1879 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTUEE. 



489 



I hope to give them more attention than I hitherto 

 have done. Hut, Mr. Root, every time that I take 

 honey from them, they sting me on the hands. I 

 always protect my face with a veil, then they go for 

 my hands, and I thought that I should have to send 

 to you for a pair of gloves. Let me know the price 

 of gloves and oblige, W. C. Hilt,. 



Jefferson, Texas, Nov. 6, 1879. 



Thanks for your good opinion, friend II. 

 But do you not need a smoker, rather than 

 gloves? There must be something wrong 

 somewhere, when the hees sting your hands 



as you say. 



CAN'T AFFORD TO TAKE GLEANINGS. 



I wish I could afford to take Gleanings 1his win- 

 ter, but cannot. A hail ftorm, July Kith, destroyed 

 almost all our crops, especially buckwheat. Still, 

 thanks in great measure to Gleanings and A B C, I 

 can make a good report for a beginner. I had 17 

 stocks in the spring, and have 38 now, in fine con- 

 dition for winter. In the spring, 2 stocks were Ital- 

 ians, all the rest blacks in box hives. Now all are 

 transferred, and all but 5 Italianized. 1 took 257ft>. 

 of section honey, and about 200 of extracted. I 

 made all my own hives, frames, sections, &c, which 

 is too much work for lazy folks. I think bee-keep- 

 ers earn all the honey they get. They have to work 

 as hard as the bees for it. Hut then the bees are 

 our ^jets. I am quite insensible to the effects of 

 stings. Wm. H. Hakt. 



Poughkeep: i !, X. Y., Nov. 6, 1879. 



Perhaps, my friends, you will say I have a 

 sehish motive in what I am about to say, 

 and perhaps I have, but as it is for your 

 good too, as well as my own, I think I would 

 best say it. When going to school, did you 

 ever notice the way in which a boy who lias 

 ••staid out" a few days looks, when he comes 

 to recite V Do you remember his vacant 

 stare when a part of the lesson comes up. 

 which hinges directly on the one of the pre- 

 vious days V When he tries to make up by 

 shrewdness, what he lacks in knowledge, it 

 is sometimes pitiable to those who are post- 

 ed and familiar with the ground. Now the 

 journal for this winter will cost you, friend 

 II., less than 25c. ; less, in fact, than 1-10 of 

 the value of the poorest one of your 38 colo- 

 nies of bees, or the value of 2lb. of honey, 

 and yet you cannot afford it. There! I beg 

 pardon ; I shall get to scolding, if I keep on. 

 I hope you will take one or more of the other 

 journals, if you do not take Gleanings. 



INTRODUCING A QUEEN BY A NOVEL METHOD. 



I received my second imported (jueen all right, 

 and have had the opportunity of seeing a limited 

 number of eggs, deposited by her, which I had not 

 expected, as The most of my queens had ceased lay- 

 ing. I had quite a time getting a nucleus started 

 for her with just hatching bees, as we had no very 

 suitable place to keep the combs warm. I just took 

 a glass jar and went to a hive that had plenty of 

 young bees, and picked off young bees just hatched, 

 bne or two at a time as I could catch them, and put 

 them in the jar. W r hen 1 got about a double hand- 

 ful, I put them in a hive with a couple of combs 

 without brood, turned the queen loose, and kept on 

 picking young bees every now and then for two or 

 three days, until I had' enough to cover and keep 

 warm a frame of brood, and have since been adding 

 frames of brood as fast as needed, and hope to get 

 them strong enough to be in good condition for win- 

 ter. 1 commenced in the spring, with 15, and expect 

 to go into the winter with about 40 good colonies. I 

 have taken about 600ft. of surplus besides. I made 

 mv increase bv artificial swarming. 



Centreville, O., Oct. 1, '79. Geo. W. Lawson. 



Your plan is not quite new, friend L., and 

 I am sony to say it is not always successful. 

 1 have known young hees to attack a queen, 

 when they looked as if they could not be 

 more than a day old; but I have never 



known a bee hatched in the hive with the 

 new queen to attack her. We always brush 

 every bee from combs of hatclwng brood, 

 when introducing a valuable queen; still, I 

 suppose your plan will succeed in the great 

 majority of cases. It is a slow process, as I 

 know by experi ence. 



ARE LARGE SWARMS ALWAYS THE MOST PROFITABLE 

 TO WINTER? 



I wish to tell you of a small August swarm of bees 

 that came out and lit on a small bush, was hived in 

 an old fashioned hive, set on a bench and kept there 

 until cold weather came, then was placed on a shelf 

 in the wood-house, with probably 101b. of honey to 

 keep it all winter, and it finally made a live of it, 

 and that same swarm sent out 3 very large swarms 

 that summer. Does not this show a very prolific 

 queen? 1 judge from this, that it is not always the 

 large amount of bees which are kept over winter, 

 that does the extra business. I was talking with a 

 friend to-day, who had 8 swarms of bees, and lost all 

 but one, and he told me that he had corked them up 

 tiuht, and they had sweat themselves to death. The 

 water had run out of the hives. I think bees should 

 be kept dry and warm, and the man that fails to do 

 this can surely count some loss. Now, friend Nov- 

 ice, do j ou keep all your bees all winter without loss 

 of any kind? 1 am trying to find those who are 

 most successful in wintering bees, and am going to 

 try to imitate them. K. A. Labar. 



Portland, Penn., Nov. 8, 1879. 



Large stocks are not always the most prof- 

 itable, and there are those who go so far as 

 to say they would as soon have a quart of 

 bees to commence with in the spring, as to 

 have more ; but I can by no means agree 

 with them. I never saw a colony with too 

 many bees in it, either in the spring or at 

 any other time; but, at the same time, a 

 quart of young bees in the spring might be 

 of more value than a peck of' old bees. The 

 colony you mentioned being a second swarm, 

 probably went into winter quarters with all 

 young bees. I once obtained swarms from 

 neighbors who were going to brimstone 

 them, and filled my hives to overflowing. 

 They ate a great quantity of food, and then 

 (as they were all about of the same age) all 

 died in the spring at pretty nearly the same 

 time, and left my stocks little, if any, better 

 than if they had not been given such a drove 

 of boarders through the winter.. Had I 

 made them raise brood in the fall, by feed- 

 ing, the case would, probably, have been 

 different. You are right in regard to keep- 

 ing the bees dry in the winter. 



A NEW FEATURE IN SIDE STOKING; HONEY BY THE 

 "JUG FDLL." 



A box hive man, a friend of mine, was telling me 

 of a new side storing box, a 2 gal. jug that he acci- 

 dentally left by the side of one of his hives last sea- 

 son. The bee's filled it with honey this season, and 

 when the nights got cold in the fall, they returned 

 to the hive, leaving the jug full of honey. He did 

 not get any surplus, so he is like friend Hasty, he 

 wants that honey. He is afraid that he cannot get 

 it without breaking the favorite jug. Don't tell 

 Mitchell: he will have a patent on it. 



Whitestown, Ind., Oct. 11, lt79. S. H. Lane. 



Now those bees were very inconsiderate, 

 to go and put comb honey into a jug; any 

 Itees of common sense should have known 

 it could not be poured out. By the way, 

 friend L., was it not a small second swarm 

 that took up its quarters there ¥ I should 

 hardly suppose they would go into a jug to 

 store their surplus honey", unless the nose of 

 the jug were inserted in a knot hole in the 

 hive (this last idea is my invention, mind 

 you), or something of the kind. 



