416 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



May 15. 



say in several of the papers in regard to this 

 very matter. In taking a small quantity of 

 valuable potatoes, like the Craig, for instance, 

 and increasing a single tuber to the utmost, he 

 practices pulling off the sprouts, after they 

 nave made a leaf or two above ground, and 

 have sent up little branching roots where the 

 sprout is attached to the potato, a good deal as 

 we do with the sweet potato. These sets may 

 be pulled off and planted out; but to make a 

 success of it you want this kind of fine rich soil 

 I have been talking about. I suppose florists 

 would call it 2Joffi?icf-soil. There are many 

 grades of this potling-soil; but when we get 

 some that is real good it will start potato-plants. 

 or any other kind of plants, with almost no 

 effort or care at all. For instance, when we 

 put out plants in our plant- beds, if the sun 

 shines during the month of May we must both 

 water the plants and shade them during the 

 middle of the day, in ordinary soil; but if you 

 have plenty of the very host kind of this pot- 

 tingsoil, if you put out good plants over night, 

 and give them a pretty good wetting, they will 

 have caught on to this (jood soil even during 

 the night, so they will sland up all next day in 

 the sun unless, indet^d. it shines tremendously 

 hot, with severe drying winds. The plants will 

 do this with such soil where they would need 

 to be shaded a week in ordlnarv garden dirt. 



I have mentioned before doing quite a trade 

 in furnishing this potting-soil. We eet 10 cts. a 

 peck or 25 cts. a bushel for it: and where we 

 give a real good article, everybody thinks it is 

 cheap, and is sure to come again. But if I am 

 away from home, the boys are pretty apt to fill 

 the order from some bed where it is only toler- 

 ably good. When I tell them that at this price 

 they ought to have the very best we have — 

 even that right out of the greenhouse-benches 

 — they are apt to dpmur. and think we can not 

 spare it. Why, 25 cts. a bushel would pay for 

 clear stable manure, and we can make a very 

 nice potting-soil with a half or even a fourth of 

 well-rotted manure. A great many times we 

 can find just the very best of this stuff where 

 an old hogpen, stable, or even poultry-house. 

 has rotted down in some obscure corner. I 

 think the best I have seen was where we put a 

 great lot of poultry-manure in one of our green- 

 houses. I feared it would kill the plants; but 

 by spading the ground down very deep — say 

 more than a foot— and sifting the whole to- 

 gether repeatedly, it did not hurt the plants — 

 at least very much. But it did not get to do its 

 best until it had been worked and turned over 

 for about one year, and then it was just beau- 

 tiful to look at or to handle; and any thing 

 that was given a chance would take hold and 

 begin to grow almost in one night, and the 

 plants would cover the ground, and need trans- 

 Ijlanting again, almost before one could turn 

 his back. Oh what bright, clean, smooth-look- 

 ing foliage— cabbage, celery, tomato, and every 

 thing else! Somebody has put in a caution 

 about getting the ground too rich for vegetable- 

 plants. I never saw it too rich myself, provid- 

 ing they had plenty of sun and air, and were 

 transplanted further apart just as soon as they 

 began to crowd each other in the least. 



I often read the piece on the tliird \>nge of " Bees 

 and Honey." and sometimes the tears blind ni.veyes. 

 I know you must be a frDorl man to meet with such 

 wonderful siicecss— oiu'e a laboring: boy and now 

 keeper ovt'i' sueli woiulei'ful works. As a rvile I 

 make things prosper along- "ly path. T commenced 

 empty-liaiidcd. but now it is (pnte diffei'ent. I am 

 bound to make the bee-business tlourish in this val- 

 ley. 1 have always kept bees, but on the old plan, 

 which amounts to nothing. 



M. A. Bellows, GrifHn's Corners, N. Y. 



HONEY FROM THE FLORIDA WILD PP^NNYROYAL. 



Around friend Poppleton's, and at other 

 places around Indian River, we saw a plant 

 which they call pennyroyal. ]t is not a bit 

 like the pennyroyal of the North, however, but 

 it is rather a sort of vine with a pennyroyal 

 taste. It spreads and grows of itself, with even 

 just a little chance, and friend King is prepar- 

 ing now to plant out ten acres. I suggested 

 moving his bees to some place where he could 

 have 7Hi?idrec?s of acres without the trouble of 

 planting it. But he thought he could prepare 

 and plant ten acres around his home cheaper 

 than to move his bees, etc., to where the penny- 

 royal is already. 



Friend King asked me the question whether 

 bees always gather honey when the flowers 

 yield it. Of course, I said they would; and 

 when he went on to tell me of a time w hen the 

 black mangrove yielded so much honey that it 

 actually dropped out of the blossoms on the 

 leaves below, and the bees would not touch it 

 at all, I was going to accuse him of supersti- 

 tion. He finally explained it by saying they 

 had a sort of salt-water fog, or spray, that 

 covered the blossoms, bushes, and all. until the 

 honey tasted of the salt. After they had had a 

 good rain they washed out the salt honey, so 

 that some more was secreted, and then the bees 

 went at it again with a great boom. 



MORE ABOUT THE SHELL MOUNI>S. 



Close by friend King's ranch, a spur, or side- 

 track, branches off from the main road, and 

 runs down to a shell mound on the banks of 

 Indian River. This side-track is solely to take 

 shells by the carload to the adjoining towns 

 and cities for paving the streets. As soon as I 

 was able to walk half a mile or more we went 

 over to this shell mound. The shells had been 

 shoveled away, and the track pushed off into 

 the mound until in places a wall of solid shells 

 rises almost perpendicularly beside the track, 

 up fifteen or twenty feet. Was this great 

 mound or hill made entirely of shells thrown 

 away after some former race of people had used 

 the contents for food? One feels a little in- 

 credulous; but as he examines the shells and 

 finds they were broken open much as we open 

 them now, and the large conch shells mixed in, 

 each one of them having an opening broken in 

 at just the right point to scoop out the edible 

 portion, it begins to look as if it must have been 

 the work of human beings. Besides this, at 

 different points along up the wall of shells we 

 see strata of dirt, debris, ashes, charcoal, and 

 even broken pottery, indicating that the people 

 who lived there encamped for some time on a 

 certain spot, and that this spot was at a later 

 date vacated and covered up with a foot or two 

 of shells; then another encampment, and so on. 

 Are these shells valuable only for road-making ? 

 Yes, they can be easily burned into lime, to be 

 used for plastering houses, or to be spread on 

 the soil where lime is needed; and some excel- 

 lent results have been obtained by using these 

 burnt shells for a fertilizer. One trouble is to 

 get the fuel to burn them. 



WAXING HONEY-BARRELS. 



Before I finish up my visit at friend King's I 

 want to speak about barrels for honey. In that 

 warm southern clime, where frosts are so sel- 

 dom known, there are great varieties of insect- 

 enemies that we know nothing about. For in- 

 stance, if you leave a boat in the water for any 



