland the 

 branch of industry that it might or should be; but I 

 am very glad to inform you that Gleanings and the 

 ABC have commenced a work that will revolution- 

 ize the whole subject at no distant date. Till lately, 

 bees hereabout received little or no attention — no 

 expenditure was incurred on their account, and if 

 they did well, their owner was benefited; if not, he 

 had no loss, and the boes were the worse for it them- 

 selves. People are now beginning to open their 

 eyes, and wonder how they could have ever kept 

 them closed so long. 



As a rule, our seasons are poor and short; but this 

 is partially compensated by a higher price for our 

 produce. The past season has been a very bad one, 

 and honey in every shape is dear; 1-lb. sections are 

 being sold to consumei's at about 3 shillings each. 



I wish the vexed questions about wintering were 

 settled ; but,as far as 1 can gather, we are no nearer the 

 solution of the problem at the end of this year than 

 we were at the beginnmg of it. I do not see that 

 your contributors have proved that queens reared ar- 

 tificially are inferior in any way to those reared 

 "under the swarming impulse." 



Apiaries were devastated in our country by hun- 

 dreds last winter, where queens of the former de- 

 scription were never heard of. My own impression 

 is, that bees in actual want of a queen would treat 

 the larvoa far more tenderly than those rearing one 

 against the possible contingency of swarming. 



Neither can I indorse your ideas about ventila- 

 tion. The weakest hive that I had last winter was a 

 third swarm in a straw skep that I purchased. When 

 taken otr the railway it weighed 18 lbs., including 

 hive, bees, honey, floor, bag that it was in, and rope, 

 etc. I put the skep in a wooden box U inches thick, 

 made a tunnel from the outside of the box to the in- 

 side of the hive, allowing ingress and egress of one 

 bee at a time; packed the box full of straw, and 

 nailed on the lid, in which there was a half-inch ven- 



tilation-hole. There might have been four inches of 

 straw above and around the hive inside the box. 

 When I took out that hive in the spring I found 

 only 5 dead bees— one of them being a queen. 

 They were black bees. This hive proved the most 

 valuable in my apiary. My others are Simplicity, 

 double-walled (each wall M in. thick), with Vi in. dead- 

 air space between. A chaif cushion 4 in. thick, 

 made of sack-cloth, goes on the top of the duck, and 

 entrances are all contracted so as to allow passage 

 of one bee at a time. All came through satisfacto- 

 rily. Now, alongside of this a neighbor keeps his 

 bees in straw skeps with no protection, and en- 

 trances of the usual size. His also came through 

 satisfactorily, and swarmed early. Now, what do 

 you make of that? Simply what has been remarked 

 often in Gleanings, that sometimes protection 

 seems to succeed, and at other times success is 

 achieved without protection. 



There is another thing I wish to notice. It seems 

 to be assumed in Gleanings and in the ABC, that 

 if brood of the right stage is given to a queenless 

 colony, it invariably commences to raise a queen. 

 Now, that I can't agree to. This spring I got an im- 

 ported Italian queen, and when the swarming sea- 

 son arrived 1 intended to Italianize. One fine day I 

 moved one of my best hivv^s from its stand, and put 

 one full of combs in its place. Next day I gave the 

 bees about 2 square inches of Italian brood. This 

 the bees fed, sealed up, and hatched out, producing 

 all workers, and they did not attempt a queen-cell 

 at all. A week after, I gave them a whole frame of 

 Italian brood in all stages, from the egg upward. 

 This was all hatched out too, and no queen-cell was 

 ever started. The colony was beginning to decrease 

 in numbers, so about ten days after this I gave it 

 two frames of black brood in all stages, all of which 

 was hatched out, and the bees never made an ef- 

 fort to supply themselves with a queen. I even put 

 a newly laid egg into an old queen-cell that hap- 

 pened to bo on one frame, but the bees threw out 

 the egg at once. They gathered honey and pollen 

 enough, defended themselves from robbers, and 

 nothing unusual was observed in their conduct. All 

 this, you will say, is the result of the piesenco of a 

 fertile worker. But, no! Not a single egg was ever 

 laid; and when the brood I gave the colony was 

 hate ed out, none remained. The bees did not seem 

 to mind the loss of a queen, but went on with the 

 pollen arid honey gathering. I could not have been 

 deceived by honey being stored above the eggs or 

 brood, as I used the extractor freely, and was very 

 thorough in my investigation. The result was, I did 

 not Italianize; but after that colony had remained 

 about three weeks with no brood, I gave it a black 

 queen I got from a neighbor, which they gave a 

 right loyal welcome to. Next day 1 saw her attend- 

 ing to her duties, and she reigns supremo in the hive 

 to-day. If nothing similar to this has ever cropped 

 up before, it is verj- strange. I confess the like 

 never occurred in my own experience, and I can 

 not account for it in any way, though I can prove 

 it to be true. John H. Frasee. 



The School House, Dyco, Aberdeenshire, Scotland, 

 Dec. 5, 1881. 



Many thanks for your kind and cheering 

 words, friend Frasier, and I am very glad 

 indeed to know that your people are being 

 waked up in our favorite industry. Perhaps 

 the ABC should state, if it does not, that 

 once in a while we find a colony that will 



