GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Jan. 



BEES AND filUPtS. 



i^j EEING the discussion in Gleanings as to bees 

 Sgrk eating grapes, we would like to give our expe- 

 rience, as we make grape-growing a specialty. 

 We have twelve acres of grapes and about 120 stands 

 of bees, blacks and hybrids, and we do not think that 

 we have ever had a grape punctured by bees. You 

 do not seem to be aware that the Concords are very 

 liable to burst, if there is a wet spell of weather 

 about the time they are ripe. In fact, their thin 

 skin is their weak point. About four years ago, we 

 lost nearly our entire crop of Concords, by their 

 bursting, on account of a two or three days' rain, 

 before they were quite ripe enough for wiue. If you 

 will take the p. tins to look at your Concord grapes 

 after every wet spell, when they are ripening, you 

 will soon become convinced of this fact. 



Deliwares very often burst, because the bunch is 

 so compact that they have not room to grow, and 

 they are also so very sweet that the orioles are more 

 destrucih e to them. Our Delawares are about thir- 

 ty yards from our bees at the nearest end of the 

 rows, and may be one hundred yards from them at 

 the furthest cr.d. Our house stands by the side of 

 the bees, and, in consequence, is about the same 

 distance from the Delawares. We have usually 

 found it almost impossible to get a perfect bunch of 

 Delawares from the furthest end of the rows, and 

 supposed it was because the orioles worked there 

 more than they did near the house; but I suppose 

 we shall have to change our minds now, as you say 

 the further the grapes are fromt'.ie apiary, the more 

 the bees work on them. We have two brothers who 

 have about teu acres of grapes, within one-half mile 

 of our bees. One has two stands of bees, the other 

 none; and we have never known either of them to 

 complain of bees eating their grapes. 



The only time when the bees trouble us seriously 

 is after we have commenced gathering the grapes. 

 We usually gather them in buckets, and pour them 

 into barrels in the vineyard. The handling bursts a 

 great many of them, and the bees get into the bar- 

 rels and get covered up. Then when we go to feed 

 the grapes in the mill, for crushing, we get our hands 

 full of stings, as we feed them out with our hands. 

 The grape juice seems to be an antidote for the 

 stings, however, as when we get through and wash 

 up, we cannot find where we have been stung, though 

 we may have pulled out fifty in the course of two or 

 three hours. At other times, a sting is very apt to 

 swell. 



We certainly would not keep bees, if we thought 

 that they destroyed grapes, as we only make bee- 

 keeping a secondary consideration. 



A. H. & Geo. B. Worthen. 



Warsaw, 111., Dec. 10, 187.). 



QUEEN REARING. 



HOW DOOLITTLE RAISES THE QUEENS THAT GIVE 

 THE GREAT CHOPS OF HONEY. 



iPj^N page 176, Dec. No. of Gleanings, Doolittle is 

 lOj) asked to stand up and tell how he raises queens. 

 To best do this, we wish to go back 7 or 8 years, 

 at which time we had a mania for artificial queens, 

 as they were then called. We reared a lot, by tak- 

 ing the best queen we had away from a populous 

 colony, the fore part of clover bloom, as the books 

 and papers told us this was the best time. We had 

 a fine-looking lot of queens, which, in due time, were 



fertilized, and did not seem to be surpassed in egg- 

 laying that season, by any of those reared a little 

 after by natural swarming, although those reared 

 during natural swarming were nearly one third 

 larger. As soon as the first lot of cells was about 

 hatching, we took them all away, giving the bees 

 more brood upon which they started and sealed 

 upwards of 100 cells. To our surprise, these cells 

 commenced hatching in eight days from the time 

 the brood was given. About four hatched on the 

 eighth day; ten on the ninth; about twenty-five, on 

 the tenth; and by the thirteenth, all were hatched. 



We experimented with those queens, and succeed- 

 ed in getting a few of the 8 and 9 day queens fertiliz- 

 ed, after they were two or more weeks old. They 

 laid well for a short time, but all died of old age be- 

 fore fall, one living only about a month. The next 

 spring, we lost a number of queens, finding them 

 dead at the entrance with a few bees around them; 

 ami upon tracing the matter out we found that ?£ of 

 this loss was of the queens reared artificially. We 

 were not slow to take the hint, and since then have 

 reared searely any aueens artificially. Our plan of 

 rearing queens is this: In the spring, we selrct the 

 stocks havingthe queens which gave us the best re- 

 subs the season previous and get them strong as 

 early as possible, by spreading- the brood, or, if wo 

 can do it in no other way, by giving them frames of 

 sealed brood from other stocks, so as to have them 

 swarm in advance of the rest, thus giving us ct lis or 

 queens reared just as bees used to rear them, when 

 they first came from the hand of the great Creator, 

 and he pronounced them good. These oils we give 

 to nuclei which wc form to suit the requirements of 

 the cells, and by the time we wish to use .queens in 

 the apiary, we have queens that are just as good as 

 those reared by any other method, and we judge we 

 shal be pardoned for thinking they are a little bet- 

 ter. As Novice tells you, we (my wife and I) arc 

 quite hands to unite bees, and, of course, keep an 

 eye out for the best queens at all times. 



One other thing we think, and that is, that queens 

 reared from the egg, by all old bees ( " queens from 

 the egg" as Mr. Foster says), are but little better 

 than queens that hatch in nine or ten days from the 

 time the brood was given. This is our experience at 

 least, and we would give some of our experiments, 

 but it would make this article too long. 

 two queens in a hive. 



There is one other way in which we get splendid 

 queens (and we see by back Nos. of Gleanings that 

 Novice is not slow to take hold of a good thing eith- 

 er), and that is, by keeping watch of all colonies that 

 show a disposition to keep two queens in a hive. We 

 have had several such colonies, and as fast as the 

 young queens get to laying, we take them away, and 

 in 3 or i weeks they have another ready. Thus we 

 kept one colony rearing queens all the season of 1877, 

 and had one other in the yard that had two queens 

 in the hive all the season, and both laying. We saw 

 those queens come together so as to touch each 

 other, at two different times. The old queen grad- 

 ually ceased laying and, at last, I found her at the 

 entrance, one morning in October, dead. It is not 

 necessary to wait for the cells to hatch in the colon- 

 ies showingthis disposition, but, as soon as they are 

 sealed, take them out and give them to nuclei, and 

 thus you can secure many queens of the highest 

 standard of excellence, provided the mother is such 

 a one as you care to breed from. G. M. Doolittle. 



Borodino, N. Y., Dec. 1879. 



