1882 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



167 



SOME POETRY AND— PROSE. 



FROM THE LONE-STAU APIARY. 



J?u<'kwht>at cake! 'tis of thee, 

 ,\nil the little honev-bee, 



Tlmt I wouklsin;;: 

 Thoii that with pork art fried, 

 Tlicii Imlti rill on one side, 

 With IioiMiiiint honev thick applied. 



Thou luscious thing: 



i^] TOP, Amos' wait until "Eliza" or "Lou" brings 

 ^^ those delicious cakes smoking hot from the 

 ' — stove over yonder in the corner of the lunch- 

 room, before you wallop them all over in honey; or 

 perhaps you prefer the Early-Amber sorghum 'lasses 

 or Buffalo grape-sugar syrup. Well, I declare it is 

 too bad; we bee-folks down here never quarrel over 

 our sugar-barrel, for we get the pure article right 

 from the mills; but if jou could step into my gar- 

 den and see my 100 pear-trees in bloom, and bees by 

 the hive full swarming over them, loading them- 

 selves with the sweet nectar, you would be con- 

 strained to exclaim. What a lovely country! The 

 whole earth is one vast sea of bloom, and the bees 

 are making good time of the opportunity. 



CYPUIANS, THE I.ONG-SOUGOT APIS AMEUICANA, 



There under that ornamental peach-tree is the 

 three-frame nucleus that passed through the win- 

 ter of 1880-'8l safe and sound, whose queen was 

 raised in November, and mated the Cth of Decem- 

 ber, now 16 months old. Raise the top and peep in, 

 and you will flud 8 full frames of brood, and two 

 others with eggs in them. I have taken two frames 

 from them, and they have replaced them in the last 

 few days, and have eggs in them. I have gone 

 through all the colonie's, and I And the Cyprians are 

 ahead. If you remember, I got a Cyprian queen 

 from you in August, 1880, and this is her daughter. 

 Last spring I divided the old Cyprian colony, and 

 again and again, making four colonies; four frames 

 melted down in July, and in September I took out 

 four frames for queen-rearing, and I now have 

 these hives all full. I got 131 lbs. of honey from the 

 old colony, and lost about 30 lbs. by melting down. 

 I find them better workers than the Italian*, but not 

 so gentle, for they are rather nervous while being 

 handled, but not more so than hybrids or blacks. I 

 do not want a better bee. But there is one trait 

 about them that I can not appreciate: the young 

 lady bees delight in a little flirtation with the gentle- 

 man bees before they settle down to a married life. 



FEUTILE WORKEIIS, SO CALLED. 



The bee-books tell us something about fertile 

 workers (so-called) being such a pest ; and it is pure 

 laziness in the apiarian to have them in his hives, 

 and that it is useless to try to introduce a queen or 

 queen-cell where one is. This has not been my ex- 

 perience, for they have given me no trouble what- 

 ever. I have seen several times last year a fertile 

 worker (?) laying eggs and a virgin queen a few days 

 old crawling about on the same comb. I watched 

 one of these hives closely for 19 days, and this same 

 diminutive drone-layer kept sticking eggs here and 

 there until the queen began laying, and perhaps 

 longer. I have often introduced queen-cells where 

 I knew fertile workers (so called) were, and never 

 had one destroyed, I had two hives last week with 

 fertile workers, and they have raised them a queen 

 now in a capped-over cell, from eggs given them. 

 One of these hives had several queen-cups started 

 with six to ten eggs in each, with cells built out and 

 capped over drone larv£E, and I had no trouble to 



get them to build cells over worker larvre. I had a 

 nucleus last year in the same tix, and I gave them a 

 cell, and they raised a good queen. Again, I have 

 found fertile workers, and seen thorn laying (drone- 

 layers) in a hive that had a good fertile queen, and 

 I believe it is a common thing for these drone-laying 

 workers to be in hives where there are good fertile 

 queens. B. F. Carroll. 



Dresden, Texas, March, 188~'. 



Friend C, it isn't Eliza, or J^ou either, 

 who makes the hot cakes to go with the ma- 

 ple molasses : in fact, I am afraid they have 

 ahiiost forgotten how. ISI either is there any 

 "corner" to the lunch-room (especially at 

 12 o'clock at noon), for it is hut a corner it- 

 self. We have heeii considering the matter 

 of a comhined dining and reading room, and, 

 in fact, we have, at our noon service, asked 

 God to help us in bringing it about. — I can 

 pretty nearly agree with you in regard to 

 fertile workers, only I should say it was your 

 lauded Cyprians that had brought in the 

 fashion of a laying worker in the hive with 

 a laying queen. 1 never heard of it when 

 we had only Italians. 



SEVERAL ITEMS FROM FRIEND C. C. 

 MILLER. 



BARE-HEADED BEES. 



« 



LL old bee-keepers have probably had frequent 

 cases of young bees, nearly ready to hatch, 

 ~^^^ remaining uncapped. It has been said that 

 it was all right; that they hatched out as well as 

 anj-. It may be all right, but I am getting suspi- 

 cious. I can remember more than one instance 

 where the colony was poor, either at the time or 

 shortly after, apparently from no other reason but a 

 poor queen, and no amount of fussing could bring 

 them up to strong working order. I may have had 

 good colonies acting in the same way, as my atten- 

 tion has only lately been directed to the matter; but 

 I am inclined to the opifiion, that when the heads of 

 the young bees are bare it is a sign the head of the 

 queen should come off. Will others report if they 

 have known any case similar, in which the colony 

 continued afterward a strong working colony? 



SIZE OF STARTERS. 



For the purpose of shipping, it maybe well enough 

 to have small starters: but for home use I can not 

 be satisfied with any thing but a full section of fda. 

 For the i^ixi^i sections I prefer stai-tcrs SViXo^ 

 inches; and as there is a standard size of sheets for 

 Langstroth brood-frames, so I think there should be 

 a standard size of sheets that will cut into starters 

 3'2x3?.t, if the majority should agree upon this as the 

 best size. If I am not much mistaken, a section full 

 of foundation will bo finished sooner than one part 

 full, and thus more honey be obtained when the 

 flush comes. 



FASTENING STARTERS. 



I have had some trouble with foundation dropping: 

 out of sections just at the most annoying time when 

 honey is coming in with a rush, and every minute 

 counts; and I suppose others who use full-size 

 starters are not entirely free from this trouble. 

 Where they have been fastened with Parker's fdn. 

 fastener, I have found it to occur either where the 

 starter was put in too cold or where too big a "bite" 

 was taken by the fastener. I have been putting: In 



