C«5. 



<5rLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



im 



Oct. IHi/i.—A tYunnl has just niontiocied that 

 3io allowed a «ne colony ofltiiliaiis to starve 

 ill FeU. last. We adviseil iiiiu at the time to 

 .'4"ive them candy, and he bought a pound for 

 tlieiuJustiu time to tuui tkeiu all dead. The 

 j)oint is that he if&ve the candy to another 

 -stock, and tkey left their scaled stores for it 

 ■and ate the whole pound clean.. As he simply 

 laid the sticks across the frames under the 

 <tlniU, it makes a very easy way oif supplying 

 •colonies that aix; short of stores, but who can 

 iissurems tliat it will result in no injurious 

 form of activity }* 



A bee-keoper liviujj near Newport, Ivy., had 

 •a l)rothei- in the vicinity of Moscow, Russia, 

 who recently sent him several Queens. Thro' 

 the kindness of some of our suljscribers, a 

 daughter of one of these imported Russians 

 lias been sent us. 



About the 1st of Sept., as we took our usual 

 6)romeuade through the Apiary just before din- 

 aier, we discovered a very pretty Queen rest- 

 ing on one of the luves,— by the way, you can 

 see this very hive in the fore-ground of the 

 view of the house Apiary, which stands in the 

 iiorth-east corner of the enclosure shown in 

 the Lithograph. We stooped down to enquire 

 into the trouble of her ladyship, "poor thing !" 

 one wing was a little defectiT-e, and we were 

 <'ngaged in tossing lier up to test the matter, 

 when Blue Eyes interrupted by singing out,' 

 "dame's weady, papa.'" and we hastily put her 

 Jjack into the hive to pacify the bees, turning 

 the register on "not ai)proved," until we could 

 give them a better one. "Supposing we should 

 find Lier laying, after all," thought we, as we 

 were carrying them a Queen cell a few days 

 after ; and surely enough a line lot of brood we 

 found on looking, and stranger still, her bad 

 wing had become perfect, mts this the case ? 

 Not at all ; the Queen we put into the hive 

 i-ame from some other which must be queeuless. 

 ThisAvasso, and it proved to be in the house 

 Apiary— we can run iJ^em over very quickly 

 As we looked the hive over, the peculiar huiii 

 <)i distress that almost invariably indicates 

 C^ueeiilessuess was very marked, and as the 

 Kussian Queen reached us just at this time, we I 

 could not resist the temptation to trv our skill ' 

 ni releasing /d'/-^/fe Queens at once! i^ccord- ' 

 ingly the bo.x was opened and the cover was 

 j)resented to the bereaved colony to see if they 

 were peaceably inclined toward the bees that 

 adhered to it. Much to our surprise the tirst 

 bee that touched the cover with its antenna- 

 vittered a peculiar note, and straightway every 

 ()eo of the colony apparently, turned itself 

 fibout and scampered in response to the call, 

 at the same time joining in the note of rejoic- 

 Hig; this note is about the same that we hear 

 when a cluster of young bees have just discov- 

 ered their hive after having been shaken oft' 

 the combs, and the consequence was that we 

 soon had almost the entire colony hano-ir^^ to 

 tae little board, for the simple reason that 

 taey were attracted by the scent of a fertile 

 Queen. Of course we gave them the Queen 

 when we found they wanted her so badly and 

 never did subjects behave with more" com- 

 mendable decorum, unless it were that their 

 tokens^of regard were a little too vehement, as 

 JVIrs. R., who was called to witness the cu- 

 rious sight, suggested. The Queen began lay- 



ing at once, and on our return from the West 

 we found an almost incredible amount of 

 brood. Now it is our opinion that 'i Queens 

 out of 4 might l»e let loose At once with safety, 

 and to determiiK ^/■/■^'fi, it is safe, simply show 

 the bees a piece of comb or wood that she has 

 been crawling over, and see how they receive 

 it. We h.ave liberated many in a similar niau- 

 uer, and we «rmly believe that many a Queen 

 has starved in a cage, when liad she Ijcen al- 

 lowed to run among ih.! bees, she would have 

 been happily oviixjsiting. Now we know the 

 danger of such advice, ami therefore suggest 

 that you first practice on a Queen of no value, 

 and If you always keep your smoker in hand 

 and your wits a)>out you, you can put valua- 

 ble Queens where you want them with almost 

 perfect safety. 



Caged Queens when not watched, are sub- 

 ject to many mishaps, see the following. Our 

 cages always present food on both sides of the 

 inmates. 



I i)ressed the cage into the honey so the (iuecn 

 would have food, but I oi.one<l the hive the thinl dav 

 to nijerate her, awd the bees had removed all of thi; 

 Jioney out ol iier reach and she was dead. I learne(t 

 a lesson ; the lesson is, never trust bh»ck bees to feei) 

 a caged l^ueen, but put the feed in the cage secure 

 «rom the bees. W. A. Kuur, Easton, Wis., Uct. IH, '7.-;. 



Froblem 1. Have you* solve<l it? (see paire U, of 

 ULEANjNu.s, 1S74). Has any one tried to winter bees 

 oy that .■' It your solution is satisfactory, then whv 

 use syruj} .-> Why not have a two story hive to wLn"- 

 cer.'' the , space between the stories will aflord good 

 passage lor the bees? ji» Movi.i{ 



Sharpsville, Pa., .Sept. 13th, lb7r>. 



1 es, we tried it iu this way ; we made some 

 home-made candy and put it over the cluster. 

 It soon got soft and sticky, and tinally ran 

 down on the bees and daubed them up in such 

 a way that we never wanted to see any more 

 candy, and we suppose they felt about as we 

 did. The year we had the manure heaps wc 

 made some better candy, but they died iu spite 

 ot it— the candy didn't kill 'em,— we aiut going 

 to tell why i/iet/ died. Well, we went vi.siting 

 two weeks— when we got home, our leedin^ 

 was rather l)eliind,— about the ICth of Oct., we 

 were so fearful that they would not get it nice- 

 ly sealed that we stopped feeding— sent one 

 barrel of A sugar to the confectioner's, and he 

 has promised to make it all into nice, hard can- 

 dy, for lo.oO— any sized or shaped sticks that 

 we wish. Now you see wc are going to give 

 several good, strong colonics about half their 

 rations in candy laid under the quilt on the 

 frames. 



P. S.— Confidentially- we are going to keep 

 that ))arrel of candy in the barn. 



We think the two story plan would be tip- 

 top, and when Ave get a colony too large to get 

 into one story, Ave will try that too. We made 

 holes in the combs of about half of our stocks 

 last fall, but could see no difference, they all 

 Avintered equally avcH- put in bees enough 

 and they can go over the top and under the 

 bottom of the combs. 



Oct. 2nd.—Th(i candy is made, and aa'c have 

 just been putting the house Apiary in Avinter 

 trim. All unoccupied combs are removed and 

 piled up Avhere they will be handy next spring, 

 in y. hives piled one on another" iu the centre 

 of the room. We have been rather disappoint- 

 ed to find that our strong colonies when thus 

 condensed, do not cover more than from 4 to 7 



