12 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Jan. 



lost. Somebody else pushed them off on the floor, 

 they were then carried down with rubbish, and got, 

 I know not how, into the slop pail and old iron box. 

 I confess this incident tried my patience more se- 

 verely than almost anything that has happened all 

 summer. For a long time after, I "got mad" when- 

 ever I thought of anyone's being so very heedless 

 and careless with' my property. 



Three hands were getting a large and valuable 

 stone into the boiler room. They let it fall, and 

 broke it in two. I do not know how I can raise their 

 wages; only one of them was probably to blame, 

 and perhaps they would claim that nobody was. If 

 anv one of the three had said, "Now, ooys, do not 

 let us break this, whatever we do," I do not think it 

 would have been broken. 



A clerk was paying a man some money, and among 

 the articles purchased was a little over 5 lbs. of cop- 

 per wire for a telephone. I happened to notice the 

 amount, and thought it was too much. The wire 

 was 50c. per lb., but the amount carried out was over 

 $5.00. It was simply a mistake in multiplying, and 

 as this clerk does not make such a mistake onetime 

 in a thousand, it should be called only an accident. 

 T tell you. my friends, we ran do better even than 

 this. 'Following out Mr. W.'s plan, as soon as the 

 clerk commenced the multiplication she should have 

 said, mentallv, "As the wire is a half dollar a pound, 

 there will be half as many dollars as pounds; so the 

 result must come somewhere near $2.50;" apply- 

 ing- not the rule of feet and inches to it, but the rule 

 of keen common sense. 



In the same way, I have been for years in the hab- 

 it of making a rough estimate of what things should 

 cost, or what results should be, long before mv mul- 

 tiplications or additions are made, and thereby 

 have stopped many a mistake, before it had gone 

 farther. It all sums up, in having your wits con- 

 stantly about you, your mind always on your work, 

 and looking forward to anticipate any trouble that 

 may come up. 



One more illustration of how a hand can earn bet- 

 ter wages happened that day. A man was working 

 on hive stuff on a circular saw, and as he finished 

 each board, he turned around and laid it down be- 

 hind him. The next piece was picked up in a simi- 

 lar way. By night, this man would be very tired, 

 and would have tired himself out in work worse 

 than useless. A box or stand should have been pro- 

 vided, at an easy height, and close to his hand, or a 

 boy should have put the boards in place and taken 

 them away, so he would have had nothing to do but 

 to push the pieces through. By arranging things 

 properly, and setting two hands at the work, the 

 whole lot was put through in 45 minutes. 



This principle is by no means confined to my work; 

 I presume you, my friend, might save a great part 

 of your hard labor each year, by following out the 

 principle T have suggested. If you are working for 

 wages, you will not only stand a chance of getting 

 better pay, but you will be sure of a nlace, at good 

 wnges, even when times are dull, and money scarce. 

 Numbers are now coming to me for places in the 

 new building, but careful, faithful hands, such as I 

 have described, are never out of work, but are as a 

 general thing hunted up, and wanted in a dozen 

 places at once. 



A boy who cannot keep and take care of a knife 

 of his own will seldom take care of the tools and 

 other property of his employer. I do not know but 

 that I shall ask the next bov who applies for a place, 

 to let me see his pocket knife; if it will whittle my 

 lead pencil nicely, I can afford to hire him. 



m m ^ — 



ANABC SCHOLAR'S EXPERIENCE. 



ESPECIALLY WITH QUEENS. 



sjlj? SHOULD long ago have reported my experience 

 Ijl with those three queens I got from you when I 

 sal was in Medina, in July last, but protracted ill- 

 ness prevented me. I often think with pleasure of 

 those two days I spent in your shop, and especially 

 amongst your bees, and I saw and learned a good 

 deal that is of value to me; but I don't think I both- 

 ered much with asking questions, or did I bother 

 you, "friend Will?" 



Those queens I took were of different looks; one 

 was of such a beautiful golden color that I marked 

 her No. 1, on the cage; the second, hardly inferior 

 in looks, I called No. 2; and the last one, rather an 

 inferior looking, dark queen, of smaller size than 

 the other two, and with the tip of her abdomen quite 

 black besides, I named No. 3. 



With each one of them, I had more or less trouble 

 in introducing, but I succeeded with all of them, in 

 the end. 



