4S2 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



July 



money, by Brown's reasonable care, had been lost, 

 the loss should have been borne equally ; but if by 

 Brown's neglig-ence, maliciousness, or dishonesty, 

 he, then, of course, should be responsible for, not 

 half, but all of it. 



4. Jones furnished the bees, and Brown the labor; 

 Jones's superintendence and responsibility then 

 ceased, and was assumed by Brown; and it would 

 have been wanton interference upon the part of 

 Jones to concern himself further with the business. 

 Advice, even, would have been purely voluntary. 



5. Brown's skill or capacity to care for bees has 

 nothing- to do with the matter. It was not needful 

 for Jones to know of them, under a private con- 

 tract, any more than under a public bid under the 

 hammer. All Jones needed to be interested in was 

 Brown's ability to meet a money obligation. 



6. "If the bees," says friend Wilkin, "did not 

 make honey enough during the season to keep 

 them over, it should be the owner's loss." Exactly; 

 but are not both parties the owners for the time of 

 the contract? Would it not be better to say, that, 

 "if the bees did not make enough to keep them 

 over, the firm should have bought sugar for Brown 

 to feed them, and thus divide the loss only of sugar, 

 and save the loss of the bees"? 



7. Mrs. Harrison and George Grimm gave the 

 best answers, both worth repeating. She says: 

 " Ordinarily a share in the profits would imply a 

 share in the losses, there being no provision to the 

 contrary." He says: "Under the given state of 

 facts, each must stand half the loss, even if not oc- 

 casioned by the carelessness of Brown." I would 

 amend by adding, " And if occasioned by the care- 

 lessness of Brown, then Brown should stand it all." 



This matter being of much importance to the 

 fraternity, it is seriously to be hoped the final deci- 

 sion may be correct. 



You have done the public great service in expos- 

 ing Dr. Hall. I will have your article copied in the 

 newspapers. Thousands of dollars go to Hall from 

 Texas every month. J. L. Caldwell. 



Mart, Texas, June 14. 



Friend C, I am exceedingly obliged to 

 you ; in fact, I have been wishing for some 

 time to have some lawyer speak out ; and I 

 am very glad, too, for your opinion in re- 

 gard to the Dr. Hall matter. I only wish 

 that some of our doctors would speak out 

 just as freely; but some way or other the 

 whole brotherhood are perfectly silent on 

 this great discovery of doctoring without 

 medicine. Is it really true, as Dr. Hall 

 says, that they are all bitterly opposed be- 

 cause it would cut off their bread and but- 

 ter? You know, of course, I do not believe 

 a word of it ; but what in the world is the 

 reason that all of them keep still? 



AGE OF BEES TO GO "WITH QUEENS 

 IN SHIPPING THEM, ETC. 



FRIEND DOOLITTLE TELLS US HOW TO GET BEES 

 OF THE RIGHT AGE. 



A CORRESPONDENT Writes, asking whether there 

 is any difference as to age of bees which are placed 

 in the cage with a queen for shipment, or whether 

 an indiscriminate catching of them will answer 

 every purpose. I have made the sending of queens 

 by mail a study for many years, and find that there 

 is a difference in regard to the bees that go with the 



queen. I have used bees that were all old and 

 those that were all young, with poor results. To il- 

 lustrate: A party ordered three queens. In one of 

 the cages, all old bees were used to go with the 

 queen. This cage was marked with a private 

 mark. My circular states that I guarantee the safe 

 arrival of all queens, on the condition that, when 

 the cage arrives, the bees be carefully examined 

 through the wire cloth; and if the queen is dead, 

 the cage is to be returned to me with contents un- 

 molested, when I will send another. I made it 

 thus, partly to guard against fraud, but mainly so 

 I could look into any failure on my part in meet- 

 ing the right requirements for perfect shipment, as 

 I could often find the clew to the failure, in the re- 

 turned cage. The candy part was the main trouble 

 in former years; but that has been fully overcome 

 by the Good candy and its modification. From this 

 digression by way of explanation, let us return to 

 the three cages. 



One was reported as arriving dead, and was re- 

 turned, while the other two came without a dead 

 bee. When the returned cage arrived it had the 

 private mark on it. Again, in early spring 1 often 

 have to use bees too old for the best results, where 

 the queens are taken from the hives lately set from, 

 the cellar, unless I take bees to go with them from 

 hives that were wintered on the summer stands, 

 they having bees of the right age. As it is some 

 trouble to get these bees from another hive, and as 

 such bees sometimes have a desire to worry a 

 strange queen, I sometimes take the bees that have 

 wintered over from these cellared hives, and send 

 them along; but the loss has been so great that I 

 have resolved never to do it again. I also find that 

 very young bees will not endure the journey any 

 better than old bees. Sometimes in forming nuclei 

 by setting a laying queen with the bees and frame 

 of brood she is on, into an empty hive, as I have 

 given in Gleanings, and sending the queea off 

 two or three days afterward, a few had only young 

 fuzzy bees left, as the older ones had returned to 

 the old stand. Cages so sent with young bees, and 

 marked, have gone with many dead bees, where 

 they were not returned as altogether bad. In this 

 way I have watched results till I have found that 

 bees from six to fifteen days old are the ones that 

 stand the journey best, especially if a long one, like 

 going to Texas, California, or to Washington, were 

 to be taken. 



Having learned what bees to select, I now rarely 

 lose more queens in going to these distant points 

 than I do when the distance is 500 miles or less. In 

 selecting bees, take those that have flown a day or 

 so previously, and not those whose bodies are dis- 

 tended with excremedt, as all young bees that have 

 never flown are extended to a greater or lesser ex- 

 tent, with the pollen consumed in their larval 

 state. To know what bees to select, I am often 

 guided by those which thrust their heads into the 

 cells of unsealed honey first; and, besides this, bees 

 in this position are very easily picked off the 

 combs, as the wings gtand out f rona the body. The 

 item of having queens reach their destination in 

 good order every time is quite an important one to 

 the queen-breeder. 



THOSE LONG-IDEA HIVES. 



On page 318 I see it is desired that 1 tell why I did 

 not stick to the " Long-Idea " hive after obtaining 

 so large a yield of honey from it. There were three 

 reasons why I gave it up: The first and greatest of 



