1893 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



665 



wanted to get into position to see. Thus they 

 alternately fly and rest, keeping some show in 

 the air all the time, until a regular cluster may 

 develop somewhere later on. Occasionally 

 each bee seems to come out almost as if shot 

 from a pop-gun. and goes directly high up in 

 the air; and, before the rear end of the swarm 

 is out, the advance guard is gone, nobody 

 knows where; and part of the company have 

 to return for want of any thing else to do with 

 themselves. Thus the swarm is like one of 

 those great swift comets that almost touch the 

 sun: a piece of the tail gets pulled ofl" in pass- 

 ing. So many reliable apiarists Hnd the foun- 

 tain pump of some use in controlling swarms, 

 while the same is absurdly useless with me, 

 that I judge that the dense, just-like-a-picture 

 style of swarming is common in some yards. 

 Otherwise I should be tempted to say that bees 

 never swarm that way. Who will collect all 

 these facts, and get them salted down some- 

 where where they can be referred to '? 

 Richards, O., August .■>. E. E. Hasty. 



[It seems to us, friend H., that you have pret- 

 ty well salted down the facts. However, we 

 shall be glad of more data from other sources, 

 and from yourself whenever you are prepared 

 to furnish them. To tell the truth, we had 

 rather accepted the eight-day rule as being 

 quite reliable; and even yet we are inclined to 

 regard it as more reliable than any other day 

 for us to cut out cells. If we were to cut them 

 out before or after, we are not much better off. 

 In the one case more cells may be started from 

 larvie not yet too old ; and in the other case we 

 may have swarms when the eighth day ar- 

 rives. Can't you or somebody else straighten 

 out these facts so that wo may have a rule that 

 will work a little better? Your last paragraph 

 describes more minutely and more accurately 

 all the phases of swarming with which we are 

 acquainted than any thing we have before read. 



Referring to the fountain pump, we may say 

 that we are among the "reliable apiarists" 

 who have found its use a decided advantage. 

 Indeed, there have been times when we know 

 we should have lost swarms without it; but as 

 it was. we could drive them like a drove of 

 sheep where we wanted them, and almost make 

 them cluster on the identical spot desired; but, 

 if we remember correctly, you have at your 

 apiary a large amount of shrubbery — low 

 bushes, high bushes, lots of posies, big and lit- 

 tle, and trees large and small. There are so 

 many convenient places on which a swarm may 

 cluster that a fountain pump would be "ab- 

 surdly useless." When A. I. R. planned the 

 location for our present apiary here at the 

 Home of the Honey-bees, he decided that there 

 should not be a single tree inside of the ever- 

 green inclosure. This is all very nice at swarm- 

 ing-time, but it is not so very pleasant during 

 the very hot days of summer, for the apiarist. 

 The big evergreens cut off the fine delicate 

 breezes that are so pleasant, and leave the sun 

 to pour down inside of the small square, as it 

 were.l 



THAT PADDLE, ETC. 



DOOLITTLE ARGUES FOB ONE OF SOLID WOOD. 



In Dr. Miller's "Stray Straws " for August 

 1st I find this: "Doolittle makes a paddle of 

 peculiar construction with which to kill bees 

 that persist in chasing and scolding. Avery 

 good substitute for this is a piece of heavy wire 

 cloth. It will fetch the bee every whack, while 

 the stick will miss nine times out of ten." 



Now, I should like to ask Dr. M. if he has 

 tried a stick and a piece of wire cloth, both of 

 equal dimensions, and found out that the wire 

 cloth was superior to the wooden piece. Soon 

 after I gave the item of how I killed cross bees 

 that persisted in following me about, and by 

 so doing kept things so peaceable that visitors 

 could walk about the bee-yard without danger 

 of being stung, some one wrote me privately, or 

 through one of the bee-papers, I do not remem- 

 ber which, that, if I would make a skeleton 

 paddle, and cover each side with wire cloth, 

 it would be superior to the wooden paddle, 

 inasmuch as that the air would pass through 

 the wire cloth so that the bee would be hit 

 every time, while the wooden paddle tended to 

 blow the bee out of the way of the stroke, thus 

 making it difticult to hit the bee the first time. 

 Thinking that this writer had struck the right 

 thing, as it looked so reasonable, I made two or 

 three of these wire-cloth and wood paddles, 

 and, upon a thorough trial, I found that I could 

 hit a bee just as often with the wooden one as 

 „lt,h the other. To be sure, I could hear the 

 air hiss, as the force of the blow drove it 

 through the wire cloth; but when it came to 

 hitting the bee. I could do so every time with 

 either, unless it happened to dart out of the 

 line of the blow just before the paddle got to it. 

 But there was one thing I found that was in 

 favor of the all-wood paddle that the wire 

 cloth did not possess; and that was, that, 

 every time I hit a bee with it, the bee was a 

 dead bee; while with the wire cloth, fully one- 

 half were only maimed, to die a lingering 

 death, or to come back at me with redoubled 

 fury. Now, of all the things which hurt me 

 the most, it is to see any thing die by torture: 

 and a bee maimed and hurt takes me many 

 steps out of my road to finish killing it. while a 

 dead one is thought no more of. In striking a 

 bee with the wire cloth, if the bee's head or 

 thorax goes between the wires or in the meshes, 

 it is not killed; while with the wooden one the 

 head and thorax are paralyzed at once. At 

 least, this is my experience. Keeping down 

 cross bees in this way saves lots of stings and 

 annoyance, and I think it pays as well as any 

 of the little things in the apiary. 



DEAD BEES ATCTHE ENTRANCE WHEN INTRO- 

 DUCING. 



Another " Straw " which atti-acted my atten- 

 tion in the same number was this: " Dead bees 

 to a considerable number are often seen in 

 front of a hive to which a queen has been in- 

 troduced, their curled-up position showing that 

 they have been stung to death. I think that 

 this is an indication that the queen will be re- 

 ceived all right. The bees which make an at- 

 tempt on the queen's life are stung to death." 



To this I take exceptions; and were it not 

 that Dr. M. says " I think," we should " lock 

 horns" over the matter in a way that might 

 not seem so funny to those fellows who are 

 so anxious to say "seek" when it comes to 

 Miller and Doolittle— not but that I have had 

 queens accepted all right where a fight has 

 occurred in a hive where a strange queen was 

 being introduced, till a handful or more of bees 

 were killed; but where I have had one accepted 

 all right, I have had fully two queens either 

 killed or hugged till they were good for but 

 little, or worse than nothing, because they had 

 been tortured till they could hold the place of 

 a queen, but not fill it. Many a queen have I 

 known, under such circumstances, to be kept in 

 a ball of bees so long that they were shiny all 

 over, the fine hairs being all scraped or gnawed 

 off, and many times the wings were torn in 

 shreds, with one or more of their legs stiffened, 

 till they were useless. After keeping them in 



