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GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



Feb. 1 



a prelude to my story. I purchased three 

 more colonies that spring, and moved them 

 the fore part of June. They were perfectly 

 healthy, as were the four I had wintered. 

 The raspberry commenced to bloom, and it 

 was followed by white clover, so that my 

 seven weak colonies built up rapidly. 



About the first of July I decided to begin 

 preparations for increasing my apiary. I 

 moved one colony to a new location and 

 placed a set of combs on the old stand for 

 the old queen. If the old colony had plenty 

 of young bees left I intended to let it rear 

 its own cells. On looking at the old brood a 

 day afterward I was somewhat surprised to 

 find that nearly all the bees had deserted it. 

 I took away most of the sealed brood and 

 gave it to other colonies for fear it would 

 chill, massing the frames left containing 

 partly unsealed brood in the center of the 

 nive. It was now not much better than a 

 nucleus. About ten days later I made an 

 examination. The sealed brood had mostly 

 hatched, but that which was unsealed had 

 died and lay untouched in the cells. Half of 

 it had turned to a dark-brown mass. I 

 thought it was chilled brood, and it might 

 have been, for the colony was perfectly 

 healthy. When I divided it I gave the 

 frames to several of the other colonies. The 

 honey-flow continued a while longer — about 

 ten days — and the dead brood practically dis- 

 appeared. After the flow had ceased I no- 

 ticed a large quantity of dead brood in sev- 

 eral hives. I began to think something was 

 wrong. Several in the neighborhood who 

 kept bees were consulted. They had never 

 noticed any such thing except an occasional 

 cell, therefore they were inclined to think it 

 was poisoned or starved brood, so I did noth- 

 ing. Being anxious for increase that year I 

 formed nuclei, raised queens, and then 

 strengthened the nuclei by drawing brood 

 from the stronger colonies. The seven col- 

 onies were increased that year to thirty, all 

 of which were inoculated with disease. 



GOOD PROSPECTS FOR 1905. 



The bees wintered well, as I lost only three 

 colonies out of thirty. The first batch of brood 

 the bees reared appeared to be healthy, and 

 I thought the disease had disappeared. This 

 is something I have often noticed with the 

 disease. The first lot of brood raised in the 

 spring is, to all appearance, healthy. It is 

 tne second lot, or after that, when the dis- 

 ease begins to appear. But soon I noticed 

 it in a few colonies, and by the latter part of 

 May every colony but two was badly dis- 

 eased. Some showed very few healthy cells. 

 In some cases it seemed to affect the bees. 

 Some colonies that had prepared to swarm, 

 in a few weeks had scarcely enough bees to 

 cover the brood. These, of course, were ex- 

 ceptional cases. Two colonies remained 

 healthy. One was a hybrid; the other colo- 

 nies left showed three yellow bands, al- 

 though at that time I had introduced no new 

 blood. The rest were all hybrids. 



I sent a sample of the brood to the A. I. 

 Root Co. They pronounced it pickled brood, 

 or possibly foul brood, and advised me to 



give the bees the McEvoy treatment. I de- 

 cided to follow their advice and do a thor- 

 ough job. So on the first day of June, 1905, 

 I snook all the thirty colonies, except the 

 two healthy ones, on frames with starters. 

 As I had no tight building to handle the 

 combs in I carried the whole 28 set through 

 our dining-room, up a flight of stairs, through 

 a hall, into an attic. As luck would have it, 

 mother did not notice the honey and bits of 

 comb that got on to the stair carpet until the 

 combs were all in the attic. Shaking the 

 bees and carrying the combs into the attic 

 occupied a whole day, and a hard day's work 

 it was. 



That evening I went to work extracting 

 the honey out of the combs. Part of it was 

 candied and would not come out. I worked 

 past midnight, took a "lay off" next day, 

 and worked past midnight the next night be- 

 fore I got the stuff extracted. 



Next morning I built a fire under the big 

 iron kettle, went up into the attic, cut the 

 combs from the frames, put them in sacks, 

 and carried them down and put them into 

 the kettle to render into wax. I had just 

 completed stacking the combs, and had part 

 of them in the kettle. The wax was about 

 ready to boil over when mother came to the 

 door and informed me that the attic was full 

 of smoke — the house must be on fire. I hur- 

 ried into the house and up into the attic, 

 distinctly remembering that, the day before, 

 I had had the smoker up there driving some 

 bees out of doors that had clustered on the 

 windows. 



Pierpont, Ohio. 



To be continued. 



THE VARIATION IN ORANGE HONEY. 



BY EDWIN G. BALDWIN. 



My dear Mr. Root: — You will note in the 

 article by Mr. H. F. Hart, of Alabama, page 

 738, Dec. 1, that he names titi and black hi- 

 pelo, sweet gum, gallberry, and loquat as 

 possible sources of contamination with the 

 pure orange nectar. I am much obliged to 

 him for his kindness in calling my attention 

 to what he believes are possible sources; but 

 locality has so much effect, he naturally sup- 

 posed that, because we live in Florida, we 

 have all the trees, shrubs, etc., that are to 

 be found anywhere in the State, and have 

 them right here in range of our bees at De- 

 land. 



As a matter of fact and interest, the titi 

 and black tupelo do not extend further south 

 than the northern end of Lake George, 

 northern end of our county, sixty or more 

 miles from us. That is the southern limit of 

 their growth. The loquat is here in fairly 

 large numbers; but it is now in bloom, and 

 will be till early January. It is in fruit, not 

 blossom, by the time oranges come into blos- 

 som, and can not possibly be a source of any 

 of the honey in the supers at orange-bloom- 

 ing time unless it be carried up by the bees 

 later in giving the queen room, as stated in 

 my article on orange honey in your columns. 



