451 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Nov. 



f <m%' §<niartt£wi' 



jpjjjpl'IIIS has been a very poor honey season here. 

 jS| J Bees swarmed well, but, for some cause, they 

 ™i have gathered very little honey. White clover, 

 basswood and buckwheat all bloomed well, but did 

 not seem to yield any honey, and I never saw fall 

 flowers as plenty as at the present lime. Our black 

 bees made but very little white honey and no fall 

 honey at all, Our Italians did a great deal better 

 than the blacks. I don't think we will have four 

 hundred pounds all told. We will have to feed some 

 of our bees or they will not winter through. We 

 have about seventy colonies now but intend uniting 

 some. Bee culture isn't much of a success here. It 

 is a poor locality for bees. It does not look very 

 encouraging to bee keepers, and if bees die off this 

 winter as they did last you will have to add another 

 page or two for blasted hopes, although we lost but 

 1 out of 37. I never saw bees rob as they have this 

 summer; we could hardly open a hive all summer 

 but the robbers would pounce upon it like so many 

 boys at an empty sugar barrel. The Alsike clover 

 we got of you grew nicely; but when is the proper 

 time to sow it? Some say in the spring. But I 

 must close, hoping you will not have occasion to 

 put my name in blasted hopes. 

 East Hickory, Pa. Mrs. G. W. Siggins. 



You women seldom get into Blasted 

 Hopes, Mrs. K., for you are not easily dis- 

 couraged. Sow Alsike at any time almost, 

 but spring is preferable. 



THAT MATCH BOX ATTACHED TO THE SMOKER. 



I think a match safe would be an improvement to 

 your smoker, and that one could be put on the op- 

 posite side to the handle. It should be made either 

 square or half round, with a lid opening to the left 

 and clasped, and would hold a penny's worth of 

 matches. Mi:s. Jordan. 



Redding, Conn., Oct. 13, 1879. 



Thanks, Mrs. J., we will try and see what 

 we can do with your idea. We want the 

 match box out of the way, and it will not do 

 to have it too near the fire, or we should 

 have the matches going off prematurely. 

 When we get it to suit, we will have an en- 

 graving of it, and will at least give you your 

 share of the credit. 



DEPOSITORY OF 



Or Letters from Those Who Have JTIaile 

 Bee Culture a. Failure. 



i twi 

 "i yo\ 



THE ABC SCHOLAR WHO "OVERDID" FEEDING. 



HAVE received Gleanings and read it through 

 rice. I gather much from it, but much of 

 your advice don't "jibe" ; as, for instance, you 

 say "Crowd them up in preparing- for winter," &c. 

 Now Ziind, in every hive, if I crowd the combs near 

 tog-ether, they immediately fasten them all togeth- 

 er, or 2 and 2, or 2 and 3 together. Cutting- and pul- 

 ling- them apart jars, and then they g-o for me. I 

 never dare open and look through my hives with- 

 out a veil, and I am slow and careful too. Give me 

 Italians though for peaceableness. Then again, you 

 say, feed to start and keep up brood rearing-. 1 have 

 fed 100 lbs. coffee A syrup to 10 hives, (about ' ; Lb. to 

 each, nightly) during- the last month, in a 2d story 

 (empty of frames), ai.d "nary" a brood in any of 

 them. They have none of them made honey enough 

 to carry them one-half through winter. I shall have 

 to feed at least a barrel, and have not had a pound 

 of surplus, so bee keeping- don't paty this year; but 1 

 am a rather stubborn man, and shall try to winter 

 them over, and try it another year. My friends 

 laug-h at me for spending $100. for bees, &c\, getting 



! no return, and then feeding them a barrel of sugar. 



I My better half says, I would better put sugar in 

 the house, and bees in the fire. 

 That queen that reared beautiful Italian workers 



; for a month, and then only hybrid drones, is still 

 there, and so are the drones." It is the only hive re- 

 taining drones, and there are quite a lot of them. 



1 All brood has hatched. They were in worker cells, 

 and quite regularly placed in the centre of two 



I combs. IShe is a good sized queen. 



I find my syrup in about every cell in each hive, 

 and queens crawling about unable to find empty 

 cells. I put filn. in the centre, and as fast as it is 

 drawn out it is V% filled with syrup, so the queen 

 can't lay if she wants to. 



I have black and Italian and see no difference. 

 They have almost no sealed stores, but it is scattered 

 all over 10 frames, or 8, as I may have in the hive. 

 How can 1 crowd them on to less frames and not 

 have them fastened together? 1 have raised % acre 

 of sugar beets, and I thought of trying the very 

 thing you mention; 1 hat is, to see if bees will take 

 up "beet juice as well as cane juice. I have some 

 bouncing beets. 15. S. Binney. 



Shirley, Mass. Oct. T, 1879. 



Do you mean to say, friend 13., there is 

 not a particle of brood in any one of your 10 

 hives? I should hardly suppose it possible 

 that you fed all of them until such was the 

 ' case. I would hold on a little, and feed less. 

 If there are plenty of bees, and a good queen 

 in each hive, it seems to me there must be 

 brood, in some of them. I fear you have 

 misunderstood me in regard to crowding the 

 bees up on a small number of frames; the 

 frames should never be nearer than about 

 li inches from centre to centre. This dis- 

 tance is obtained pretty nearly, by moving 

 the frames so close that the point of your 

 forefinger will just go between the project- 

 ing arms of the frames. If the combs are 

 bulged with stores along the top bar, they 

 will often touch there, and be fastened to- 

 gether; but these fastenings will readily 

 break when you attempt to remove the 

 frames. If your combs are all so full that 

 the queens can find no empty cells, I do not 

 see how you need to feed a barrel more. If 

 you put a good, warm cushion over the 

 frames, I think the bees will seal up their 

 stores faster. Bid your wife be patient; my 

 wife felt pretty much the same way when I 

 first commenced, but when, a year or two 

 afterward, we got over three tons of honey, 

 she was the first one to wish the basswood 

 yield would stop, for she said she knew no 

 one would ever want so much of it, and the 

 weight of it was breaking down the wood 

 house. 



We clip the following from the Cincinati Grange 

 Bulletin, of Oct. 23d, thinking it may be interesting 

 to our readers after perusing Mr. Jones' report on 

 page 434 of this issue: 



tLJ^H 



there 



THE MOST EXTENSIVE BEE FARM IN THE WORI 



Near the village of Beeton, Ontario, Canada, 

 is a bee farm which is probably one of the most ex- 

 tensive and successful things of the kind in the 

 world. It consists of four bee yards situated at the 

 angles of a square which embraces several square 

 miles of country. The current year, so far, has 

 proved favorable for honey. Mr. D. A. Jones, the 

 owner, had at the end of July already secured 30,000 

 pounds of honey from 620 stocks of bees. The hives 

 used are oblong pine wood boxes, with a cubic ca- 

 pacity of 3,240 inches, the inside measure being 15 by 

 18 by 12. The proprietor expects a total yield for 

 the year of 70.000ft. of honey from his 19,000,000 little 

 workers, in which case he would net between $7,000 

 and $10,000 for the year's product, without taking in- 

 to account the sale of swarms or of queen bees. 



