140 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



April 



THE COVERED SIMPLICITY FEEDER. 



-OW, Novice, don't you think I deserved a little 

 credit as an inventor of the bee feeder illus- 

 trated on page 82? Mr. Gray has the necessary 

 tools to work with, and he has put "my idea," as you 

 called it, into a better form; but I think he will ad- 

 mit that the principle is the same. 



Frank McNay. 

 Eau Gallie, Wis., March 10th, '79. 



I humbly beg your pardon, friend M. When 

 Mr. Gray was at work at the feeders, I 

 thought I had seen something similar; but 

 on looking over our ''museum,' 1 as the edi- 

 tor of the A. B. J. pleasantly terms it, I 

 could not find what I wanted. It was prob- 

 ably lost when we moved. I now find the 

 following letter in regard to it, and a note on 

 the margin to the effect that I gave you one 

 year's subscription for the idea. 



I have invented a feeder which I think, if properly 

 made, will be more convenient than any we have 

 vised. I will send it to you by mail. It is the only one 

 I have made, and as I had not the necessary tools, it 

 is not very '.perfectly made. I had no 2 in. lumber, 

 and was obliged to nail 2 one in. boards together. 

 As you will be obliged to tear the bottom board off 

 to see how it is made, I have only tacked it on. It 

 should be well nailed on, and then waxed inside. 

 Please examine it, and if you think it is not prac- 

 tical, or that it is an infringement on your Simplicity 

 feeder, you may reject it, at once. 



This feeder is to be placed at the entrance, with 

 the edge having 2 slots next to the entrance. This 

 will close the upper slot, which is only to let the bees 

 pass from the first slot over the first partition into 

 the second slot, where they take the feed which 

 passes under the second partition, through a slot too 

 small to admit a bee. FRANk McNay. 



Eau Gallie, Wis., Nov. 19th, '78. 



The idea was suggested to Mr. Gray, by a 

 customer's ordering some covered Simplici- 

 ties. As Shuck's "Boss" feeder was at 

 hand, we looked it over. It contained 7 

 pieces, where one single block of wood would 

 answer. It also allowed the honey to come 

 right on the backs of the bees when filling, 

 and here is where the most valuable feature 

 of your invention comes in, friend M;viz., 

 introducing the food so as to have it rise up 

 from the bottom. The tin over the auger 

 hole, in the "■Boss" feeder, cannot well be a 

 perfect fit, and security against robbers, as 

 is the one I devised to work in a saw cut, 

 inside of the cover. Mr. J. C. Dickerman, 

 Hudson, Mich., sent a most beautiful form 

 of Simplicity feeder a long time ago, having 

 the cover of glass, that the bees might be 

 seen at work, and to indicate when the feed- 

 er was empty. This feeder is precisely a 

 "Boss" feeder, only that the auger hole was 

 at one end. This feeder is also made of a 

 single block of wood, and it would have been 

 engraved at the proper time, only that 1 then 

 decided it was too complicated and expen- 

 sive. You can get just as many patents on 

 such things, as you have money to pay for, 

 but they will no more stand law, than will 

 the foolish claims some of our friends have 

 been making on smokers, extractors, fdn. 

 machines, and the like. I am sorry to speak 

 thus, but why will you waste your time and 

 strength in trying to monopolize the rest? 

 Since the time when Wagner's patent on 

 fdn. proved so futile, patents on bee fixtures 

 have fallen to the ground one after another 

 in a way that should convince any one, that 

 I do not speak blindly; your patent claims 

 are all beside me, in the Patent Office Ga- 

 zette, and in the same room are bee books 



and journals for more than a hundred years 

 back, besides the models and letters that 

 have been accumulating on my hands. 



fiRAPE SUGAR. IS IT PROFITARLE 

 FOOD FOR REES '. 



FTER reading all the comments on glucose, 

 grape sugar, and honey and candy adultera- 

 tions, that have greeted my vision for the last 

 year or two, and after using about 100 lbs. of grape 

 sugar in my apiary last autumn, I have arrived at 

 the conclusion that the use of grape sugar by the 

 apiarian is neither profitable nor advantageous. I 

 was induced to try it on account of its cheapness, 

 and apparent adaptation to bee feeding (according 

 to articles that appeared from time to time in 

 Gleanings), not for purposes of adulteration! or 

 for storage in surplus boxes, but simply for bee 

 feeding- in time of honey drouth. 



I found last autumn, out of 71 colonies in my api- 

 ary, 9 that were short of food and required from 2 

 to 16 lbs. each to give them a supply of 20 lbs. for 

 winter, while several other colonies needed a few 

 pounds each to render them perfectly safe. I de- 

 termined to try grape sugar, on account of econo- 

 my, and procured 100 lbs. at an expense of $b. I 

 used to dissolve about 10 lbs. at a lime, in a small 

 boiler, and then add about 10 lbs. of honey, and feed 

 the mixture. 



The bees stored it readily, and cappsd a large por- 

 tion of the food before winter set in. I thus fed up 

 all my weak colonies, and felt confident of triumph. 

 The cold weather following and chilling some of the 

 weak colonies, determined me to remove them into 

 the cellar. This however did not save them, for 3 

 of them died outright, and the others became so 

 weak that I have united 2 or 3 into one, thus re- 

 ducing my number below 60. Some of them also 

 showed signs of dysentery. 



But what pnrticularly convinces me thut grape 

 sugar is poor food for bees is the fact, that nearly 

 every frame of the colonies to which 1 fed this mix- 

 ture, contains, to-day. in the bottom of nearly half 

 the cells in each comb, the crystallized portion of 

 said food, so hard indeed that one can scarcely cut 

 it with a knife. What the bees will eventually do 

 with it is yet to be determined. Some of said bees 

 would probably have died, had they been fed only 

 with pure honey, as they were too weak for a severe 

 winter campaign; but here T stick peg No. 1, in con- 

 demnation of grape sugar for bee feed in winter. 



Again; it is no cheaper comparatively than the 

 best coffee sugar, for chemists universally maintain 

 that 3 lbs. of grape sugar contain no greater quanti- 

 ty of saccharine matter, or sweetening power, than 

 one pound of coffee sugar, and the taste alone of 

 dissolved grape sugar, compared with honey or pure 

 syrup, is sufficiently insipid to warrant its total con- 

 demnation. 



I was at first disposed to think favorably of it, and 

 have given it a fair trial; I have suffered, although 

 not severely, for it, and can see no expediency in its 

 use, but much injury from its abuse; therefore, I 

 desire every bee man to record his testimony and 

 his vote upon it. S. W. Salisbury. 



Kansas City, Mo., March 17, 1879. 



You say you bought this, friend S., for us- 

 ing in time" of drouth, but if I am correct 

 you have given no report of it for this pur- 

 pose. Your bees will take every bit of the 

 hard sugar out of the cells, as fast as they 

 need it, in warm weather. To be sure the 

 grape sugar, like honey (which is principally 

 grape sugar), has less sweetening power than 

 cane sugar, but does it follow that it has also 

 less nourishing power for bee food? Are 

 not you, too, friend S., accepting books rath- 

 er than your own experiments. If you, or 

 others, from the statement given above, 

 think grape sugar killed your bees, I would 

 advise you, by all means, to discard it. 



Bees may have dysentery when fed on a 

 mixture of honey and grape sugar as they 

 do with honey alone, but I have always con- 

 sidered both grape and cane sugar safer than 

 honey in this respect. 



