18S0 



G LEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



13 



The position taken by friend I)., that 

 qneen cells produced by the bees during the 

 season of natural swarming under the in- 

 fluence of the swarming fever, and not be- 

 cause they had been deprived of their queen, 

 will bring forth longer lived and more pro- 

 lific queens, is by no means a new one. The 

 same ground has been strenuously held by a 

 great many, during the years past, and per- 

 haps by none more earnestly and vehement- 

 ly, than by our friend, J. M. Price, who 

 wrote for the American Bee Journal, lu or 12 

 years ago. In collecting facts on the subject, 

 so many strongly marked exceptions to the 

 rule were found, that I believe it was gener- 

 ally dropped, although all agreed that there 

 was a tendency to snort lived queens where 

 the cells were reared artificially, as it is call- 

 ed, unless careful precautions were taken to 

 prevent the bees from using large larvaB, to 

 nurse and feed up for queens. I do not 

 know that I ever had a queen hatch in s days ; 

 if I have, I do not now recall it to mind. I 

 have had ,puite a number hatch in n days, 

 but I have never been satisfied that these 

 were invariably poor. The half queen and 

 half worker, that we have many of us seen, 

 reared by poor, thriftless, weak colonies, that 

 lays a little and then is gone, is, of course, a 

 poor thing ; but, if I am correct, we some- 

 times find these as the results of natural 

 swarming, and especially, of excessive over 

 swarming. If natural swarming surely gives 

 better and longer lived queens, I wonder 

 why some of the friends I have now in mind 

 don't thrive and prosper as well as those 

 who do things more on the artificial way. 



Friend D's way of knowing exactly the 

 worth of every queen in his apiary, and then 

 uniting that he may save only the best of the 

 large number he rears every year, is certain- 

 ly a most commendable idea, and I have 

 many times suspected that sharp wife of his, 

 whom I have never seen but have heard of 

 and from, has had very much to do with 

 many of these things, which has caused them 

 to bring forth such wonderful crops of comb 

 honey from a given number of stocks yearly. 

 I am very glad indeed to get encourage- 

 ment from two such worthy workers, in our 

 new plan of getting a race of queens that 

 will supply us with extra natural queens 

 without ever having a hive in the apiary 

 queenless. I am afraid, my friends, I shall 

 not be able to raise a thousand queens in a 

 season, if I have to get all the cells from 

 colonies bent on natural swarming, and have 

 them all from imported queens too. How 

 much more will I have to charge for queens 

 reared from such cells? As a good many 

 imported queens have been found dead in 

 front of their hives this fall, would we not 

 better find how Fiorini, Bianconcini, and 

 Tremontani rear theirs V "Who will tell us 

 how tlley rear queens in Italy V And by the 

 way, my friends, just keep a record of the 

 queens you have purchased, and tell us how 

 long they live. Did any one ever sell queens 

 that were reared from cells built only under 

 the influence of natural swarming V " Let all 

 the facts come out, no matter how it hits. I 

 am quite in love with the idea, and have 

 been for koine time, of an apiary where all 

 colonies are allowed to swarm naturally. 



Boys, how is it with the queens that come 

 from the woods V Are the ones you get out 

 of bee-trees always extra good? 



THE NEW SUGAR CANE. 



THE EARLY AMBER. 



<7.J IXCE my offer of last month, to give 

 Oj any of our subscribers a few seeds of 

 '-' the new sugar cane, there has been so 

 much said about it that I have prevailed 

 upon our neighbor to furnish the following : 



Mr. Boot:— You wish to know the name of the 

 seed that I sent you. It is the Early Amber sugar 

 cane, and I will give you my experience with it on a 

 small scale. 



I received a small package of seed from the Com'r 

 of Agriculture, and planted it about the first of 

 June in my garden. It received no special care, ex- 

 cept that the weeds were cut out. I was surprised 

 to see it ripen about the first of September, making 

 nearly the whole growth in the short space of three 

 months. This determined me to experiment fur- 

 ther, thinking that sugar could be made from ripo 

 cane. As there was no machinery near for extract- 

 ing juice, I constructed wooden rollers, and succeed- 

 ed in getting about a gallon of juice from an armful 

 of cane. This was cooked down into a sticky, ropy 

 mess that was not very inviting. I was a littlo dis- 

 couraged, and th >ught no more about it for a few 

 days. When I came to look at it again, however, I 

 was astonished to find that it had grained, and I had 

 about two pounds of raw sugar — certainly "raw" 

 enough, but our Commissioner of Agriculture says 

 it is equally as good as the raw sugar of the South. 

 What the process of clarifying sugar is, I don't know, 

 and consequently could not experiment further. 

 The rest of my cane (about one square rod) T took to 

 a mill and got eleven gallons of juice, and from this 

 three gallons of syrup. You know how good it is, as 

 I sent you half a gallon. I find the syrup in the bot- 

 tom of the vessel has granulated. 



This, then, would be my way of treating it: I would 

 make pretty thick syrup, put it away for a month, 

 and then about o:-:e half, I think, would bo sugar. 

 Drain off the molasses, and we would have a pretty 

 fair quality of sugar. I am satisfied that I could 

 furnish the syrup for 25 or 30c. per gallon, and make 

 a good profit from the land. My experiment shows 

 that one acre of cane will produce over 300 gallons of 

 syrup. I know of no cheaper feed for bees than this; 

 but this is not all the profit from the crop. I got 

 seed at the rate of 60 bushels to the acre, weighing 

 (guess work) about 40B>. to the bushel. I am s.> well 

 pleased with this cane that I have bought machinery 

 for pressing it, and intend to plant the coming sea- 

 son, at least an acre. Ika Bennett. 



Medina, O., Dec. 14, 1870. 



Friend B. did indeed bring me a half-gal- 

 lon about the day after Thanksgiving, and 

 I have eaten it at almost every meal since. 

 When I tell you I prefer it to honey or any 

 other kind of syrup, not even excepting ma- 

 ple molasses, you may be inclined to think 

 me extravagant, as do Mrs. II and the child- 

 ren, for not a drop of it will one of them have. 

 That it will make a suL r ar that will do for 

 feeding bees, in poor seasons. 1 am well sat- 

 isfied ; for I saw the sugar in the feeders the 

 day I visited friend 15. Very likely, we can 

 feed them the juice, and let them do the re- 



