1879 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



385 



to it, they will be waiting at the floor way, every 

 night, even when the nights are quite cool. Al- 

 though you can till them conveniently with a coffee 

 pot, a pail with cover and curved spout, as shown 

 in the engraving below, will be found handier. 



SIMPLICITY FEEDER ARRANGED FOR FEEDING CHAFF 

 HIVE FOR WINTER. 



The feeder should be set so low, that its upper 

 edge is just even with the entrance block. Now, to 

 make this work nicely, you must have the hive so 

 full of bees that they are crowded out at the entrance 

 a little, unless during the very coolest nights, and 

 they should be thus strong to winter safely, any way. 

 If you cannot crowd them out otherwise, put a di- 

 vision board on each side. A -good colony will empty 

 a pint Simplicity feeder, almost without fail; but if 

 you should find it is not all taken out, and makes 

 trouble by exciting robbing next morning, fill them 

 no more than half full. If it should rain and fill 

 your feeders with rain water, instead of taking the 

 trouble to pour it out, just sprinkle in enough sugar 

 to make the bees take it out. With the above ar- 

 rangement, it is an easy matter to feed at the rate 

 of 5 hives per minute. 



WHAT TO FEED. 



If you want the very best and safest thing for your 

 bees for winter, give them a syrup made of straight 

 A coffee sugar. I believe all are agreed that this is 

 just as good, or better, than honey. There is no 

 need of boiling it at all; just stir it up with water as 

 1 have directed in the ABC. No matter about the 

 proportions, only the sweeter you make it the less 

 labor will they have to evaporate it in the hives. 



Now the friends who are afraid of grape sugar 

 would better stop right here, and read no farther. 

 Those who, like myself, feel that grape sugar is just 

 as safe as cane sugar aside from its inveterate habit 

 of hardening in the cells in cool or cold weather can 

 read on, for I have made 



A VERY VALUABLE DISCOVERY. 



The credit of it belongs to several individuals who 

 gave me suggestions, some accidentally, and I will 

 try to give all due credit. You may remember that 

 I remarked, when we first began experiments with 

 grape sugar, that Will had failed in all his attempts 

 to combine the two sugars in making bee candy. 

 Although they were solid and dry when separate, as 

 soon as they were combined they were soft and 

 sticky, and he could not make them hard. This is 

 fact one. 



When friend Bingham was here last winter, there 

 was here at the same time a fiiend from Milan, ()., 

 Mr. S. Fish. Friend B. was, of course, very vehe- 

 ment in his denunciations of grape sugar and its 

 use for confectionary. Mr. Fish said he had used it 

 for bees without any bad results, and in the way it 

 was used in making candy, he thought it no harm at 

 all. He said they simply added enough grape sugar, 

 to destroy the tendency, in the; canr BUgar, to grain. 

 For this purpose, they had formerly used vinegar; 

 but he thought a nice article of grape sugar prefer- 

 able, and so do I, in common with all our candy ma- 

 kers. Hence, notice that grape sugar destroys the 

 graining property of cane sugar, when added to it in 

 either large or small proportions. This is fact No. 

 two. 



On page 90, March No., Prof. Cook gives an ac- 

 count of a very valuable experiment, and it has 

 doubtless demonstrated something he did not at the 

 time expect, as well as the fact that I was mistaken. 

 The bottles still stand in my study, and while three 



of them have candied, including the honey, the bot- 

 tle containing 2 parts of grape sugar and one of 

 honey has not candied at all. This is fact No. three. 

 Well, my invention, deduced from the above, is 

 that three lb. of grape sugar with one lb. of coffee 

 sugar, dissolved in any quantity of water, will not 

 candy at all. You may boil it down, if you choose, 

 until it is solid, but no amount of stirring will make 

 it grain, and you can make it so thick that the dish 

 holding it may be turned upside down without spill- 

 ing its contents, and it will still be as clear as glass. 

