246 



GLEAKIKGS 11^ BEE CULTURE. 



jMay 



THE GIVEN PRESS, ONCE MORE. 



I tried making fdn. last Saturday, and I find it is 

 more difficult to fill L. frames, and do a nice job, 

 than to fill the short L. frames that I use. If you 

 use No. 30 wire, you will have to have heavy sheets 

 of wax cr it will cut the wire; or if you take thin 

 sheets of wax, such as you use for making thin fdn., 

 lay one sheet on the dies, then your wired frame, 

 then another sheet on top, having the wires between 

 the two sheets; press the two sheets together in that 

 way, and it is not apt to cut the wires. The greatest 

 dilSculty I find is in keeping the wires stretched 

 and straight after the tin bar is taken out, and then 

 putting it back in again after the wax is pressed in. 

 This is something I had no experience with, as I do 

 not use them in my short L. frames. I. K. Good. 



Nappaneo, Ind., March 20, 1882, 



It would seem from the above, that I was 

 not so far out of the way after all, in decid- 

 iug that the Given press is hardly yet per- 

 fected for filling full-sized L. frames with 

 fdn. Of course, we can make the top-bar to 

 the frame so heavy there will be little dan- 

 ger of its sagging, and then, by dispensing 

 with the tin bar, gel the frame pretty nearly 

 filled. But there are two objections to this: 

 First, top-bars nearly an inch in thickness 

 will often sag considerably,under the weight 

 of a great mass of honey. Secondly, such 

 great top-bars are heavy to handle, and oc- 

 cupy space that might just as well be hlled 

 with brood and honey. The diagonal wires 

 and the tin bar give us a frame tliat can not 

 sag a particle, practically, although they are 

 made of i-inch pine all round. With our 

 live-cent button-hook, and full-sized sheets, 

 we get perfect sheets of comb clear up to the 

 wood. No one has yet answered in regard 

 to shipping frames of fdn. made on the Giv- 

 en press, lias any one received any safely, 

 that liad been shipped a long distance? 



GOOD rOR AN A B C SCHOLAR. 



I worked to some disadvantage, having too much 

 farm work on hand ; and it being impossible to get 

 men at any price, my bees were neglected. A num- 

 ber of swarms having no room, left for the woods; 

 so my report is not as good as it might have been. I 

 took out of winter quarters 13 stands in very poor 

 condition, not more than half-swarms, and from 

 them I sold 1800 lbs. of extracted honey, and 100 lbs. 

 comb in 1-pound sections — lOiO lbs. in all, making 

 an average of 146 lbs. per swarm, not counting what 

 we used in the house daily, and increased to 30 colo- 

 nies, which I think is a fair report considering their 

 condition in the spring. Honey was gathered from 

 white clover, basswood, and buckwheat — mostly 

 from the latter. I sell honey at 10 to 11 cents per lb. 

 I winter them in a bee'house built on top of the 

 ground. H. E. Christie. 



Oxford Mills, Ontario, Canada, March, 1883. 



DOLLAR queens. 



•riife drift of much that is written is, pay more for 

 your queens, and you will get better ones (doubtful). 

 A dollar queen is usually sold before her brood 

 hatches out, in which case she is termed tested (aft- 

 er het brood is out). If there is fraud in the queen 

 business, I hardly think advancing the price would 

 preveht it. A queetl sold alter she has been laying 

 five days is worth as much to the purchaser as she 

 would be at twcnty-flvc days. In the latter case she 



would be tested. It seems to me, if queen-breeders 

 have sent out worthless trash in the shape of queens, 

 they would do the same thing if the price were 

 doubled. ■ I have bought only tested queens so far. 

 If worthless queens arc sold, don't put the fault on 

 the buyer, when, nine times out of ten, the seller is 

 to blame. G. W. White. 



Hickory Grove, Ga., March 31, 1883. 



I have just bought 100 colonies of neighbor 

 Rice, to be delivered in May, and the ques- 

 tion came up as to what the queens should 

 be. His queens are all tested, reared from 

 imported mothers ; but 1 told him I would 

 just as soon have dollar queens reared in 

 J\Iay as tested queens raised last season. 

 Judging from the orders we get, it seems al- 

 most everybody else has come to pretty 

 nearly the same conclusion. It is not so 

 much in what the queen is called, as it is in 

 the man of whom we buy. 



SOUR honev. 



Can you or some one of your subscribers tell me if 

 honey will sour in the comb? About six weeks after 

 I put my bees into the cellar I noticed a bad smell in 

 passing one of them. I lifted up the cover, audit 

 smelled like rotten eggs. I doubled up a number of 

 swarms in the fall, which left me hive3 and honey. 

 I filled one with sections filled with honey, and trans- 

 ferred them to-day, and they are all right. Some of 

 their honey smelled and tasted sour. What made it 

 sour and smell so badly? This is the only one out of 

 73 swarms of the kind. Had I left them in the hive 

 all winter, would they all have died? 



C. C. Holmes. 



Sauk Rapids, Benton Co., Minn , March, 1883. 



I think the wliole trouble, friend II., is 

 want of ventilation in your hives, and possi- 

 bly in your cellar. JJees will, by the warmth 

 of their bodies, evaporate the moisture from 

 the honey, providing they can liave a circu- 

 lation of air to takfeoff this surplus moisture; 

 but if they have not this circulation of air, 

 and the moisture condenses in small drops 

 on the honey, it will, by the warmth of the 

 cluster of bees, be made to sour ; and this 

 state of affairs has been suggested as a cause 

 of dysentery. If the water condenses on the 

 pollen, we have sour pollen, and no Avonder 

 the bees get sick. See what; Gallup says on 

 another page, in regard to hives cracked 

 from top to bottom, and hives with no bot- 

 toms, for wintering. 



starting I5ASSWOODS AND OTHER TREES FROM 

 CUTTINGS. 



We noticed something you said in a recent num- 

 ber of Gleanings about striking cuttings of bass- 

 wood, in which you did not give full directions, if 

 we remember right. We would say, in addition, 

 take the straight growth, not fi'ora branches; out 

 with a sharp knife close to an eye; set in clear sand 

 or powdered charcoal, and keep the bottom 10 to 20 

 degrees warmer than the top, which will cause a, 

 growth of roots speedily in any plant that can be 

 grown from cuttings. A. C. Kendel. 



Cleveland, O., April i, 1883. 



Many thanks, friend K. Our bassWood 

 buds started finely at first, but for some rea- 

 son did not hold out, and we suspect it was 

 just because of the lack of that same bottom 

 heat you mention. Since you speak of it, we 

 find that much the same directioua are given 



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