144 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Dec- 



dear NOVICE :— To-day I rec\l Gleanings: I 

 And my Letter in print, in which I wrote you so doleful- 

 ly. I must give von the history of the season as a 

 postscript to that letter. I send you an extract from 

 in \ diary. 



From the 5th to the 15th of June nearly every day it 

 rains, and is cold. Bees are to be led almost daily. 

 But few of the hives are more than half lull, say from 

 five to six frames. I use frames one foot square. Not 

 a single hive has one pound fresh honey except the 

 feeding; eggs are laid sparingly and combs with lar- 

 vae are abandoned. 



Jul)/ ith— The two straw hives have swarmed. Of 

 21, 10' hives have from 11 to 12 frames well stocked 

 with brood, the rest contain from 7 to frames, and 3 

 of them are Queenless. Not a hive that has one pound 

 of honey, and all very poor in bees. 



July ilth— Extracted 325 lbs. Linden honey. 



Jul// Slafc— 135. Item— the weather is mournfully dry, 

 the Linden flowers gone, lasted only about 5 days. 



July 2Qth— Extracted about 300 lbs., bees gathered 

 from buckwheat and swamp flowers. 



Aug. 1st— Extracted 152 lbs. 



Aug. nth— 160 lbs. Bees in good condition and honey 

 is brought in at a fair rate, pollen is gathered plenti- 

 fully. Whole combs are tilled; the pollen is blue, 

 like moistened powder. 



Aug. 9th-~ Extracted nearly 300 lbs. 



Aug. 25th — The weather is very line and honey flows 

 as usual although very dry. Buckwheat is nearly 

 gone, all hives rear brood splendidly. Every hive 

 builds a new comb. 



Aug. Wth— Yesterday we had a slight rain, to-day 

 all fly in full force and honey is brought in quite plen- 

 tifully from swamp Snap-dragon; all the bees that 

 come in are painted white from the Snap-dragon as I 

 call it, but you call it wild Touch-me-not. To-day af- 

 ter mid-day extracted one wash boiler full. 



Sept. 2nd— Extracted 243 lbs. ; the combs are filled to 

 overflowing, very much impeding the Queen's work. 

 The weather is very dry. This night it rains. 



Sept. 9th— Extracted 'about 350 lbs., the weather is 

 the same— dry and hot. Thermometer 90° in the shade. 



Sept. 10th— Ext'd 225 lbs. 



Sept. Idth— " 125 " 



Sept. nth— " 123 " Fives hives Queenless. 



Sept. 18th— " 55 " 



I have brought up the number from 23 to 40. They 

 have sealed buckwheat honey, say one half; I have 

 fed to them one barrel sugar syrup, to complete win- 

 ter stores. I have extracted nearly 3000 lbs. In 1871 

 by the large lire, a cedar swamp burned down, and 

 this fall the swamp w T as one mass of (lowers; The 

 wild Touch-me-not and another I cannot name, 

 with long cottony seed pods. The honey from the 

 wiia Touch-me-not was very thin; I set it apart in a 

 large iron kettle containing 40 gallons. That honey 

 is now one mass like butter and by far the sweetest,*! 

 kept it for spring feeding. 



Instead of making the 4 feet hives I have altered my 

 mind, and shall use my 12 frame hive. In the spring 

 I shall provide for each hive two drone combs con- 

 taining about 10 lbs. each, I have already a quantity 

 on hand. These will be used in a flow of honey. 



You will see that this postscript is a necessary 

 compendium to the whole and teaches us all that he 

 who takes care and continues to the end will be re- 

 warded. During such a spring while we are feeding 

 until the 15th of June, hives only half full in full 

 swarming time, and the 4th of July not a single hive 

 that had one pound of honey, then swarming time 

 gone, it was time and reasonable to draw a long deep 

 sigh; yet how glorious the reward. My bees had to 

 build two new combs per week and all my old combs 

 have their drone combs cut out down to the worker 

 '"nib-;: all are repaired with worker cells. In my 

 new combs my trouble was great, they built nearly all 

 drone comb. Several hives however built all worker 

 cells. I cut all the drone comb, two inches from the 

 lop bar, strait off and set them in the hives that built 

 the worker combs; by means of this. I have now all 

 frames with w r orker comb strait like a plank. Now 

 what kind of a season have we had? was it a good 

 one? My neighbors who stick to box hives say the 

 season was bad; there were no swarms and bees did 

 not work in boxes; their hives are heavy; so they are 

 in the spring and fall every year. 