 We have fed it to the bees for over a month, and 

 have combs of it nicely sealed up, and still it is ex- 

 actly like thick sealed honey. I have not a particle 

 of fear in feeding it to my 300 colonies, for it is vir- 

 tually honey, almost identical with that which the 

 ! bees gather. It may be well to add that we are get- 

 \ ting a better article of grape sugar now, from the 

 Thurbers of N. Y, than that we used last year. 

 They seem to have made important improvements 

 in making a nice, pure article. Now, this isn't all 

 ! either. It will probably be too cold for the out door 

 ! feeding, as given above, when this No. reaches the 

 most of you, and we must therefore feed candy of 

 some kind. 



BEE CANDY FOR 5C. PER DB. 



Our friends who have found it so difficult to com- 

 prehend many of the queer things about grape sugar 

 (such as that the solid sugar contains more water 

 than the liquid glucose, &c,) will, probably, be inter- 

 ested in the following: Take a small quantity of 

 coffee sugar, and three times as much grape sugar, 

 both of which substances are dry and solid; pulver- 

 ize them with a knife, and put them together, and 

 they will form a wet semi-liquid. The water contain- 

 ed in the grape sugar exists in what is called a latent 

 form, as the water does in plaster of Paris, when it 

 hardens. Well, the coffee sugar has so strong an 

 attraction for water, that it pulls it away, as it were, 

 from the grape sugar, and with it becomes a thick 

 syrup, or semi-fluid. This semi-fluid, composed of 

 the two sugars, will be greedily taken by the bees; 

 but it is too soft, and would run down and daub 

 them. Now for my invention, which I confess to 

 feeling a little proud of. You can easily melt grape 

 sugar, on the stove, in a tin pan; and that, too, with- 

 out the addition of a drop of water. You would 

 suppose this melted sugar would become solid again, 

 as soon as it becomes cold. Such is not the case 

 however; it cannot again take up all this water, 

 without having a little time in which to do it, say 24 

 or 48 hours. Now, listen. 



HOW TO MAKE THE FIVE CENT CANDY. 



Put 3 lb. of grape sugar in a tin on the stove, and 

 melt it, adding no water. When melted (partly 

 melted will do if you mash up the soft lumps), take 

 it off, and let it stand until it begins to solidify. 

 When it is partially solid, stir it up until it makes 

 an even paste, say about like butter in the summer. 

 Now stir into it, 1 lb. of coffee sugar, and y t lb. of 

 wheat flour. All lumps in the sugar or flour must 

 be mashed up or rolled. The pasty grape sugar is 

 simply to hold the coffee sugar and Hour, so that the 

 bees can lick it up. Therefore, it is not to be dis- 

 solved, but only stirred in. You can now make it 

 into candy bricks, sticks, or spread it into a frame 

 to be hung in the hive. As soon as the bees lick it 

 up, it is a liquid, and will never harden in the cells 

 afterwards: in which respect, it is even superior to 

 honey. If you wish to feed it rapidly, for winter 

 stoics, make a shallow tray, by nailing a very thin 

 board back to a common frame; All this with the 

 soft candy, and after it hardens, which it will do 

 over night if set where it is cold, lay the whole tray, 

 candy side down, over the top of the frames, so as 

 to have it cover the cluster. In this position, the 

 moisture from the breath of the bees will soften the 

 candy, and they will lick it up and deposit it in the 

 combs very quickly. The % lb. of Hour will start 

 brood rearing at once, and if it is a strong colony in 

 a chaff hive, you can, with it, make them raise 

 young bees and build up, even in winter. About 

 the expense; 3 1b. of grape sugar will be 12c: lib. 

 straight A coffee sugar, 9c; V 2 lb. best wheat flour, 

 1 l-2c; total, 22 l-2c for 4 1-2 lb. of candy, or 5c per lb. 

 I will sell you the material at the above prices, or I 

 will furnish you the candy made up, ready to feed, 

 for 2c per lb. extra. I shall keep 4 1-2 lb. trays on 

 hand, made just right to cover 1-2 of the brood nest 

 in a chaff hive. Price of each tray, 35c. Three or 4 

 such trays should, I think, carry a strong colony 

 through the winter. Price of empty trays, 5c. 



