776 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Nov. 1. 



DooLiTTLE saysl in American Bee Journal, 

 that in mailing alqueen for a three-days' trip of 

 600 or 800 miles, or for any shorter trip, he al- 

 lows an escort of 8 workers in July and August, 

 and 11 workers in June or September. For a 

 longer trip a larger.cage with 12 bees in July or 

 August, and 14 to 20 in June or September. 

 For colder months 30 to 40 bees. That tallies 

 pretty well with the escort of 35 from Italy, 

 mentioned on page 758. 



Possibly Mr. Danzenbaker is right, p. 756, 

 that " the bees have to stop to gather and 

 chink in propolis " before commencing to store 

 honey in the supers; but I'm strongly of the 

 opinion that my bees do nothing of the kind. 

 Early in the season they do very little propo- 

 llzing, chink or^no chink; and later in the sea- 

 son they plaster bee-glue everywhere, even af- 

 ter every thing ^is sealed air-tight. [I was of 

 the opinion myself that Mr, Danzenbaker was 

 not entirely correct; for you notice I based the 

 statement entirely on his authority. — Ed.] 



That fatal, stinging case on p. 754— isn't 

 there some misprint or some mistake about it ? 

 Did the bees volunteer an attack upon a horse 

 picketed a quarter of a mile away from their 

 hive? [I believe there is no mistake, doctor. 

 In some cases, when bees are allowed to get 

 fearfully enraged they will go a long distance 

 testing something or somebody. I remember 

 once when the bees got to robbing very badly 

 in our own yard (sorry to confess it), and I af- 

 terward heard that some people in our portion 

 of the town and a quarter of a mile from the 

 apiary had been stung.— Ed.] 



"Feeding by pouring syrup on the bottom- 

 board . . . with fast bottoms . . . may 

 do very well," says the editor, p. 743. I think 

 not. I practiced just that thing on a large 

 scale, and liked it till I found too many dead 

 bees as a consequence. But you must watch 

 closely or you'll never notice it. [I can readily 

 believe, doctor, you are right. In feeders where 

 a large surface of syrup is exposed, as it would 

 be in case of the bottom- board or bottom of the 

 hive, we are pretty sure to have some bees 

 drowned. They get into the syrup and swim 

 around a distance, and give up and die. It is 

 far safer, I believe, to use regular feeders. The 

 Boardman or the Miller is much preferred by 

 us.— Ed.] 



Referring, Mr. Editor, to your last remark, 

 p. 748, 1 think the splints do more than to pre- 

 vent sagging, and I'm not so sure that a filled 

 comb will stay in the frame any more solidly 

 with wire than with splints. As to hauling to 

 out-apiaries, I wouldn't think of using full 

 sheets of foundation without having them more 

 or less fastened at all four sides with melted 

 wax, whether wire or splints were used, so they 

 could be safely hauled in either case. [But the 

 splints, doctor, do not of themselves hold the 



foundation independerit of any fastening to the 

 inside edges of the frames. The wires, inas- 

 much as they are strung to the frame itself, and 

 imbedded in the wax, hold the foundation in 

 place. When we use full sheets we never think 

 of using any melted wax or of making any 

 other attachment than' the wires afford except 

 to the top-bars; and if we were lousing perpen- 

 dicular wiring we would not use..even,^that. — 

 Ed.1 



Dr. E. Gallup says ;in American Bee < Jour- 

 nal] that he introduces queens with ^tobacco 

 smoke morning or evening when all the bees 

 are at home. If done through the day, some 

 bee that was out and escaped the smoke will 

 kill the queen. c [We introduce queens right 

 along in our apiary, without tobacco smoke. We 

 simply use the Miller introducing-cage; and if 

 we make sure the colony is queenless we seldom 

 if ever have any failure. The use of tobacco 

 smoke for the purpose of 'Uniting or introduc- 

 ing should be condemned, especially in the 

 hands of beginners. A colony that has been 

 drugged is ten times more liable to be robbed, 

 and I can not help feeling that tobacco does in 

 a measure do injury. The only time we ever 

 use it is during the days of our county fair, 

 when we desire to keep the bees at home away 

 from the candy stands; and after having drug- 

 ged the bees with tobacco for this purpose dur- 

 ing the holding of three or four different fairs 

 I am coming to believe that we were doing no 

 little damage. The weed is a poison at best. — 

 Ed.] 



Suppose a colony is unqueened, how long be- 

 fore a successor begins to lay?aAnswers in the 

 Artierican Bee Journal make the time vary 

 from 16 to 40 days, most of the answers center- 

 ing somewhere about three weeks. The dis- 

 crepancies in the replies make it seem doubtful 

 whether some of the repliers have ever made 

 careful observations on the point.^[Even con- 

 sidering the circumstances and conditions un- 

 der which a colony may be queenless, and 

 whether or not the apiarist or the owner of the 

 bees assists them, the range of answersjas given 

 in the American \Beef Journal is a little wide. 

 If the apiarist givesca queenless colony a cell 

 ready to hatch within a day, there may be a 

 laying queen, if all goes well, in about ten days 

 or less.Dln my early experiments in queen- 

 rearing, carefully comparing a number of col- 

 onies, I found that young queens were fertilized 

 in from four to seven days from date of hatch- 

 ing. These intervals of time were taken by 

 giving newly hatched queens to colonies, and 

 then watching closely to see when they came in 

 with a drone appendage. In from two to three 

 days after the queen thus came in she would be 

 laying. This would make it, when a newly 

 hatched virgin queen is supplied, 6 or 10 days 

 from the time of dequeening to the time the 

 new queen mother was doing service. But I 



