344 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Sept. 



first was an accident, the virgin queen be- 

 ing found on the combs, after they had ac- 

 cepted the imported queen. 



DARK COLORED ITALIAN QUEENS. 



Aug. 8th. — Once in a while, we get very 

 dark queens from even our .best imported 

 stock. Especially is this true of the larvae 

 sent out by mail. I do not know why it is, 

 unless getting the larva? chilled slightly 

 makes the queens dark. The darkest queens 

 in our apiary we have kept for our own use, 

 to furnish brood, etc., and to see what the 

 workers would be like. One was shown me 

 this morning, which had been tested just be- 

 cause she was so very black. She is a nice, 

 large queen, but she is of a shiny, jet black. 

 In fact, there is no yellow on her ; and she 

 is much blacker than a native queen. Well, 

 what do you suppose her workers are like? 

 They are as prettily marked Italians, as any 

 in the apiary, and are remarkably light in 

 color. It is quite a curiosity to see her mo- 

 ving about among them. I shall keep her 

 just for a curiosity, and when you come to 

 see us, you can take a look at her and her 

 workers yourself. 



UOX HIVE REE KEEPERS. 



Aug. 16th— A neighbor, who has recently 

 moved into town, brought with him 4 hives 

 of bees. The four hives gave him 10 swarms 

 this season, and, after taking off considera- 

 ble box honey, he has sold me 5 second 

 swarms that he was intending to take up, 

 for $1.00 each, providing I would take out 

 the honey and put it in tin pans for him. 

 After the bargain was concluded, he came 

 back to say that he wanted the boxes and 

 barrels they were in back again, to put sec- 

 ond swarms in next year. I told him if they 

 were to be sold to me on the same or similar 

 terms, I would lend him some Simplicity 

 hives, and thus save the job of transferring. 

 Well, I got a good many lbs. of fine Italians 

 with some hybrids at a much less price than 

 even 50c per lb., and he got a very fair profit 

 on his four sw r arms of bees which had never 

 cost him anything in money, and but little 

 time, except to put the swarms, as they 

 came out, into boxes and barrels. Truly, it 

 don't seem very hard to make bees pay. 

 The way they came to be such fair Italians 

 without any care was from their being near 

 our apiary, where there were such an abun- 

 dance of Italian drones constantly flying. 



Aug. 18th. — We have had two, cold, rainy 

 days, on which the bees could not fly at all ; 

 consequently, the cups on the Simpson Hon- 

 ey Plant got full of honey. This morning, 

 if you put several of them in your mouth at 

 once, you could get quite a dose of honey, 

 somewhat diluted with rain water. It was 

 a rare sight, to see the bees drink, after the 

 sun came out enough to permit them to fly. 

 It has been said, that buckwheat does not 

 secrete honey until we have cool nights, and 

 this now seems to be the case ; for, about 9 

 o'clock, the bees rushed for the field in one 

 vast drove, and, for the first time this year, 

 made quite a showing of buckwheat honey 

 in their hives. The sunflowers seem to be 

 mostly a failure, for there is scarcely a bee 

 to be seen en them. I know this is not al- 

 ways the case, for, in former years, I have 



seen them very busy on sunflowers. Mus- 

 tard, also, is a failure under cultivation ; but, 

 although it will do nothing on our grounds, 

 it grows and blooms beautifully on the hard- 

 est, barren roadsides about us. 



Mignonnette has a fair show of bees on it, 

 and borage also ; but, although they work 

 on these plants from daylight until dark, 

 their work is tame indeed, compared with 

 the loud humming on the bed of Simpson 

 honey plants. Eor about an hour in the 

 forenoon, they make somewhat the same 

 humming on the buckwheat ; but, after the 

 honey is once licked off from the nectaries 

 of the flowers, that is the last of it for the 

 day, while this wonderful Simpson plant 

 seems to pour a, steady stream of honey into 

 its nectaries. You can see a tiny drop shin- 

 ing at the base of the flower, in less than a 

 half hour after the bee has licked it out clean, 

 and this process is going on constantly, from 

 daylight to dark, day after day, week after 

 w r eek, and month after month. I have plant- 

 ed seed enough in seed beds, to cover sever- 

 al acres, and I can hardly be patient until 

 they come up. The seeds are so small, and 

 it is so difficult to get them to germinate, 

 that I have carried some to a market garden- 

 er, who says the ground must be shaded to 

 get them to grow in this hot weather. One 

 of our clerks, who is a good hand at making 

 seeds grow, has tried some in a flower pot. 



19th.— I am rejoicing over two things this 

 morning, — the Simpson honey plant seeds 

 have come up, and the buckwheat yielded 

 honey enough in a part of the forenoon, so 

 that the bees deserted the grape sugar. We 

 only feed them in the afternoon ; but, last 

 night, they did not get it all before it became 

 too cool for bees to fly. Is it true, that buck- 

 wheat only yields honey after we have cool 

 nights V If this is so, it may be important 

 to keep it in mind while sowing it. 



HOW BEES "MAKE" HONEY. 



4 o * clock, P. M. — The Simpson honey plants 

 are at the back part of the honey farm, and, 

 as it gives me a pretty fair walk, I usually 

 go over there when tired of writing. Well, 

 I have just been over, and the very great 

 numbers of bees on so few plants aroused 

 my curiosity ; so, watch in hand (I borrowed 

 the watch), I counted the number of bees 

 that visited a certain flower, in a certain 

 length of time. To my surprise, they aver- 

 aged just about a bee a minute. The* flower 

 might not be visited for two minutes, and 

 then again, it would be visited twice in a 

 minute. Well, I very soon discovered that 

 the bees that came twice in a minute made 

 much shorter stays, than when an interval 

 of two minutes elapsed. Was it possible 

 that enough honey could collect in that tiny 

 flower, to make it profitable for the bees to 

 visit it all day long, from daylight until dark? 

 If so, I ought to be able to see it by looking 

 sharp. I found a flower, in the right posi- 

 tion to receive the direct rays of the sun, 

 and, just after a bee had licked it out clean, 

 I watched the nectaries to see how soon any 

 more honey was visible. To my great aston- 

 ishment, in just f of a minute, I saw a little 

 shining globule of honey, begin to push its 

 way up, right where the bee had licked it off. 

 (Concluded on page 364J 



