1893 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



745 



solid ground, and could now count up the stock 

 and see how many we had. Queenless ones we 

 did not count, as the other colonies had to fur- 

 nish bees for them until they could get a queen 

 — in fact, until their own brood was hatching. 



White clover this year was the best I ever 

 saw. Pasture fields looked as white as a field 

 of buckwheat. There was so much of it that 

 the bees very nearly all worked within one mile 

 of home; and our honey this year is the best 

 grade we ever had, taking the crop all through. 



Drainings from cappings, etc., made .500 lbs., 

 or a total extracted of ii'-i.tsriO lbs. Besides the 

 extracted honey, I am taking off third stories 

 from the home yard; honey in the brood-combs, 

 at least 3000 lbs., which we will keep for spring 

 feeding, if we should want it. All the bees 

 have plenty of honey for winter. 



You will see that we commenced to extract 

 the 19th of June, and quit the 20th of July: in 

 fact, we extracted but very little after the 12th 

 of July, except in the home yard. My son 

 Newel had a set of hands. They worked the 

 out-yards, and I had one boy with me and 

 worked the home bees. There were two or 

 three times that Newel and his help were home 

 in time'tohelp me with the home bees. One 

 day they helped me two hours, and we extract- 

 ed 1400 lbs. in that time. We did it with a two- 

 frame non-reversible extractor. One hand did 

 all the extracting. That was during the third 

 extracting. The dates of extracting in the 

 home yard are not given. I extracted more or 

 less every worl<ing day while the season lasted. 



White clover was unusually good; but the 

 basswood did not amount to much; and since 

 the basswood. there has been nothing for the 

 bees to work on. Every thing is dried up. We 

 have had only two little showers since we com- 

 menced to extract. It is now just four weeks 

 to-day (Sept. 13) since we had any rain, and 

 not much then. The white clover is badly 

 killed out. It doesn't look as if we could get 

 much honey next year. We did not increase our 

 stock of bees very much. You see they were 

 weak when we commenced, and the honey 

 came in so rapidly that the bees kept the combs 

 full of honey, leaving the queens a poor show- 

 to raise brood. However, we got a good working 

 force all round, and got a few new colonies. 



HOW FRANCE MANAGES THE MOTH-WOK.M. 



We had all the empty combs we could use, to 

 make new colonies and tier up on our L. hives 

 at home. We have several hundred empty 

 combs on hand now in our storeroom. They 

 will be good for another year. We find empty 

 combs are a great help. They are as good as 

 cash in the bank. We had combs from 2i')0 col- 

 onies that died last winter and spring — most of 

 them in the spring. Some of them got wormy 

 before I could get them into the storeroom. 

 Those. I had to melt up. But all that I got 

 into the storeroom are free from worms now. 

 Our storeroom for combs is 10 f(>et square, 8 feet 

 high, lathed and plastiired; one door and one 

 window. There is a cellar under it. Down 

 cellar I have a sheet-iron stove with a four- 



inch pipe from the stove up through the floor 

 into the room above. When I got the room 

 about a third full I found that some of the 

 combs were getting a few very small worms in 

 them. I shut the door and burned half a pound 

 of sulphur in the stove below. That ended all 

 the worms. Then I kept filling in until the 

 room was full of combs; then I smoked 

 them again — burned a pound of sulphur. We 

 used out about half of the combs. About the 

 time we quit extracting I found the comb-room 

 door open one morning, and there was a bee- 

 moth on the window. I killed it and shut the 

 door. After that I saw that the door was shut 

 all the time except when it was opened to look 

 in. I made it a point to look in every day. 

 One morning when I looked in I found alwut 30 

 millers about the windows — great fat fellows. 

 I killed all of them by dropping them into a 

 pail of water, and then I set them out for the 

 chickens. I was so busy that I did not smoke 

 the room that day. The next morning there 

 were more millers about the window than the 

 day before. I just shut the door and let them 

 alone, but went down cellar with one pound of 

 sulphur— put it into the stove, and set it on fire, 

 then went up and looked in the window. There 

 they were, trying to get out— about .50 of them. 

 They had a lively time of it for about five min- 

 utes. Then they dropped down on the window- 

 sill and floor, and there they are now— not so 

 lively. The next day I found a bunch of combs, 

 about 10 of th(!m, all webbed together, full of 

 cocoons and big worms, all dead. I took the 

 bunch out of the comb-room, and put them into 

 the shop. There they are now. It is now 

 about three weeks since I smoked the room, and 

 so far I don't find any worms or signs of them; 

 but I shall smoke the room again in a day or 

 two, for possibly some of those millers' eggs 

 may hatch and make trouble. I have been 

 putting in about 400 combs of honey, taken out 

 of the third stories in the home yard. They 

 may contain a few worms. I will give them a 

 smoke, and make sure of them. But I have 

 been in the habit of putting in combs in the fall 

 every year for several years, and have not 

 smoked them, and never had worms in them. 

 But I am getting them in this year about two 

 weeks earlier, and this hot weather I am a lit- 

 tle afraid of them; so I will smoke them this 

 year. E. France 



Platteville, Wis., Sept. 12. 



getting rid 



CLOSE SPACING. 



OP BURR AND BRACE COMBS BY 

 WIDER TOl'-BARS. 



■ A correspondent writes: "After seeing what 

 you say about space in Stray Straws, Aug. 15, I 

 took the Holfman frames out of a Dovetail hive 

 and put in their place nine thick-top frames, 

 and it seems to work like a charm. W'e winter 

 here on summer stands, and seldom move the 

 hive, hence I am disposed to do away with the 

 division -board in order to have as much comb 

 as possible, with a view to large swarms. Now. 

 how do vou think the nine frames will work ? 

 Would it be safe? 



In the straw referred to I raised the question 

 whether it would not be well to have only one- 

 fourth inch between top-bars; but in that I 

 had no thought of changing the distance of 

 combs from center to center. More fully ex- 

 pressed my idea was, •" Why not make the top- 

 bar an eighth of an inch wider, so as to make 

 thi' space between top-bars V Instead of ^8 of 

 an inch?" As my correspondent lives in Ten- 

 nessee, there may be a difference between his 



