46 



GLEANINGS IN HEE CULTURE. 



Jan. 1.">. 



flattering to our craft. I find them men with 

 broad and liberal views on all questions of in- 

 terest, nearly all men of temperate habits, and 

 a large per cent truly Christian gentlemen. 



ANOTHER GENTLE HINT FOR RAMBLER. 



I hope the Rambler will visit the World's 

 Fair. You know that Cupid is quite a tactician, 

 and has been known to be successful in some 

 cases by blazing away at the stomach instead 

 of the heart; and as the Rambler has been eat- 

 ing his own cooking for the past year, he may 

 be more tender— well, you see the possibilities. 

 I was thinking of Rambler the other night. 

 You see, the young people here insist on having 

 my wife for superintendent of the Y. P. S. C. E. 

 I do not belong myself, but I want my children 

 to, so I sometimes take care of the baby, and 

 my wife takes the older children and goes, 

 while I spend my time entertaining the baby 

 and meditating what I should do were I de- 

 prived of these blessings. I guess it does me 

 good, too, for I hnow I more fully appreciate 

 ray family after one of these evening's lonesome 

 meditation. I think the whole fraternity will 

 join me in saying that it were better for the 

 Rambler to be seen up nights hunting over his 

 cupboard for paragoric or some other soothing- 

 syrup to quiet the little Rambler, while the 

 mother gracefully looked on and criticised, than 

 to see him as he is, dressed with a look of rage 

 mingled with fright, hunting for a stick of 

 greasewood to throw at those pesky polecats. 

 I think if your artist would picture a little 

 Rambler sitting up in his little trundlebed in 

 that lonely cabin, and crying with his father's 

 persistence, he would see all those pests that 

 live under the floor leaving for more comforta- 

 ble quarters. iz: M. A. Gill. 



Viola, Wis., Dec. 13. » 



MANUM IN THE APIARY. 



FEEDING back; EXPERIMENTS IN SUGAR HONEY. 



■' Have you commenced feeding your bees so 

 soon?"' asks Charles, as he enters the honey- 

 house, just as Manum is going out with a pail 

 of extracted honey. 



" Yes, Charles. I am feeding back some of my 

 honey that I have extracted from the unfinish- 

 ed sections, to have some of my best unfinished 

 ones completed." 



" Do you find that it pays to feed back ? "' 



"Yes, it does in my case, for the reason that 

 I have but very little call for extracted honey; 

 and this year I have got so many unfinished 

 sections that, if I did not extract from a portion 

 of them to get the remainder finished, I should 

 have more extracted honey than I can dispose 

 of in my home market; and, furthermore, when 

 I get this honey into the sections again, and 

 nicely sealed over, it is worth more than it is 

 now." 



"Don't you find there is a shrinkage in this 

 honey by feeding it back?" 



"Yes, there is some shrinkage, but not in 

 proportion to the difl'erence in the price between 

 comb and extracted honey, inasmuch as the 

 combs are already drawn out." 



" What makes your extracted honey .so thin? 

 Mine is thick and heavy." 



" Well, Charles, in order to get the bees to 

 take it from the feeders rapidly I find it neces- 

 sary to add one-third warm water; by so doing 

 I find that they do much better in finishing up 

 their work than where it is fed to them too 

 thick. Just step out here and I will show you. 

 There, you see this hive has on 80 sections that 

 were given them day before yesterday; and. as 



you see, they are nearly finished. I think by 

 to-morrow night they will do to take off and 

 more put on." 



" My ! they are working in the boxes as busily 

 as I ever saw bees work during a good bass- 

 wood flow. TIow many colonies are you feeding 

 in this way?'" 



"Only 15. These 15 colonies will do all my 

 finishing up." 



"How much do you feed at a time, to each 

 colony?'' 



"About 15 lbs. These new feeders, you know, 

 hold 16 lbs. of thick syrup, such as we feed in 

 the fall for winter stores; but this diluted honey 

 is not as heavy as our syrup is, and I calculate 

 that a feeder full will weigh only about 15 lbs., 

 though I have never weighed any to ascertain." 



" Have you ever tried feeding sugar syrup for 

 the same purpose that you are feeding this 

 honey? " 



"Yes; and right here are two colonies that I 

 am experimenting with in feeding sugar syrup. 

 Now, I want to show you the difference be- 

 tween the two kinds of honey. This sugar 

 honey, you will see, looks diff'erently where it is 

 capped over: the cappings look watery, or icy, 

 as though the honey were frozen in the comb. 

 1 don't know why it should be so; but there it 

 is; it shows for itself. I thought, when I ex- 

 amined the honey on the first hive I opened, 

 that it was the nature of the bees of this colony; 

 but when 1 found that both colonies capped 

 their honey in the same way, I thought that it 

 might be owing to the sugar syrup fed them; 

 however, that may not be the case. Two colo- 

 nies are hardly enough to prove the matter for 

 a certainty." 



" Well, now, Manum, to be honest, do you 

 think that feeding sugar syrup for the purpose 

 of having it stored in sections to sell as honey 

 will pay us in dollars and cents, laying aside all 

 conscientious scruples as to the dishonesty of 

 the practice? Have you tried it thoroughly 

 enough so that you are satisfied regarding the 

 matter?'' 



" Well, Charles, you have asked a difficult 

 question for me to answer. I wish you would 

 try to confine yourself to easy questions. In 

 the first place, you ask whether feeding sugar 

 for the purpose of making honey will pay. I 

 will answer that by showing you what these 

 two colonies did last week. Here are the fig- 

 ures. The two finished up 330 sections, two 

 sets each, of 80 to the set; 330 sections (partly 

 filled), weighing 1.50 lbs., at 15 cts. per lb., would 

 be I33..50 for the honey given them in the sec- 

 tions; 300 lbs. of sugar fed them, at 5 cts., $15.00, 

 making $37.50 worth of sugar and honey given 

 them. The 330 sections, when removed from 

 the hives, weighed 303 lbs.; and, at 15 cts. per 

 lb., would be $45.30. Now we will deduct the 

 $37.50 worth given them, and we have $7.80 for 

 the trouble of mixing sugar, feeding, etc., which 

 is fairly good wages. Therefore, if sugar can 

 be bought at 5 cts. per lb., and we can sell our 

 honey at 15 cts., as it comes from the hive, there 

 is profit in feeding sugar." 



"Well, Manum, but what has become of all 

 the sugar you gave the bees? You fed nearly 

 as much dry sugar as you have taken off in the 

 sections, including the 1.50 lbs. of honey that 

 was already in the sections. Surely it could 

 not have evaporated that much." 



"No, Charles; not all this waste went up in 

 vapor, but a good portion of it went to support 

 the bees and in comb-building, and some of it 

 was stored in the hive; perhaps 15 lbs. of it is 

 still in the hive; and as I am following up the 

 experiment with these same two colonies, I am 

 of the opinion that the gain will be more in 

 favor of the sugar this time, because the combs 

 in the brood-chamber are so well filled that a 