No. 1, I thought too valuable to risk with a colony 

 of old bees, and so I made a nucleus, by taking from 

 each of three strong swarms, one frame with hatch- 

 ing brood and the adhering bees. These frames I 

 put into a Simplicity hive, and my queen in her 

 cage on top of the frames. A couple of hours after, 

 I saw in front of this nucleus a ball of bees on the 

 ground, and imagine my feelings, when I found 

 amongst them- — a dead queen. In spite of my 

 looking ever so sharp, as I thought, I had taken a 

 queen along with those brood frames, and there she 

 lay now. dead on the ground, and right behind me 

 was a colony all in an uproar about their lost moth- 

 er. Disgusting! wasn't it? 



The following day, I released the Italian queen in 

 this nucleus, and as all the old bees by this time 

 would naturally have left for their old homes, I ex- 

 pected her majesty to be received with smiles and 

 kisses; but in this, I was mistaken; for she was 

 balled up in less than five minutes, and I had to re- 

 lease and cage her again, to save her from the fate 

 of my poor black queen. 



Next day, I tried again; but hardly had I opened 

 the cage, when the contrary thing came rushing out 



and flew away. A tremendous jump, the highest 



since my boyhood, in hopes to catch her, availed me 

 nothing; she was too quick for me, and was out of 

 sight in a few seconds. I felt almost bad enough to 

 cry, but I remembered that the same thing occurred 

 to friend Will, when I was with him, and that his 

 queen came back again, after a little time, he leav- 

 ing the hive open meanwhile. This gave me hope, 

 and with beating heart, I watched at the side of the 

 open hive for about ten minutes, when, sure enough, 

 there she came flying slowly, straight to her hive, 

 but alighting some five feet from it, on the ground. 

 She almost slipped away once more, but, this time, I 

 was too quick for her, and had her in her cage again 

 before she was aware of it. 



The following day, I let her out again; she did not 

 try any more excursions, but staid on the comb as 

 "honest queens" should do, and the bees treating 

 her kindly, the introduction of queen No. 1 was a 

 success. 



Queen No. 2, 1 gave to a queenless colony. I had 

 to fuss with her for 4 days before she was accepted, 

 but after that, she was allowed to reign in peace. 



Queen No. 3, the one with the black tip, I intro- 

 duced to one of my most populous colonies (first 

 made queenless, of course), and she was accepted on 

 the fifth day. Two days after she had been safely 

 introduced, I opened the hive towards evening, to 

 see how she was doing, but hardly had I removed 

 the cloth from the frames and blown a little smoke 

 into the hive to keep the bees down, when lo! and 



behold! the old lady came running up and flew 



away. I left the hive open and watched for the re- 

 turn of the truant; my daughter (my main assistant 

 in my work with my bees) was with me, keeping a 

 lookout at the entrance, while I watched the top of 

 the frames, but neither of us saw anything of the 

 queen. Tired of watching any longer, I took the 

 frames out, and both of us kept on looking them 

 over and over again, as minutely as if trying to find 

 a pin in a haystack, but could discover no queen. It 

 grew too dark, at last, for keeping up the hunt any 

 longer; that queen was surely lost anyway, so I 

 thought, and with a deep sigh of disappointment, I 

 shut up the hive. ^- . 



The following day, I had to go away on business, 

 and when I came home again, towards evening. I 

 was startled with the unexpected news, that 1h3 

 bees had been swarming. My daughter had hived 

 them, but she had not seen from what hive they 

 came. ,, , _ . 



As I had my lost queen from the day before up- 

 permost in my mind vet, 1 went and opened that 

 particular hive, and here was a puzzle! Of my rous- 

 ing big colony, there was but a handful of bees left; 

 sure enough, they had swarmed, but without a 

 queen? How is that? To solve this riddle, I went 

 and shook my new swarm onto a sheet to find the 

 queen, and behold! almost the first thing I cast my 



eyes on was my lost, yellow queen, with her 



"black tip." , ., . , „ 



She must have got in unobserved the day before, 

 and kept hidden somewhere while I was looking 

 over the combs, as it is too improbable that she 

 could have staid away over night, and succeeded in 

 finding her hive the next morning. 

 As the queen seemed to be dissatisfied, with her 



