14 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Jan. 



RE.VRINQ DRONES. 



I have 3 or 3 hybrid swarms, and want to get full 

 Italians. What proportion of queens should be de- 

 voted to raising drones, to secure this result from 

 a good queen to raise queens from? 



It will be a very good idea to raise as 

 many pure drones as you can conveniently, 

 if you have black drones near you, in abun- 

 dance. 



TO SAVE A VALUABLE QUEEV WIIE^J THE BEES DIE 

 OFF. 



Suppose you wish to save a queen in a colony that 

 ■was dying off rapidly, how would you do it; i. c, In 

 the winter or early spring? 



I have never had much success in keep- 

 in.i? queens after the bees liad died off and 

 left tliem, unless it was so late in the spring 

 that I could introduce them into a nucleus 

 of healthy bees made for them. If given 

 young bees in an ordinary queen-cage, and 

 fed on pui-e sugar and water, they may be 

 kept a month or more. 



YEARLY REPORT. 



Had 4 colonics List spring; increased to 12. They 

 gave 775 lbs. honey, mostly extracted. Extracted 

 brought ISlaC; comb, 18c. per lb., netting $'.ty.70. 

 Value of the 8 new swarms, you may place yourself; 

 but S150 would not buy the product of my lour col- 

 onies the past ye.ir, and all this from one who did 

 not know a queen from a drone, May 15, 1833. 



ENCOURAGEMENT. 



Can it be possible that the author of that famous 

 growlery article in last Gle.vnings, and other r-ien 

 who write similar articles, ever glance at the " kind 

 words" from the grand army of constantly increas- 

 ing patrons of your noble business? If so, do they 

 ever pause to think that they may be wrong and you 

 right? It woulfi seem not. Surely such harsh grat- 

 ing words can not fall gently upon the ear of one 

 who is striving with all his might todo justice to the 

 many who arr^iri part instrumental in building up 

 a business for him, which of itself speaks the ver- 

 dict rendered by the honest, grateful members of 

 our bee-keeping fraternity. F. A. Palmer. 



McBrides, Montcalm Co., Mich., Dec. C, 1881. 



Yon are right, friend P.; the kind words 

 do help me wonderfully to bear the harsh 

 ones when they come. They do not come 

 very often. I believe you have seen the 

 most of them and the worst of them. 



COMB FOUNDATinN FOR 

 BOXES. 



SECTION 



M FTER comb foundation had been in use but a 

 _^\ year or two, it became apparent to some that 

 ' the bees did not properly thin the base of the 

 cells so as to make it practical for using in section 

 boxes, as a hard ridge of wax (or "fishbone," as it 

 was termed) in the center of each comb of honey 

 was quite a serious objection, for consumers did not 

 like to eat so much wax with their honey. At this 

 time, fdn. running from G to 8 square feet to the 

 pound was used for sections; and it was predicted 

 that if such a course was persisted in, our honey 

 markets would eventually be ruined. About this 

 time the Armriccin Btz Journal lifted up its voice of 

 waruiag, and bee coaventiouj resolved against Us 



use for comb honey, to such an extent that some of 

 our large honey-producers began to study on the 

 matter of making a very thin foundation. 



In due time, the Van Deusen flat-bottomed fdn. 

 appeared before the public as a result, and we had 

 fdn. so thin that it took from 10 to 1-1 square feet of 

 it to make one pound. This seemed to be successful 

 as far as the " fishbone " was concerned; but as the 

 bees had to change the flat bottom into a lozenge- 

 shaped base, it was soon discovered that it was not 

 accepted as readily by the bees as fdn. with a natur- 

 al-shaped septum. However, this was far ahead of 

 any yet inuse, and thus it could be readilj' seen that 

 we were gaining ground. To overcome this last diffi- 

 culty, Mr. Vandervort succeeded in producing fdn. 

 running from 10 to 12 square feet to the pound, with 

 a lozenge-shaped base which was said to work equally 

 as well as the Van Deusen, and having none of the 

 objections urged against that. Thus wo find the N. 

 E. Bee Convention in February, 188 1, giving the 

 Vandervort the preference over all others on exhi- 

 bition. At about this time, A. I. Root advertised in 

 his price list vcrtj thin fdn. for comb honey, running 

 at least 10 square feet to the pound, and the pros- 

 pect looked quite flattering that comb foundation 

 for section honey would prove a success, for " out 

 of a m\iltitude of covmselors cometh wisdom." To 

 see which was best, I concluded, last spring, to thor- 

 oughly test the matter, and so procured fdn. from 

 the following parties; namely: A. I. Root, Medina, 

 Ohio; G.W.Stanley, Wyoming, N. Y.; I. G. Whit- 

 ten, Genoa, N. Y. ; R. Van Deusen, Sprout Brook, 

 N. Y., and Chas. Dadant & Son, Hamilton, III. That 

 procured from A. T. Root was his own make, but 

 proved to run ouly fi'/j square feet to the pound in- 

 stead of "at least 10," as was advertised; and be- 

 sides, it was made of dark, dirty wax. Perhaps 

 friend Root will explain why he allowed such to bo 

 sent out. T hat from Stanley was made on the Van- 

 dervort machine; was very nice wax, and ran 11 

 feet to the pound. Mr. Whitten's was made on a 

 Dunham machine, and was the nicest I have seen 

 coming from a Dunham mill, as it ran WA feet to 

 the pound, and was made of nice wa.x. Mr. Van 

 Deusen's was the thin flat-bottomed, which is, I 

 think, the prettiest fdn. to look at of any I have yet 

 seen. Of Chas. Dadiint &Son, I had both the Root 

 and Dunham. The Root ran about 7!» feet to the 

 pound, and the Dutiham about 6. As to quality of 

 ii'a.c, I will say, this last was the nicest of all. I 

 filled 30 section boxes full within ?8 of an inch of 

 the bottom, with each kind, and marked the name 

 of the party producing the fdn. on each box. In 

 due time these boxes were placed on the hives so 

 that an equal number (six, one of each kind) was on 

 each hive. These hives were examined at different 

 times, and the result showed that the two kinds pro- 

 duced by Dadant, and that by Stanley were worked 

 upon about alike, and finished at nearly the same 

 time. That produced by Root and Whitton was 

 about a day later in being finished, while the Van 

 Deusen was nearly three days behind the first- 

 named. This was taking the average time of the 

 20 swarms which worked upon them. By this ex- 

 periment we found that it did take lime for the bees 

 to manipulate the flat-bottomed fdn. After all was 

 off the hives, we were anxious to know which kind 

 had the thinnest base, or, in other words, which was 

 most free from the "fishbone" center so much 

 talked of. Accordingly, I procured a very sensitive 

 pair of scales, showing a variation of 54 ounce ac- 



