632 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Sept. 1. 



you would put into actual use. We could turn 

 out 100 in a lathe, and these would give you an 

 opportunity to try them in 12 eight-frame hives. 

 I have been trying something very similar, and 

 did not like it a little bit; but why, I can not 

 explain. If you will whittle out a piece of 

 wood, or file a piece of metal just exactly as 

 you want it, we will make 100 for you. — Ed.J 



What you sat on p. 614, friend Root, makes 

 me wonder why it is that there is such a low 

 grade of morals generally prevailing as to steal- 

 ing any thing to eat. Thousands who would 

 never think of stealing five or tea cents in 

 money have no compunctions about taking — 

 they don't seem to think of it as stealing— five 

 or ten cents' worth of fruit or honey; and caus- 

 ing the loss of a colony of bees for the sake of 

 getting a little honey is only a " joke." 



The avebage weight of a prime swarm, 

 according to J. M. S., in Ainerican Bee Journal, 

 who weighed all his swarms for two years, is 6 

 pounds, the heaviest being 8 and the lightest 

 5)4. pounds. Second swarms averaged 3 pounds. 

 These were from eight-frame hives. [Quite a 

 number of years ago we bought swarms of the 

 farmers at sd much a pound. The bees were 

 brought in their hiving-boxes or hives just as 

 they had been shaken from the limb. Boxes, 

 bees, and all were weighed on accurate scales, 

 the bees dumped out, and then the box re- 

 weighed to get the weight of the bees. The 

 bigger the swarm, the more we had to pay; 

 and there was never any "kick" on either side 

 as to the price of a certain swarm, as the scales 

 settled it. We bought in all something like 50 

 swarms that season, and, if my memory serves 

 me correctly, the weights corresponded very 

 closely with those you have just given.— Ed.] 



Say, Ernest, you keep out from between 

 Skylark and me or you'll get hurt. So you 

 don't understand how I can "separate sections 

 from the wood." Well, I'll tell you. I take a 

 knife and I cut all around tlie section of honey, 

 lifting off the wooden section and leaving the 

 section of honey on the plate, thus " separating 

 the section from the wood." That's the way 

 we call things at Marengo; how do you call 

 them at Medina ? Isn't it a " section of honey " 

 you have on the table? and isn't the wood sep- 

 arated before it's put on the table? [In using 

 the term .section we sometimes mean the wood 

 and the honey, but never for the honey alone. 

 The term section more often applies to wood 

 that surrounds the honey. Yes, sir, we sepa- 

 rate the section of honey from the wood 

 around it just as you do; but we always refer 

 to it as cutting the honey out of the section. — 

 Ed] 



When I read p. 617 I went right straight 

 and put a pan of salt into one of our cisterns 

 that hasn't been used for some time because of 

 its bad smell. We'll see what the salt will do. 



But I don't propose to stir it with any aerating 

 pump, for that alone ought to sweeten it. 

 [Fire-insurance men in many cases recommend 

 barrels of water standing upon the different 

 floors of factory buildings. Salt is often rec- 

 ommended to keep the water sweet. A few 

 days ago the boys reported that our barrels of 

 water were "smelling awful bad," and they 

 wanted me to come up and take a smell. I 

 then remembered that we had not complied 

 with the directions in putting in salt, or, what 

 is perhaps a little better, carbonate of soda. 

 But, say; those barrels of water without any 

 salt in them, as they had stood two or three 

 weeks, did smell "awful bad," and no mistake. 

 They have been " doctored " and are now keep- 

 ing nice and sweet. If it works well on a small 

 scale, why shouldn't it on a large? But I 

 wouldn't recommend carbonate of soda for cis- 

 terns. — Ed.] 



The veterans are beginning to go. Cornell 

 and Pringle in Canada, and now B. Taylor on 

 this side. We'll miss them all. Who'll go 

 next? [Yes, and a couple more would have 

 gone had it not been for the Salisbury treat- 

 ment. One of his patients talked beef diet to 

 B. Taylor. If he had gone on to it, I believe he 

 would have been alive to-day, old as he was. 

 Our friend Mr. Pringle was an earnest advo- 

 cate of a vegetarian diet; and he too, I believe, 

 might have been numbered with the living had 

 he believed as thoroughly in the Salisbury 

 treatment. While I do not call myself a vet- 

 eran, nor place myself alongside these names, I 

 wish to say that I never enjoyed better health 

 than to-day. Yesterday a bee-keeper who met 

 me two years ago at the Toledo convention 

 said he would have hardly known me, as I 

 had filled out so much and looked so much 

 better. "Why," said he, "I went home and 

 told my folks that I did not believe Ernest 

 would live very long; but now," he continued, 

 "you look so well and strong." lam not on 

 the diet now; but when I do not feel just rights 

 back I go on to the diet, and out I come from 

 my slight indisposition. My own experience is 

 only a repetition of A. I. R.'s, Dr. C. C. Miller's, 

 Harry Lathrop's, and quite a number of others'^ 

 who are known personally to me but not to the 

 bee keeping world.— Ed.] 



R. L. Taylor says in Review, "Not more 

 than one or two per cent of the colonies did any 

 thing at all in the supers before casting swarms, 

 and many did not wait to fill the combs in the 

 brood-nest." There it is again. Lots of room 

 seems to work for the Dadants but not for 

 everybody else. [Giving lots of room, a la 

 Dadants, works nicely with us; but I want to 

 say that I find that empty combs in a single 

 eight frame brood -nest do not necessarily act 

 as a preventive of swarming; but where we 

 have had two eight-frame brood-nests, one on 

 top of the other, making a capacity of more 