Second postscript— My two straw hives were far 

 ahead in the spring, but from Julv to Oct. they work- 

 ed by far the slowest. One weighs 01 lbs., the other 

 4 1 ; the hives are small. I finish by saying, "a glorious 

 hand shaking, and a thank yon." 



Joseph Duffelek, Wequiock, Wis. Nov. 3rd, 1874. 



Stock browse on the Kockv Mountain bee plant, 

 and 1 think it would make good fodder. I like the 



plan of a uniform standard size for frames. I have 

 six sizes of frames in my apiary and find it very incon- 

 venient, but as I am a learner aim experimenting, I 

 can bear it for a ivhile. My bees have done well since 

 summer set in, have extracted 200 lbs. and taken 40 

 lbs. comb, from colonies and have increased from 7 

 weak colonies the 15th of May, to 17 now on hand. 

 Some Italians, some Hybrids and some common. 

 They are now laying in some, but what thev get it 

 from I do not know as we have had till veste'rday a. 

 very warm and dry time. 



Success to Gleanings, which I highlv prize, and a 

 good time for all bee raisers. 



Abner J. Pope, Indianapolis, Ind. Sept. 24th, 1874 



I wish to ask the following favor of you; which is 

 that you try at least to have three young Queens fer- 

 tilized in your hot house. I am even more positive 

 than ever that it can be done, and that I have done it. 

 In the first place see that yon have no old bees in your 

 nucleus, insert drone brood in it so that it will hatch 

 a little before and just about the time the Queen 

 hatches, in short, have no bees in the nucleus that 

 have ever flown outside of the hot house. If you pav 

 as much attention to this as you do to your other af- 

 fairs and don't succeed, I will pay all the expense of 

 the experiment. A. N. DRAPER. 



Upper Alton, 111. Nov. Cth, 1874. 



Bless your heart friend Draper; to be sure 

 we shall try the experiment. One colony has 

 attempted to build Queen cells already, but as 

 we had no drones, we were obliged to unite 

 them. We are going to push them along and 

 as soon as drones are capped over we will have 

 some Queens. We have no fears but that they 

 will rear Queens, but to get these Queens to 

 lay worker eggs — that is the point. In regard 

 to pay; all the pay we expect or want, is the 

 75c at the beginning of each year and we'll 

 foot all expenses of experiments whether tbey 

 are failures or successes. If the latter we shall 

 be very glad to know that we have been useful. 



I have just written to J. Carroll, Australia, that 1 

 would endeavor to send him a Queen with a small col- 

 ony of bees next spring. 



Fall pasturage has been good. Bees cpiit gathering 

 only the other day, last week. Have plenty of drones 

 and bees do not appear hostile to them even in hives 

 having young Queens. Frank Benton. 



Edgefield Junction, Tenn. Nov. 4th, 1874. 



FRIEND NOVICE:— For the benefit of those read- 

 ers of Gleanings who doubt the practicability of the 

 Bidwell method ol wintering, or the veracity of Mr. 

 B's statements, please say that he has already put 

 his bees in hot beds for the winter. When the weath- 

 er admits of it, the bees are allowed to fly abroad as 

 in summer. We think it advisable to construct the 

 hot beds so as to admit of ventilation without remo- 

 ving the glass. 



One point more. While glass directly in front of the 

 bees, as in your '■'■Glass House" may not destroy its 

 utility, still we must think it like a pane of glass in 

 the side of a bee hive, more ornamental than useful- 

 more convenient than desirable. Please try a simple 

 shallow "hot-bed'" with glass over the bees only, be- 

 fore pronouncing this method a failure. 



Herbeht A. BCTRCH, South Haven, Mich. Nov. 0th 



We are happy to say our glass house isn't ;< 

 failure by any means, and if we conveyed tin 

 idea that the glass stood perpendicularly, it 

 was our mistake. The sash is about 6^x13, 

 and the lower edge is about 2% feet from tin 

 ground and the upper or north, perhaps (P.. 

 the whole room is 14x24 now, with only the 

 amount of glass named, and yet it gets too 

 warm on a very clear day. Instead of straw 

 for the ground underneath, Ave prefer saw-dust. 

 When the air is cold outside, the bees gel 

 against the glass but little. Our objection to 

 a simple hot-bed is that, we can't, go inside 

 and whenever our bees are where we can't get 

 at 'em, we are "in a peek of trouble." 



