November, 1918 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



it would have inadi' a differonee to nie, as 

 I sold my honey crop quite a little under the 

 market. Please renew it. Have seen the 

 July number and was surprised at the prices 

 of honey quoted in your journal." — Oscar 

 E. Browner, Herkimer County, N. Y. 



"Last spring Edgar C. Polhemus and Cora 

 D. Polhemus divided the bee business of the 

 late D. C. Polhemus. We each got 515 colo- 

 nies on May 1. We have had a good crop 

 of honey and of good quality and color. One 

 of my yards of 110 colonies averaged 90 

 pounds to the colony. I attended the Na- 

 tional convention at Burlington, la., last 

 year and expect to be in Chicago this win- 

 ter." — Mrs. Cora D. Polhemus, Prowers 

 County, Colo. 



"I had, spring count, 75 colonies. My 

 yield was 13,440 i)ounds of choice honey. 

 The best individual colony yielded 600 

 pounds of wax and honey. Several others 

 (not calculated separately) must have yield- 

 ed very little short of this amount. Sources 

 of suj^ijly are orange bloom, some white 

 clover and fruit bloom. The bloodwood 

 yielded about three tons, 18 cwt. of clear 

 mild honey which candied to a snow-white 

 hard candy in less than a week after extrac- 

 tion. This was sold for export but is held 

 up for want of shipping space. ' ' — W. Hessel 

 Hall, N. S. W., Australia. 



"We live in East Jordan about five 

 months in the summer and resume our work 

 theatrically in the winter. Have 20 colonies 

 of bees. We bought our ten-acre place four 

 years ago, and set it all out to fruit, 800 

 cherry trees and quantities of small fruit. 

 Started the first year with two colonies of 

 bees and increa,sed each year vmtil we now 

 have 20 colonies. We took off over 1,000 

 pounds of honey last summer. We love the 

 study of bees, and our place would be un- 

 bearably lonesome without them. Our stage 

 name is Hanson & Drew. ' ' — Mrs. J. Y. Car- 

 lisle, Wayne County, Mich. 



' ' Basswood is the universal name in 

 America for this marvelous tree (the lin- 

 den). Basswood is simply 'bast-wood,' the 

 tree that furnishes 'bast,' the fibrous inner 

 bark, from which primitive man made him 

 mats, cordage, and fishing nets. Here it is 

 <amed — who knows why? — from its utili- 

 tarian value, and there is a break in its his- 

 toric and poetic past. For 'linden' seems 

 a foreign affectation, bookish, literary. Few 

 reading ' The old house by the lindens stood 

 open in the shade ' connect the shade trees 

 with the basswood of popular speech. 'Line,' 

 ' lime, ' ' linden, ' are ' all one reckonings, 

 save the phrase is a little variations,' as 

 Captain Fluellen would say. The plain 

 American basswood is lawful heir to all the 

 history and romance of the linden, but on 

 account of this unfortunate change of name 

 can never enter into its inheritance." — The 

 Nation. 



"This is where the natives trap bees by 

 putting a bark cylinder about two feet long 



and thirty inches in circumference, in the 

 fork of a tree. June is the month for rob- 

 bing, and it makes a beekeeper weep to see 

 the way they smoke out the bees and then 

 shove their bare arms in and pull out the 

 comb. If they get stung, they say the bees 

 are 'penza, ' which means mad. A swarm 

 goes thru tlie air like an express train, with 

 very nearly as loud a roar. Septemljer and 

 October are the swarming months here, as 

 the rainy season sets in in November. The 

 honey is very dark with a flavor of some- 

 thing resembling brown moist cane sugar." 

 — J. E. Titterton, Zimbabwe, Rhodesia, 

 South Africa. 



' ' My father was a successful bee and 

 honey manager, always at this time of year 

 having hundreds of pounds of honey; but 

 since liia going the farm tenants liave oc- 

 casioned a total loss of all the bees and I 

 deem it needful to resort to only qualified 

 and careful beekeepers for the successful 

 handling of the honeybees. We have much 

 buckwheat, white clover, various blooms of 

 trees and plants, besides the noted basswood, 

 and our best farm is situated so that the 

 little workers may bring their burden down 

 hill. Only today I had delivered bj' the 

 express company two kits of strained honey 

 from a distance, which cost us three times 

 the old price we once were pleased to sell 

 honey at from one of these same farms 

 where bees flourished finely under primitive 

 conditions 50 odd j^ears ago; but now we 

 can no longer adhere to chance — all is law." 

 — C. W. Griggs, Lycoming County, Pa. 



' ' The article in your September issue, 

 page 533, ' Stores for Winter, ' no doubt glad- 

 dened the heart of many a beginner, who 

 like myself had been wondering what was 

 meant by ' rich in stores, ' ' plenty of winter 

 stores, ' and other vague statements. At 

 last we were given definite figures and 

 weights by no less an authority than Mr. 

 Doolittle. Wishing to verify these figures, 

 I carefully weighed my hives, empty hives, 

 hives with combs, hives with foundation, 

 covers, bottom-boards, and 'other things too 

 numerous to mention,' and found the fol- 

 lowing remarkable discrepancy. A stan- 

 dard dovetailed 10-frame hive, white pine, 

 painted, with reversible bottom-board and 

 double wood cover flat (Lewis make) with 

 new combs, weighed just 37 jjounds, or 17 

 pounds more than weight given 1 y I 'oolittle 

 for a hive with old combs. If, as Doolittle 

 says, old combs weigh double as much as 

 new ones, the weight would have bo-^u about 

 40 pounds. According to Doolittle 's figures 

 the weight for outside wintering should be 

 as follows: Hive with empty combs (old), 

 40 pounds; bees and beebread, 5 pounds; 

 honey, 40 pounds; total, 85 pounds. If, as 

 Doolittle says, a total weight of 65 pounds 

 contains ample storage for outside winter- 

 ing, then 20 ])ounds of honey would consti- 

 tute a full winter sui)i)ly. " — W. E. I'oim, 

 Dodge County, Wis. 



