1890 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTUKE. 



483 



which was, 1 could not winter bees In them. The 

 bees died in them every winter during the thi-ee 

 years I tried them. The second reason was, that, 

 when taking out the combs for extracting, the 

 back must be bent all the while or else the hive be 

 set on stilts, and then the bees ran out all over the 

 sides of the hive, so as to make much work in 

 closing it, instead of going below, as they do in a 

 two-story hive. The third reason was, that, the 

 last season I used them, colonies worked in two- 

 story hives gave a little more honey than did the 

 Long-Idea hives, one giving over 400 lbs., while the 

 Long-Idea was some 28 lbs. short. I might also 

 add, as a fourth reason, that I found that there 

 was more money to me in comb honey than extract- 

 ed, and the Long-Idea hive was never intended for 

 comb honey. G. M. Doolittle. 



Borodino, N. Y., June 14. 



Since you suggest it, friend D., it occurs 

 to me that my custom in getting bees to go 

 with the queen was always to take those 

 with their heads in the cells, sucking up 

 honey. One reason for so doing was that i 

 might get bees having honey in their sacs, 

 to teed the queens.— Thanks for your ans- 

 wer in regard to the Long-Idea hive. Your 

 third reason is rather a stunner. But I do 

 remember that a great many at one time re- 



Eorted enormous crops of honey from those 

 iOng-Idea hives. 



OSBORN IN CUBA. 



PROPRIETOR OF OVER 500 COLONIES. 



Friend Root:— Onr drouth is at an end. For six 

 and one-half months we had no rain, three little 

 showers being all. Is this common for Cuba? They 

 say it is not. In 1840, so the records show, they had 

 a drier year than this has been. For eight months 

 It did not rain; and you can set it down for a fact, 

 that I hope we shall not have another drouth in 

 fifty years to come. How did our bees live through 

 the last six and one-half months, when there was 

 not a flower or a green blade of grass— nothing but 

 dust, dust, and dry leaves that you could see, as 

 far as the eye could reach? Now, did I not tell you 

 that I had unbounded faith in Cuba and its honey 

 resources? Well, the last six and one-half months 

 has been a test of that assertion. But, how did 

 they live, from our apiary in the east and south 

 and west too? From two to six miles away (as the 

 crow would fly), there are small lakes and creeks 

 and large bodies of wet land covered with all sorts 

 of timber and vegetation common to a tropical 

 country. These regions furnish an immense 

 amount of bee-pasturage that is not materially af- 

 fected by dry weather. To such places our bees 

 went for their rations, when there was not a single 

 flower near home. Now, such a season as this has 

 been is what I call a practical test of the haney re- 

 sources of Cuba. You know that assertions 

 amount to but very little, and misdirected efforts 

 do not prove to be false what I have stated before; 

 1. e., that at this day in Cuba it is practically impos- 

 sible to overstock a range. The time may come 

 when the conditions will be so different from what 

 they are now that overstocking will be possible, 

 but It is not now. 



I wi9h to correct one statement you or Ernest 

 made when you said "Osburn had fcliarge of seven 

 or eight hundred colonies." That was a mistake. 



I never was in charge of so many colonies for any 

 one. The most I ever had was in the fall of 1885. I 

 had charge of 586 colonies for the Casanova broth- 

 ers; and now that I am running my own business I 

 have 526 colonies, and I think that, nextspiing, I 

 shall increase them to 600, all in one apiary. I 

 know that to many, yes, to very many readers of 

 Gleanings, 600 colonies seems too many for one 

 apiary; but if they will stop a moment to consider 

 the cost of starting even a small apiary here, they 

 will make up their minds that more honey can be 

 secured from 600 than from 250, and one outfit will 

 answer for the whole; and during the bellflower 

 season, I tell you 1000 colonies in an apiary can not 

 gather the honey. But in summer the poorest of 

 them would have to be helped. 



QUKEN-REARING. 



We are requeening our apiary now; and while 

 upon ihis subject, I must say a few words upon the 

 subject; i. e., young queens vs. old queens. I know 

 friend Doolittle has just written an article con- 

 demning the practice of superseding queens two 

 years old; but for this country such a practice 

 (that is, letting the queens live as long as they 

 seem to be doing well) would ruin any man that 

 followed it, for more reasons than one. Chief 

 among them is, our honey-flow comes at an unsea- 

 sonable time of the year— at a time when the bees 

 prefer to be at rest. Now, then, if you have not 

 young and vigorous queens that will lay and keep 

 the hives full of bees at a time of the year when an 

 old queen would lay hardly enough to furnish bees 

 to take care of the combs, any one can see at a glance 

 that such bee-keeping would not pay for Cuba. 

 Then, again, an old queen begins to fail in more 

 ways than in the decrease of eggs she lays. The 

 bees that hatch from eggs of the old queen are 

 lacking in vitality. You may go into her brood- 

 chamber, and you find it quite well filled with 

 brood; but her bees die young; they do not live to 

 do much work; they lack vitality; they lack lon- 

 gevity, ambition, and push to go after the honey. 

 Most of the above arc the characteristics of the 

 progeny of the old queen. Does the rearing of 

 queens have any thing to do with it, for better or 

 for worse? Yes, much, very much; and now I 

 want to say again that I have yet to see or hear of 

 a better mode of rearing queens than by the hori- 

 zontal-bar process, when all conditions are favora- 

 ble. This principle I found in Gleanings, I think, 

 in 1877. I can not remember the one who first used 

 it. But I have used it for thirteen years, and have 

 never seen a good reason to abandon it. No, not 

 any queens over two years old for us here; but in 

 California I have had them live to be five years old, 

 and do good business up to four years, but not here, 

 for they lay so continuously that they exhaust their 

 fertility long before they are four years old. 



Now, friend Root, if you have any objections to 

 raising queen-cells on horizontal bars, tell me what 

 they are and I will see whether I can meet your 

 objections with reasons backed up with a long and 

 successful experience. I shall say, "No, I do not 



CLOSED ENDS AND WIDE TOP-BARS." 



If, with the narrow end and top bars, brace-combs 

 must come, why, then so be it; but deliver me 

 from a frame that you have to have a beetle and 

 wedge to get it loose when you want to. 



THE OLD simplicity VERSUS THE FLAT COVER. 



You say you do not see how we keep the bees 



