1893 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



493 



ers. It seems that, during the past month, 

 the bees have been working in supers as they 

 ordinarily do in June; and that, taking it all 

 in all, there has been such early summer 

 weather as has not prevailed for many a year. 

 We learn, also, that the drouth and heat have 

 been such that the cattle have been dying in 

 some parts of Europe; and in other parts snow- 

 storms have prevailed to such an extent as to 

 cause immense damage; that plagues of lo- 

 custs have infested Algeria, destroying the 

 crops for miles around. The prospects, both 

 for England and Ireland, have never been 

 brighter. That our friends across the water 

 may be blessed with a big crop of honey is the 

 wish of all the cousins on this side of the big 

 pond. 



Locust-trees, so far as we can judge from re- 

 ports, and from what we notice of those in our 

 own locality, have been doing unusually well 

 this season. White clover is following up the 

 locusts very closely. The prospects for a crop 

 of honey were never better; and although the 

 seasons have been discouraging of late, bee- 

 keepers should not fail to see that their bees 

 are in good order — strong, and ready for honey 

 when it does come. Indeed, it is already on the 

 way. The conditions of weather during the 

 past few weeks have never been more favorable. 

 It would be a sad comment on bee-keepers, if 

 they should have an extraordinary season this 

 year — if they were to let the nectar go to waste, 

 simply for want of bees, or from a lack of en- 

 terprise to get the bees in order to secure it. 

 We presume that, ere this number is out, in 

 many portions of the North the bees will be 

 actively at work. Hold your tin pans up to 

 catch the honey-shower when it comes; and 

 look out for the basswood-blossoms, as men- 

 tioned by Doolittle in another column. 



In the Bee-keepers' Review, page 18(5, we find 

 the following, from the pen of E. E. Hasty, un- 

 der the heading of a " Condensed View of Cur- 

 rent Bee-writings:" 



The world moves, Gleanings included. When 

 Weed was at artiflcial-conib making- it preserved a 

 silence tliat could be cut into chunks with a knife. 

 I think the Review was about tlio only journal that 

 frankly told right out all it could get hold of to 

 tell. 



Elsewhere the editor says, editorially, that 

 "Gleanings did eventually describe and no- 

 tice the Weed artificial comb." When we first 

 read these lines over we were at a loss to know 

 what was meant by these quotations, as we 

 were sure we had fully described the Weed ar- 

 tificial comb. No doubt our item on page 297 is 

 referred to. As this form was going to press, 

 we had time to look up only one reference. If 

 Bro. Hasty will put on his specs, and turn to 

 page 824 of Gleanings for 1889, he will find a 

 full account of the early experiments in mak- 

 ing artificial comb, and all about how it was 

 made by Mr. Weed. In fad, the senior editor 

 made a trip to the factory, in Detroit, Mich. 

 Later on we made other allusions to and have 

 experimented with it carefully in our apiary, 

 but could not make the bees take it. As to why 

 we should " preserve a silence that could be 

 cut into chunks with a knife" on this question, 

 even if it were true, is a little hard for us to 

 understand. We have had neither desire nor 

 object in suppressing information relative to 

 such comb. 



In this issue the Rambler gives a very inter- 

 esting fact in regard to the white-sage blossoms, 

 and how the bee manages toabstract the nectar 

 that the blossom seems loath to give up. We 

 have recorded in the ABC how Italians would 

 break through the flower-stem to get the nec- 



tar of the touch-me-not ; but here is another 

 way in which the bee seems to overcome any 

 obstruction that nature may afford. The ques- 

 tion may be asked. Why is it that the white 

 sage is jealous of her treasures, as expressed by 

 Rambler? Is it that she desires to give her 

 treasured sweet only to that most intelligent of 

 all insects, the bee. or that she would if she 

 could hold them all to herself? Who of our 

 readers can give us some light on this interest- 

 ing question? Perhaps Prof. Cook can come to 

 our rescue as he has done so many times before. 

 Oh, yesi the Rambler has directed us to an- 

 other interesting fact; viz.. that the sheep in- 

 dustry come into direct conflict with that of the 

 bees, yheep are close grazers, and it is no 

 wonder that 5000 of them in a good bee country 

 are unwelcome to the bee-keeper. 



percentage of winter losses throughout 

 the united states. 

 On page 404 of our issue for May 15 we called 

 for reports as to how the bees had wintered. 

 The first question was this: What percentage 

 of your bees have wintered? and the second, 

 What percentage of the bees in your locality, 

 as nearly as you can estimate, have wintered? 

 By summing up all the reports that have been 

 received within the two weeks just past, we 

 find the total aggregate is 77 per cent to Qu. 1; 

 for No. 2, the per cent is only 57. This is much 

 better than we expected it would be, as it seems 

 the losses were not as heavy as the I'eports 

 seemed to indicate early in the season. The 

 greatest mortality seems to have been in New 

 York, Indiana, Wisconsin, Illinois, Ohio, and 

 Michigan, in the order named. Throughout 

 the whole South there seems to have been, as 

 usual, but little if any loss, and that only from 

 starvation. The reports were not as numerous 

 as we could have desired, yet they are suffi- 

 ciently so to give us a very fair idea of the con- 

 dition of bees throughout the country. Dear, 

 dear, dear! the Home of the Honey-bees seems 

 to be at the bottom of the whole ladder. One 

 thing we have determined upon is this: Never 

 unite again so late in the fall a lot of nuclei. 

 We believe it was friend Alley (and perhaps he 

 was not very far from right) who said it was 

 about as cheap to throw the few bees into the 

 grass. That seems cruel, but perhaps not more 

 so than to let them pine away one by one with 

 dysentery during the subsequent winter and 

 spring. Queen-rearing can not be pursued 

 profitably so late in the season in the North, as 

 our experience showed. 



HAS THE SELF-HIVEK HAD ITS DAY ? 



The editors of the Review and the Aplcul- 

 turist take the ground that the self-hiver has 

 had its day. They may be right; but we are 

 not quite willing yet to let go of something 

 that worked practically in our apiary with 

 much satisfaction last summer. Alley has 

 never tried the Pratt self-hiver, if we are cor- 

 rect; and having tested his own quite thorough- 

 ly he has abandoned it. By the way, editor 

 Alley rather scores Pratt for switching from 

 one hiver to another. Folks who live in glass 

 houses should not throw stones. If any one 

 has switched from one hiver to another, it has 

 been Mr. Alley. 



If the non-swarming devices are actually 

 non-swarming, they will be preferable to any 

 automatic hiver ever made. Hut, right here, 

 does not the chief objection urged against the 

 Pratt hiver, to the effect that it requires the 

 lifting of heavy supers, obtain equal force 

 against the Langdon non-swarming system? 

 Let us not urge that lifting is an insurmount- 

 able objection when there is necessarily a large 

 amount of that sort of work in the apiary. We 



