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GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Aug. 15. 



the Mormons were at Nauvoo, 111., they sent 

 some of their elders to preach, and set stakes in 

 this part of Zion. and many of these elders were 

 very illiterate, considering the work they were 

 expected to do. On one occasion two of them 

 had an appointment to preach in a schoolhouse 

 near here; and when about to announce his 

 text, the one who was to preach stated that he 

 had forgotten to bring his Bible, but that his 

 text would be found in the book of Exodus, and 

 read like this: "And Bezaleel made the ark." 



"Hold on!" exclaimed the other elder, "it 

 was Noah who built the ark; everybody knows 

 that." 



"Brother," said the first elder, " I believe I 

 know what I am about, and I say it was Bezaleel 

 who made the ark; and if some good brother or 

 sister has a Bible here we will soon settle our 

 dispute." 



A Bible was procured from a house near by, 

 and the first elder turned to the 37th chapter of 

 Exodus, and read: "And Bezaleel made the ark 

 of shittim wood," etc. Explanations were in 

 order, and it was apparent that the two eldliFs 

 had different arks in their minds, and that a 

 little explanation by elder No. 1 would have 

 made a controversy impossible. If we were to 

 take a wider view of many of the disputes that 

 arise we should often see that there is really no 

 occasion for a dispute. 



In the Amc7-ican Bee Journal for July 18, 

 Mr. J. A. Nash, of Monroe, la., gives an ac- 

 count of getting a great deal of honey-dew 

 honey a few. years ago, and he blames that 

 honey for the destruction of his bees during the 

 following winter and spring. As all bee-keep- 

 ers in this part of Jowa had an experience with 

 that kind of honey at the time, and as some of 

 us wintered our bees successfully on it, I felt 

 inclined to dispute his statement that it was 

 the honey-dew that was so detrimental to his 

 bees; but when I come to consider some of the 

 facts I am inclined to think he is right. He 

 wintered his bees in a cellar, and I wintered 

 mine in chaff hives on their summer stands; 

 and it is possible that my bees were enabled to 

 take a purifying flight during the winter, with- 

 out being unnecessarily disturbed, while his 

 were not, and that may have made all the dif- 

 ference between success and failure. 



During the fall of 1871 our bees here gathered 

 much of that honey-dew honey, and at that 

 time we knew nothing of chaff hives, and re- 

 sorted to cellar wintering, and almost all of 

 the bees in the country died. 



If at any time before our strawberries ripened 

 this year any one had asserted that bees work- 

 ed on ripe strawberries I should have said that 

 it was a mistake, as I had never, in my long 

 experience as a fruit grower, seen a single bee 

 on a ripe strawberry; but this year my bees 

 attacked what few strawberries had escaped 

 the frost of May 13th, with a fury that was ir- 



resistible. As only myself and boys, who were 

 used to handling bees, did the picking, they 

 did not drive us out of the patch as Mr. Wm. C. 

 Ash by says of himself in the American Bee 

 Journal; but they did ruin fully half of the 

 crop; and as berries were scarce and high- 

 priced, the loss was a serious one. My loss by 

 bees working on strawberries and raspberries 

 this year will aggregate more than all the bees 

 and honey that I have sold from an average of 

 30 stands of bees in ten years; and yet there 

 are plenty of writers on bee culture who will 

 assert that bees never do any damage to fruit 

 of any kind. 



Bees, like human beings, will try to live on 

 any thing that gives a promise of appeasing 

 hunger when starvation drives them to it; and 

 bee-keepers certainly owe it to horticulturists 

 that they feed their bees and keep them at 

 home at times when starvation drives them to 

 destroy fruit. 



When picking strawberries and raspberries 

 I noticed that, during the morning and until 

 about 9 o'clock, when the bees were knocked 

 off the berries they were quite lively, and either 

 flew away or else to another berry; but after 

 about 9 o'clock, if knocked off they fell to the 

 ground and acted as if intoxicated. Did the 

 berry-juice have that effect on them? No 

 berry-juice, so far as I could ascertain, was car- 

 ried to the hives. 



Our blackberries were a complete failure. 

 From two acres I did not get a single box. The 

 drouth used up what the frost did not kill. 

 This week we have had five inches of rainfall, 

 and the drouth is broken. 



Muscatine, la., July 20. 



[I think we can not question that the bees do 

 at times work on strawberry-blossoms; neither 

 can we question that they may, in very rare in- 

 stances, attack the fruit itself while on the 

 vines. I do not remember to have read a re- 

 port of their having done so before; and I 

 should say the case you mention is most unusu- 

 al; still, we must not conceal the facts. I don't 

 have much sympathy with that class of bee- 

 keepers and bee-journal editors who insist, in 

 spite of all the facts to the contrary, that bees 

 will not attack ripe fruit. Careful and consci- 

 entious bee-keepers who observe matters close- 

 ly know that they do at times when there is a 

 great dearth of nectar from natural sources. 

 The cases, however, are not frequent; but to de- 

 ny them all is to do more harm than good.— Ed.] 



NO HONEY AT DR. MILLER'S. 



THE QUESTION OF BROOD CHAMBEKS, LARGE 

 OR SMALL. DISCUSSED. 



By Emma Wilsou. 



We are disappointed in more ways than one 

 in not having any honey crop this year, as 

 there were so many experiments that we want- 

 ed to try. They had to be postponed last year 

 on account of the failure, and it is rather dis- 

 couraging to know that they will have to go 



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