1875. 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



21 



FROM DIFFERENT FIELDS. 



*ja ^j^ll. ROOT, DEAR SIU:— Please tell us as near as 

 pyMj von can. just the condition that a colony should 

 ^/•5* be in when ihe l)o.\cs arc put on, how early in 

 the season, how many to a time, how many I'raines 

 left in the lirood nest, "if upward ventilation is essen- 

 tial to storing in lioxes? Our bees would store their 

 ilioney in the brood uost instead ot boxes; would not 

 tlie colony dwindle down too weak lor winter, if an 

 •em|)ty comb was not occasionally inserted in the cen- 

 tre between brooil combs, and would not the inserlinji 

 <if an cmiity comb draw the bees from the boxes ? if 

 not t<io miich trouble we woidil like very much to 

 have you make it jihiin to us, just the condition of a 

 ■colony, and how to manage them in getting box hon- 

 ■ey; how to get extractedhoney seems very ])lain but 

 Ave want some box honej- as some persons will only 

 hvv comb honey. S-VltAll J, W. A.VTELl",. 



Roseville, 111, Dec. 29th, 1874. 



We have just drawn a lous; bi-cath prepara- 

 tory to tellinii- "just how to niaua2;e to j;et lx)x 

 houej'." Ahem — It just uow occurs to us that 

 we had better ask Mr. Doolittle or some of his 

 neighbors,, and upon further consideratiou it 

 occurs to us that ice dou't Ivuow. Getting ex- 

 tracted honey as you say is a very simple mat- 

 ter, and any one can learn to do it in even the 

 poorest season. Our experience has been that 

 when you get j'our colony built up strong, and 

 they have got all their combs pretty well tilled 

 with honey, bulged out with lengthened cells 

 over brood, etc., that it is time to put on the 

 boxes. If the boxes are close, and no openings 

 are left for the warmth from the cluster to es- 

 cape, the bees will soon occupy the empty 

 space thus furnished, especially if the weather 

 is favorable anil good sized guide combs are 

 provided. 3Iany times however, they will 

 waste time enough before accepting the boxes, 

 to have gathered many pounds of honey had 

 the extractor been used, and in fact we have 

 never seen comb lioney produced in any shape, 

 without, what looks to us like, very poor do- 

 mestic economy inside the hive. When the 

 extractor lir.s*; came into use, we fondly imag- 

 ined that we should have much stronger colo- 

 nies to go into winter quarters, because the 

 Queen would have so much more room for 

 5)rood; for some reason unknown, such does 

 not .seem to be the case in the majority of in- 

 stances. Perhaps the queer maladj^ that has 

 so depopulated our hives in winter and sprii;g, 

 of late, ma.v be one reason. We believe we 

 shall have to admit that black bees, in box 

 iuA^s, have been more populous in the spring 

 of late, than our Italian stocks where the ex- 

 tractor has been used. Many hasty conclu- 

 sions have been drawn as to the reason of this 

 and we think it best to "go slowly' in the 

 matter. 



A I'rw days ago one one of my swarms left the hive 

 (plenty of honey and in good condition) swarmed 

 around awhile ('twas cinitc warm) and returned to the 

 hive. Xear night I found a knot of bees at the en- 

 trance and of course the Queen in the middle. They 

 had gnawed both wings otf and even her sting seemed 

 to be gone, though slie was alive and after caging 

 seemed lively but died next day. i'lease tell me why 

 they (lid so and what to do. ' W. F. Lewis. 



Baldwin, Miss. Jan. 1st, 75. 



We imagine it will be quite difficult to ac- 

 count for all cases of this so called swarming 

 out. It evidently arises from a discontented 

 disposition engendered by some deficiency or 

 disatii-eeable feature belonging to the interior 

 of the hive. For instance want of food is the 



most common cause, and it is well known that 

 bees have been in the habit of deserting their 

 hives both in fall and spring, for centuries i)ast, 

 for this reason. It is only of late years, we 

 believe however, that they have taken to de- 

 serting hives well sui)plied with stores, and 

 these cases we think will be found to result 

 from a variety of causes; the principle one, in 

 our opinion is only to be explained by consid- 

 ering the losses of late years the result of a 

 disease; and that colonies thinned d(nvn in 

 numbers, and utterly demoralized and discoin • 

 aged, swarm out with the vain hope of throv. - 

 ing ofi'old and painful associations, and taking 

 a new start. This will satisfactorily explain 

 why such losses occur in Southern climates as 

 well as in the North. On the ground that 

 "Satan always finds some mischief etc.," we 

 should pix;scribe as a remedy that when this 

 gets to be the fashion, they should have a good 

 "feed" to keep them busy at home, until they 

 had got over the notion, for they almost invai"- 

 iably, when put back, come out again if the 

 weather seems enticing. Attacking their 

 Queens and killing them, so far as we can see, 

 can be explained on no other hypothesis, viz : 

 a diseased and unnatural state of afl'airs in the 

 bee hive. Our friend Miss Annie Saunders, of 

 Woodville, Miss., writes in regard to the latter 

 trouble : 



I think I can convince you that 7ny bees killed their 

 own Queens last spring. The circumstances were 

 such as to forbid any otlier hypothesis. They fly all 

 the year, so do not have your sin-ing setting out to 

 confuse them ; the mischief was done before extract- 

 ing commenced, therefore it could not have been from 

 shaking them where they got into the "wrong box"; 

 none of the unfortunate "hives were so arranged that; 

 such an accident would have been likely to occur, 

 only one being less than twenty feet from neighboring 

 hives and I always keep each little <loor-yard perfect- 

 ly clean, sol do" not think my bees had" a shadow of 

 "a i>eg" on which to hang an excuse "for intruding on 

 each otlier." Nevertheless they killed live of eleven 

 of my last years Queens, and two young ones. 



Once in hiving a natural swarm, during the preva- 

 lence of the matricidal epidemic, I used a glass hive 

 and so saw the bees trving to kill their Queen before 

 they had fairly entereil tlie hive. She was a beautilul 

 young Italian, laying too, and had not the slightest 

 defect that I could discover. In most of tiie cases I 

 thought the Queens were killed because they could 

 not or would not go, when the bees wanted to swarm. 

 Mot one had been introduced during the spring, tho 

 two young ones were hatched with those same unnat- 

 ural bees that murdered them. 



Now is it not unkind, to say the least, to tell 

 Miss Annie that all this trouble was the re- 

 sult of her own carelessness V In some cases 

 it may be that a lack of pollen brings about 

 this discontent (see page 141, Vol. 2) but we 

 think we have many cases where even this will 

 not do for an explanation. All the advice we 

 can otter is to keep them busy with brood, feed 

 etc., and to have them always neat, clean and 

 nice, just as Miss Annie says she luis kept her 

 bees. We advised friend AYhitson to tiy feed- 

 ing to save his Queens last spring, and it suc- 

 ceeded perfectly ; see what he sa3^s about it on 

 page 70, Vol. 2. 



My bees are doing well in the ise house. [Sec page 

 11, Vol. 2.] 1 think one colony Queen less but they are 

 strong and cross as need be". What can I do tosave 

 them before spring ? L. M. Raub, Bolivar, N. Y. 



Dec. nth, 1874. 



Nothing until you give them a flj', then give 

 them a comb containing eggs from some other 

 colony. Ilepeat this as often as is convenient 

 until thev can rear a Queen in the spring. See 

 page 90, Vol. 1. 



