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GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Oct. 1. 



seems to make but little difference whether 

 the atmosphere is dry or moist. After having 

 lost pretty heavily in experimenting with can- 

 dies other than the sugar and honey of the 

 Good old sort, we have decided to " stay where 

 we are at," and let Good enough alone. 



In midwinter you may find some colonies 

 short of stores, aiid the only way to pull them 

 through is to give them a lump of candy: or it 

 may be well to have a stock on hand, ready for 

 an emergency. 





W^hosoever shall exiilt himself shall be abased; and he that 

 •shall humble himself shall be exalted.— Matt. 33: 12. 



Say, Rambler, the idea of crossing lightning- 

 bugs with bees is older than the hills. 



In our last issue we expressed a doubt as to 

 whether the fall flow of honey would amount to 

 much throughout the North; but so far reports 

 in our own locality, as well as those in many 

 oihers, show that the fall flow of honey will be 

 pretty fair in spite of the prevailing drouth. 



We have had several inquiries as to how 

 many there would be in attendance at the big 

 convention in Chicago, from the Home of the 

 Honey-bees. Both of the editors of Glicanings 

 expect to be there, accompanied by their better 

 halves. The latter, however, do not promise to 

 be present at all of the meetings, because thev 

 say the World's Fair has greater attractions. 



We find it necessary for us to say again, as 

 we have often said before, that articles from 

 small bee-keepnrs are just as acceptable as 

 those from bee-keepers who number their colo- 

 nies by the several hundred. It is not the 

 numerical strength of an apiary that decides 

 whether the owner's articles shall be used, but 

 the value of the article itself. Other things 

 being equal, the owner of a large' apiary is more 

 experienced than one who has a small number 

 of colonies. 



We have just been down looking over the 

 progeny of the extra yellow queens of the five- 

 banded stock obtained from Mrs. .Jennie Atch- 

 ley. These queens were placed in the apiary of 

 our neighbor, Mr. Vei'uon Burt. who. as you 

 may know, is testing for us bees, devices, etc. 

 Weil, the bees are very yellow and quite in- 

 dustrious, and our friend Burt seems to think 

 they are a little bit ahead of the ordinary stock. 

 We have protested against this tendency on the 

 part of queen-breeders to running to yellow 

 stock; but when the facts show that industry 

 as well as beauty are combined together, we 

 protest no longer. It biggins to look now as if 

 the American Italian queens would excel any 

 other queens of this race in the world. 



We extend our grateful acknowledgements 

 to the Bee keepers' Revieiv and the American 

 Bee Journal for the pleasant things said of our 

 co-worker and friend. W. P. Root, regarding 

 those book reviews he has been writing up of 

 late. We knew all along that these reviews 

 would be appreciated: and when we came into 

 possession of that gold-mine of old books it 

 occurred to us that our friend would be just 

 the right person to look them over. This he 



has not only done, but read nearly every thing 

 in them. Those of our readers who have not 

 read the reviews would do well to go ioack to 

 the June 1st number and read them clear 

 through. The writer's excellent knowledge of 

 the times in which they were written enables 

 him to make these reviews doubly interesting. 

 By the way, the last paragraph in the review 

 for this issue is exceedingly well put. Some oi 

 the domestic scenes referred to remind one of 

 the "Cotter's Saturday Night." 



Quiet robbing, as spoken of on page 687, has 

 been a great boon to our apiary. Usually, dur- 

 ing the month of September there has been 

 very little egg-laying; and this is just the time 

 we want brood-rearing to be doing its best. 

 Barring good protection and good stores there 

 is nothing that insures successful wintering 

 more than a lot of young bees raised in the 

 early fall. Well, this quiet robbing has stimu- 

 lated our whole apiary to brood - rearing. 

 Queens have been reared, and eggs have been 

 laid during the month just past just about as 

 we find it in the height of the honey-flow, when 

 every thing is booming at its best; and the 

 result is, we shall have a large force of young 

 bees and young queens. It should not be for- 

 gotten, however, that young queens are far bet- 

 ter fall layers than old ones; and this will 

 account in part for the egg-laying. 



Various methods are now being proposed for 

 scraping propolis oft' the sections. This is all 

 proper in its place, and is just what we called 

 for; but it may be w(^ll to suggest that much 

 scraping may be avoided by using the right kind 

 of surplus appliances. When sections are put in- 

 to section-iiolders or shallow wide frames with 

 wide wooden separators placed between, separa- 

 tors wide enough to cover up entirely the per- 

 pendicular edges of the sections, and the whole 

 keyed up, very little scraping will have to be 

 done. The surplus arrangement of the Dove- 

 tailed hive — not that we want to boom that 

 particular hive in this department — was made 

 along these lines, after having carefully ex- 

 amined the surplus arrangements of prominent 

 bee-keepers, right in . their own workshops. 

 When the sections are keyed up tight it closes 

 up the interstices between the sections and the 

 separators; and the tighter these are closed up, 

 the less propolis will be chinked in; in fact, 

 when the crop is stored rapidly, little or no 

 scraping will be necessary when the sections 

 are placed in the arrangement we have de- 

 scribed above. 



One of our correspondents, Mr. John B. Ma- 

 son, of Tasmania, calls our attention to an ex- 

 periment that was performed by Sir John Lub- 

 bock and Professor Darwin for the purpose of 

 showing for what particular color, if any, the 

 bees have a preference. " The experiment," he 

 writes." was performed by spreading on a white 

 cloth small squares of variously colored glass, 

 with a dab of honey in the center. The bees 

 were found to always crowd on to the blue." 

 Our correspondent goes on to state that, if bine 

 is the favorite color of the bees, a flag at con- 

 ventions can be displayed as an emblem of the 

 industry. It can be made of " blue bunting, 

 with a bee in relief, having gold thread for bars, 

 and an old-time straw skep in gold." If the 

 bees do show a decided preference for blue, such 

 an emblem would be very pretty and appropri- 

 ate; but from some very casual observations 

 with hives of variously colored fronts, we could 

 not discover that the bees showed any particu- 

 lar preference. As to whether bees may prefer 

 one color above another is not a point of any 

 particular importance; but it may be interest- 

 ing to know, nevertheless. 



