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GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE, 



Nov. 1. 



can have the timber shipped north and made 

 up. A good deal is being shipped already. 



I like Gleanings mostly for its home talks 

 and useful hints in general, as I have but few 

 bees now, and will never change the Simplicity 

 hive for any other. 



Honey crop is light here. I aim to raise hon- 

 ey only for my own use. J. G. Fitzgerald. 



Brookstown, Tex., Oct. 9. 



[We are glad to give place to the above letter, 

 even though the principal point is, getting tim- 

 ber from a place as far away as Texas. While 

 reading it the idea kept coming to my mind, 

 that wagon-wheels made entirely of metal 

 would never get loose in dry weather; and, in 

 fact, I have seen wheels with tires five or six 

 inches wide made in this way. I presume they 

 would v/eigh something more than a wooden 

 wheel; but is it not possible, at this stage and 

 age of progress, to make a wheel entirely of 

 steel as light as one made of wood ? I feel quite 

 certain that wide tires of some kind are soon to 

 come into use generally; in fact, the great trav- 

 eling public can well aflford to pay the team- 

 ster a pretty good sum of money who will travel 

 the roads with a wide-tired wagon; and the 

 man or woman who rides a wheel could afford 

 to give him still more; for you can follow a 

 wide wagon-track for miles and miles, with 

 scarcely a bumb or jar, compared to picking 

 your way where only narrow tires are used.] 



SCRAPING SECTIONS. 



In our honey -house we have a stove, on the 

 hearth of which I this year placed a board long 

 enough to range four sections facing forward, 

 and as wide as the hearth, to put the cleaned 

 sections on till ready to place them in the ship- 

 ping-case, which was on top of the stove, 

 all ready for use. In front of the hearth I 

 placed a bee-hive upper to serve as a table; at 

 the right of this a tier of supers— six or eight on 

 a low box. to raise them a little from the floor. 

 On one side of the open a large old tin milk- 

 pall was placed to catch the scrapings. On the 

 other end of the hearth was a chisel to loosen 

 frames with sections; a strong knife for pry- 

 ing; caseknife with straight edge to shove 

 scrapings out of the way or off the board into 

 an old pail; a jack-knife and razor for cleaning 

 sections. I use the first mostly. Having every 

 thing thus at hand 1 would seat myself on the 

 remaining side of my table, upon which rests a 

 planed board long enough to reach across the 

 table from the old pail on one side, and on the 

 other, close up against me, thus keeping most 

 of the scrapings on the board till I push them 

 to one side, or off with my caseknife into the 

 pail. What does not go I shake or scrape off 

 when I arise to put the clean sections into the 

 shipping-case. Another year we may try Mr. 

 Flansburg's " screen-bridge " or something sim- 

 ilar. 



Mr. Root, you did a nice thing when you got 

 W. P. R. at those old bee-books. I am more es- 

 pecially pleased that I have been doing some- 

 thing of the same kind for a number of years, 

 only I did not have the books to work at. 



Tiffin, O., Aug. 24. R. Moore. 



VALUE OF THE DIVISION-BOARDS. 



In May 1st Gleanings Dr. C. C. Miller, in 

 Stray Straws, asks, "Are division-boards of 

 real value?" etc. In reply I would say that 

 they are for certain purposes, to-wit: 



1. A small swarm, covering only two to four 

 frames, hived on starters late in the season, will 

 start to build comb in one end or corner of the 

 hive, covering, may be, the corner of five to 

 seven frames, and will, if left alone, start to 

 draw those out simultaneously, slowly and to 



disadvantage; and should the honey-flow, and, 

 in consequence, the building of comb, stop ab- 

 ruptly, there would be so many unfinished 

 combs on hand. The proper use of a division- 

 board will prevent this. Confine the swarm by 

 means of it to a space they will comfortably, 

 yet completely, fill, thereby concentrating the 

 heat and their united labor, and you will get 

 full sheets of comb as far as possible, instead of 

 half- finished ones. 



2. This applies equally to section honey. 

 When, late in the season, your sections are, 

 probably, not going to be finished, crowd the 

 bees by the use of one to three division-boards 

 inserted into the hive above, and watch results. 



3. In wintering, too, I should prefer to have a 

 division-board or two joining the sides of the 

 hive, instead of an empty comb. This is the 

 extent to which I find them useful and will 

 stand up for. C. Winter. 



Piru City, Cal. 



HOT-AIK ENGINES FOR PUMPING WATER. 



We ran short of water this summer, and put 

 in a 6-inch Ericsson hot-air pumping-engine, 

 at an expense of .f 180. It pumps 225 gallons an 

 hour, and burns two gallons of gasoline in 13 

 hours. If I had put it in earlier in the season I 

 think it would have nearly paid for itself this 

 season. Eugene Davis. 



Grand Rapids, Mich., Oct. 5. 



[I may explain to our readers, that the ad- 

 vantage the hot-air engine has over the wind- 

 mill is this: With the windmill you must have 

 a large tank or reservoir for storage, in order 

 that you may have water to use when the wind 

 does not blow. With the hot-air engine, how- 

 ever, and a good supply of water, you may 

 pump the water just as you want to use it. Of 

 course, some sort of reservoir is a great conven- 

 ience, but it need not be of so great capacity as 

 for the windmill. Friend Davis does not tell us 

 how high the engine lifts the 22.5 gallons of 

 water in an hour. Of course, this makes quite 

 a difference.] 



HONEY NOT FIT TO EAT; DR. KELLOGG'S SLAN- 

 DER STILL AFLOAT. 



I inclose herewith a clipping that is going the 

 rounds of the press, and should be glad to have 

 your opinion of it through Gleanings. I pro- 

 nounce the whole thing false, but there are 

 thousands of people who will believe it true. 



Fort Smith, Ark., Aug. 22. Z. Wills. 



[The clipping referred to was given on page 

 235, 1892. It came from Dr. Kellogg, of Battle 

 Creek, Mich., and is one of the wildest state- 

 ments that ever came from the pen of a man In 

 his position. Honey, as all human experience 

 proves, besides its place in the Bible economy, 

 is one of the best articles of food; and while 

 some kinds may not be good, it by no means 

 follows that 7(o>ie is good. So far as cleanness 

 and purity are concerned, honey may well be 

 the standard of comparison. Mr. K. is no au- 

 thority on honey.] 



GOLDEN COREOPSIS. 



Inclosed are a few flowers of the large flower- 

 ing Spanish needle. Since I saw it in Iowa in 

 1890 I have seen it in this part of the State. 

 About three miles from here are two large 

 patches of it, one on each side of the Musking- 

 um River, and about a mile apart. Both are 

 on waste land, with a depression in the ground. 

 I went last spring to look after them, and car- 

 ried home with me half a dozen little plants 

 and put them in my garden, and now they are 

 a perfect blaze of beautiful yellow flowers, and 

 the bees work on them from daylight till dark, 

 the same as on the scrophularia. That and the 

 blackheart are about all they have just now to 



