72 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CtJLTUllE. 



EEii. 



for a number of years, he will find good bee-keepers 

 who use all sizes and shapes of hives, and who man- 

 age bees In all the different ways imaginable, and 

 successfully too. He will also find some who man- 

 age bees in his ideal way, who are not successful. 

 With all these dififerent styles of hives, and ditferent 

 ways of managing bees before us, should we not have 

 a broad charity for all? J. G. Corey. 



Santa Paula, Cal., Dec. 31, 1881. 



Yes, we should all excercise charity, friend 

 C. ; and while I am about it I would say, 

 that I talked with Prof. Cook recently, while 

 he was with us at our Farmers' Institute, iu 

 Medina, and he said that it is utterly im- 

 possible that foul brood should originate 

 from chilled brood, or brood that died from 

 a natural cause. 



■ !» I Q I ^ — 



FKOITI THE BOX-ELDERS. 



tT had been some time since we had paid our 

 friend a visit at the Box-Elders; and so one 

 ' bright starlight evening, just before Christmas, 

 we gave him a call. As we entered tho sitting-room 

 we found Mr. Duster seated at a table covered with 

 books, magazines, newspapers, etc., while on the 

 other side sat his wife busily engaged in some mys- 

 teries of female handiwork. (Ghosts, and these fe- 

 male mysteries, never appeal-, except at ni(jM, So 

 says Mr. Duster.) At one end of the room was a bay- 

 window filled with plants. A strong and thrifty ivy 

 had been trained up on cither side of the window, 

 and so along the upper sides of throe walls of the 

 room — its trailing, droopmg branches, over and 

 down among the pictui-es hanging on the wall, gave 

 a pleasant elfcct; while over all, the mellow light of 

 a lamp suspended from the ceiling iia the center of 

 the room revealed every object distinctly. 



As we seated ourself, the revelation came to us 

 why Mr. Duster was not seen down town evenings. 

 He had what every man in ordinary circumstances 

 can and should have, and good sense to know and ap- 

 preciate too — a home. Home ! I can hardlj' leave 

 this subject, as the very word fills my mind with so 

 many pleasant recollections and scenes of the past; 

 but I must pass on, SutBce it, Mr. Duster neither 

 chews nor smokes tobacco, and he would as soon 

 think of coming into this room with his face and 

 hands unwashed, his clothes befouled by the worst 

 smell invented, as to come with a tobacco-pipe stick- 

 ing in one side of his mouth, and a tobacco-cud in the 

 other, into the presence of that woman sitting just 

 across the table yonder, who, by the by, is the same 

 one who sang out to Mr. Duster to " hold the fort " 

 at the time the bees chased him into that little out- 

 house. (See Gleanings, Feb., 1881.) 



" Yes, I put my bees into the cellar nearly a month 

 ago," said Mr. Duster, in answer to an inquiry of 

 ours, " and I hardly know, although the weather has 

 been very mild, whether it would have been better 

 to have left them out until now or not. My practice 

 has been to leave them out as long as I could in the 

 fall, and keep them in the cellar as late as possible 

 in the spring, and then not encourage breeding, to 

 any extent, until settled warm weather comes. 



"MY OPINION 



upon this matter is, the quieter the bees are kept, 

 from the time they are put into the cellar until the 

 Weather is pretty steadily warm, the better. Instead 

 of stimulating our bees into activity for early breed- 

 ing, I think the reverse process should be our studj'. 



We should hear loss of spring diseases and spring 

 disasters; and when wc open our hives we should 

 not be met with an ' abomination of smells,' but 

 rather with sweetness, brightness of comb, and neat- 

 ness generally." 

 " What can you say about 



DYSENTERY, 



and what has been your experience with it?" 



"My bees have had it at times, off and on, but I 

 have never lost a swarm by that disease, that I can 

 recollect. I have no particular theory in regard to 

 it. I think there are many things or conditions 

 that will develop it; and now for some hard facts." 



Just here Mr. Duster stopped short. I looked up 

 and saw him gazing at the fire, completely absorbed. 

 Soon a smile came creeping out of each corner of 

 his mouth, spreading over his chin, and then mount- 

 ing up to his eyes until you could hardly see them; 

 the wrinkles on his forehead moved and lifted; his 

 very ears seemed to jerk up and down in sympathy. 

 It came at last, and such a laugh! 



"You will excuse my rudeness," said Mr. Duster, 

 " when I tell you I was thinking of Ileddon's (hobby) 

 horse named ' Bacteria.' You see, he don't ride it 

 himself, exactly: he's too sharp for that; so he put 

 a fellow on by the name of ' Guess,' a sort of Yankee 

 production, I reckon. Already two or three writers 

 have stepped out to take a whack at that horse and 

 rider. I can almost see the grin on Htddon's face; 

 he has got them in just the position of ' heads, I win ; 

 tails, you lose.' Let me see," said Mr. Duster, re- 

 suming; " I was going to give a few cold facts. 



" I have told you before how I prepare my bees for 

 winter by using straw mats on top, and sometimes 

 at the sides of the frames, and then filling the upper 

 story with the fine, soft, silky leaves of the box- 

 elder, taking as much pains in packing for the cellar 

 as many do for outdoor wintering. I get warmth and 

 cvoi temperature. See? no dysentery. I never dis- 

 turb my bees to give them a lly in winter. I'll keep 

 still if they will. See? quiet; no dysentery. Now 

 and then there is a stock that gets uneasy; I watch 

 for them, for I know that, if not stopped at once, I 

 have a case of dysentery, more or less severe, on my 

 hands. I go into my cellar, and listen. I believe I 

 can tell by the peculiar whine of a bee if it has the 

 belly-ache," said Mr. Duster drily. 



" Nine times out of ten I have succeeded in quiet- 

 ing them by giving water at the entrance on a 

 sponge, nf oficc, before they get much disturbed. I 

 reason, that it was water they wanted, and if Ihey 

 did not get it they would gorge themselves, and then 

 have dysentery. I do not suppose that water, or, 

 rather, the want of it, is the only cause of this trou- 

 ble, as I have said before; but I am strongly in- 

 clined to think, that in ftrst-c'ass ceUars this uneasi- 

 ness can be stopped in this way. if adopted soon 

 enough. I recommended it to a gentleman last win- 

 ter, whose bees had got uneasy, ana had commenced 

 spottmg their hives. He tried it with success. The 

 cimclusion I come to is prettymuch like Quinby's:— 

 warmth, proper surroundings, and quiet. Get qui- 

 et, and you'll have no dysentery." 



As I was about to leave, Mr. Duster said, in con- 

 clusion: "There are exceptions to all rules: I lay 

 nothing down as positive. We must use our best 

 judgment in this as in any other matter or business, 

 making use of facts as they come to us. If I have 

 had any success with bees, it has been by following 

 these two conditions;— For wintering safely, even 



