406 



GLEANINGS IK BEE CULTURE. 



Aug. 



BLUE THISTLE, AGAIN. 



Now, right here is an important question I want 

 to ask, and much desire a satisfactory answer, as in 

 it the bee-keeping fraternity are all interestcil. Is 

 blue thistle really and legally a noxious weed? In 

 other words, Avill the law of the land tolerate its 

 growth? Fur instance, if one should choose to let 

 it grow for bee forage, can his neighbor compel him 

 to destroy it for fear of its species being propa- 

 gated on his lands, thereby polluting his soil? The 

 above question is agitating the minds of some to- 

 day, and an early answer will be sppreciated. 



J. H . BOSSERMAN. 



Gettysburg, Pa., June 30, 188;J. 



Blue thistle is a, vtiriety of borage, and 

 nothing more. I do not know why one can 

 not grow it for honey, just as well as to 

 grow any plant for honey alone, if he choos- 

 es to. As the plant dies every year, root 

 and branch, it is not strictly a thistle at all, 

 but is exactly like the great mass of weeds 

 that are a nuisance if allowed to seed the 

 ground. If one neighbor could compel an- 

 other to prevent all weeds from growing up 

 to seed, perhaps it might include blue this- 

 tle ; but as the law against weeds is intenil- 

 ed to cover only those of no use, there would 

 be another side to this question. 



YOUNG QUEENS, VERSUS OLD. 



I wish the (jueen to be reared this season. This is 

 a sine qua wm. I would not have an old queen as a 

 gift. M. W. Chapman. 



Mayhew Station, Miss., July 4, 1882. 



I would take an old queen as a gift, friend 

 C, providing she was still active in egg-lay- 

 ing ; but I should consider a queen a year 

 old worth only about half as much as one 

 just tested, other things being e(jual. One 

 great reason why I prefer dollar queens to 

 tested ones is because all honest dollar 

 queens are young ones, while all the tested 

 queens, say before .July, must, almost, of a 

 necessity, be of the previous year's raising. 



SKIMMINGS FROM MAPLE MOLASSES. 



My bees are " no go " this year so far; too cold and 

 wet. A friend of mine living about three miles from 

 here wintered three colonies. During May they 

 swarmed 8 times, so now he has eleven, beeause he 

 saved the skimmings from the maple molasses and 

 put them into a large wooden trough, and put a 

 board on it so the bees could get it without drown- 

 ing. Tell the people through Gleanings to save the 

 skimmings next spring for the bees. It pays. 



Henry Rreneman. 



East Germantown, Ind., June 14, 1883. 



WHAT TO DO with UNFINISHED SECTIONS. 



As the white-clover season will soon be over in my 

 locality, and I shall have a lot of sections only partly 

 filled, I wistt to know if you can tell me of any way 

 by which I can have the honey carried out of part of 

 them and stored in the others. ]n short, tell me 

 how to manage my partly filled sections when clo- 

 ver is gone. Wo usually have a very good crop of 

 fall honey here. They Sf metimes make a little sur- 

 plus in the fall. J.F.Edwards. 



Sebree, Webster Co., Ky., June 18, 1883. 



You can get the bees to take the honey 

 out of the sections without much trouble, by 

 simply uncapping them and moving them 

 back a little from the brood-nest ; but to get 

 them to take the honey and put it into other 



sections, is not so easy. I believe the usual 

 way of doing is to take all of those nearest 

 tilled, and put them on the strongest hive. 

 NoAv throw the honey out of the rest with 

 the extractor, and feed it l)ack to this one 

 colony until the sections are tilled. Or if 

 you have extracted honey enough, feed until 

 all the sections on the hives are finished; 

 but this will be (juite an expensive proceed- 

 ing, compared with placing all those nearly 

 finished on one strong hive, and feeding 

 that alone. 8ee remarks in the ABC on 

 this matter. 



MOVING BEES BY FREIGHT IN WINTER. 



As it may do some brother bee-keeper good, and 

 do me no harm, I will give my experience in moving 

 bees. I i-tarted from Lostant, La Salle Co., 111., Feb. 

 27, for Brookfield, Mo., SOO miles distance, with 13 

 swarms of best hybrid bees in large 2-story chaff 

 hives. 1 made a frame of 2x4 pine, large enough to 

 hold () hives, and cleated it so the hives did not touch; 

 then I bolted on posts and braces, and added another 

 lot of 6 hives above them on u frame made like the 

 first. I strapped the hives down securely to the 

 frames, ventilated thtj top with a two-inch tube 

 through chaff cushion. 1 set the frame in the car 

 on as much hay as we possibly could, well leveled 

 and tramped down; neither the hives nor any part 

 of the frame touched the car, which was heavily 

 loaded with stock and other freight. Part of the 

 road was very rough; the sections of hives were 

 metal cornered with tin rabbets, with nothing to 

 hold them but a very small notch made with a file, 

 and the propolis put on by the bees. There were 3 

 sections which moved a little by the journey, and 

 ever thing else was lovely. Wm. S. Robertson. 



Brookfield, Mo., July 4, 1S82. 



Your plan is a good one, friend R., but I 

 hardly think so much expense is necessary, 

 and I should have given more ventilation for 

 strong colonies. However, iis freight is lia- 

 ble to very rough handling, your plan may 

 be safest. 



candied HONEY IN THE COMB. 



I send you by to-day's mail a small can of candied 

 honey that I wrote to you about. If you are careful 

 to take out the comb jou will find at the bottom 

 some that had been subjected to heat; but the grains 

 of sugar are there the same, nevertheless. The way 

 that I got the honey was to take the combs that had 

 no brood in them, and with the honey-knife I shaved 

 off all the honey-comb and all down to the base on 

 both sides, leaving the base whole as best I could, 

 and then at night put it in vessels and set it on the 

 stove, and brought it to a heat sufficient to melt 

 wax, sugar, and all, until I thought all had thor- 

 oughly melted (stirring well in the meantime). In 

 the morning the wax had cooled, and all risen to the 

 top in a solid cake, which I took off, leaving the 

 honey in a half-sugared state, which I strained and 

 put away in a can; and in 34 hours it was as ptire 

 sugar, after heating it, as it was befori*, and that is 

 why I put Foine of that which ha I been heated, in 

 the bottom of the can, that you might taste it after 

 it had g(inc thnaigh the above process. 



All the h(jney, inclusive of persimmon and wahoo, 

 has sugarrd in the cells this year, ms you see the 

 sample. Our waLoo is synonomous with basswood. 

 We have a good deal of it on the rivers and creeks, 

 and our bees have brought in a good deal of honey 

 from it this year; but all have candied, so the sam- 



