173 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Mak. 1. 



high-priced, and are expected to be correspond- 

 ingly high in quality. When they are not they 

 cease to be luxuries, and we will not pay the 

 class price for them. Now, nice comb honey is 

 a luxury. Whatever it may become in the fu- 

 ture, at present prices it is a luxury, and the 

 fancy quality of no other edible is more easily 

 impaired. 



WIDE FRAMES NEXT TO BKOOD FRAMES. 



It is neither necessary nor profitable to have 

 much such honey to sell. It takes work and 

 trouble, sometimes money, no doubt, to secure 

 the best; but it pays to make the investment. 

 Superlative pains and care are the cost of pro- 

 ducing any kind of high-class article that will 

 take desirable rank in its class. Comb honey is 

 eminently a high-class commodity, and none 

 but a superior article is worth raising. The 

 little of inferior stuff we must have only adds, 

 in fact, to the cost of the other, for it does not— 

 or ought not — pay expenses. Hence the less w« 

 have of it the better. 



I am satisfied, from experience, that it pays 

 me to take the extra pains. I used to try a 

 wide fra me of sections at the side of the brood- 

 nest, and also section-frames and brood-frames 

 side by side in the upper story. But the bees 

 would work the old cappings and bits of comb 

 into the new comb, and especially into the cap- 

 pings. They wouJd do the same thing to a 

 great extent when I used to set the super next 

 to the brood -frames. Bees are especially prone 

 to do this when the flow of nectar is on the de- 

 cline, or when a few wet days interfere with 

 honey-gathering. In consequence I decided, 

 several years ago, to have all my comb honey 

 built in single-tier cases with a honey board 

 between the super and the brood-nest. I have 

 used zinc and wooden honey-boards, with bee- 

 space above; but better than either is the slat- 

 ted wood-zinc board. By its aid I get clear 

 white comb, untarnished cappings, with no 

 brood, and seldom a ceil of pollen in my sec- 

 tion honey. I think bees do not go to work so 

 readily in supers thus fixed. It is now that it 

 pays to have one or two sections filled with 

 comb to use as bait in the first case put on. 

 They offset the hindrance of a honey-board. Of 

 course, I am careful to mark such sections and 

 sell them, usually near home, as " off " honey. 



I seldom allow honey to leave my honey- 

 house if it has not been fumigated with brim- 

 stone at least twice, except in case of fall honey 

 taken off late in September. I have never 

 known moth-worms to hatch in ray honey after 

 that time, although I suspect they did in some 

 of that 1 bought. I fumigated once, one to two 

 weeks after taking off, and again about two 

 weeks after. This is not a hard thing to do. I 

 sometimes burn the sulphur under a stack of 

 supers as they were taken from the hive. But 

 it does just as well when the honey is packed in 

 a box, to burn it in a pan or similar vessef on 



top of the honey with the lid down, provided 

 there is space enough for the slight flame it 

 makes. A lump the size of a walnut is enough 

 for l.'jO to 200 lbs. 



It may be that the honey I found granulating 

 in the combs was some that had been fed back 

 to complete unfinished sections. It seems that 

 such is inclined to candy. Mr. Boardman says, 

 in the December Review, that it is much less 

 liable to do so if it is fed pretty soon after it has 

 been gathered, while it is yet new. I should 

 say it would also help if it is pretty well dilut- 

 ed. I have fed back honey a few times, and I 

 have never known any of it to granulate except 

 some that I fed undiluted in September. 



Mechanicsburg, III. 



[See editorial comment elsewhere.— Ed.] 



THAT GOVERNMENT BULLETIN ON BEES. 



A FEW EXTRACTS FROM THE WORK. 



[I have twice before referred to that magnifi- 

 cent little manual of 130 pages, on bees, from 

 the Department of Agriculture, Washington, 

 D. C. One of its striking features are the beau- 

 tiful engravings, most of them original, scat- 

 tered here and there through the work. I 

 wrote to the author, Mr. Benton, asking if it 

 would be possible for us to secure electrotypes 

 of some of these engravings. Receiving a fa- 

 vorable response I applied to the Department, 

 and now take pleasure in presenting you .some 

 of them. 



The first two or three that I shall show you 

 are not striking because of any artistic effect, 

 but because of what they represent. Few of 

 us have had any accurate conception of the 

 relative size of the different varieties of honey- 

 bees. Mr. Benton, I think, may be safely 

 counted as our best authority on Eastern races, 

 and what he has to say will be read with in- 

 terest. On page 13 we find this relating to the 

 East Indian honey- bee. the matter concerning 

 which I copy entire: — Ed.J 



THE COMMON EAST INDIAN HONEY-BEE. 



{Apii< indica. Fab.) 

 The common bee of southern Asia is kept in 

 very limited numbers and with a small degree of 

 profit in earthen jars and sections of hollow trees 

 in portions of the British and 

 Dutch East Indies. They are 

 also found wild, and build when 

 in this state in hollow trees and 

 in rock-rlefts. Their combs, 

 composed of hexag-onal wax 

 cells, are ranged parallel to 

 each other like those of A. 

 melliflca. but the worker brood- 

 cells are smaller than those of 

 our ordinary bees, showing- 36 

 to the .square inch of surface 

 instead of 39, while the comb 

 where worker brood is reared, 

 insteiid of having-, like that of 

 A. mclli:tica, a thickness of sev- 

 en-eightlis inch, is but flve- 

 eighthslnch thick. (Fig. 1.) 



The ivorkers. — Tbe bodies of 

 these, three-eighths inch long 

 when empty, measure about 

 one-half inch when dilated 

 Fig. 1. — Worker-cells with honey. The thorax is cov- 

 (if coramon East Indian ered with brownish hair, and 

 nalu'i^ntze^'^OHglS the shield 9r Crescent between 

 the wings is large and yellow. 

 The abdomen is yellow underneath. Above it pre- 

 sents a ringed "appearance, the anterior part of 

 each segment being orange yellow, while the poste- 

 rior part shows bands of brown of greater or less 





