1S80 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTUKE. 



267 



CALIFORNIA BEE KEEPING. NO. 2. 



VINE CLOVER APIARY. 



fHIEND ROOT:— As you have seen lit to publish 

 my writings, although no name was appended 

 (which was unintentional) except Viae Clover 

 Apiary, I will try to write you another note. By 

 this time I am gettiug better acquainted in my new 

 home, and am busy at work with the little pets. 

 When I left home in Iowa, 1 Looked and felt like a 

 candidate for the graveyard (for I had been sick for 

 '2 months with rheumatism), but the time I have 

 spent in California, two months, has begun the work 

 of improvement, and I now feel like a new man. 



When I left home, I put my foundation machine, 

 which I bought of you last spring, in my trunk, and 

 brought it with me. After showing it to friend 

 Coon, and telling him my ideas of bee-keeping, he 

 concluded that he wanted me to stay with him; and 

 that he would divide the apiary, and move one half 

 about three and a half miles away. As the bees 

 were full of honey, and the practice here had been 

 to take out some combs from each hive and smash 

 them up and drain the honey from them in a some- 

 what old-fashioned way, I suggested that we get 

 an extractor. But, as very much has been said 

 about the market of California being ruined by the 

 Los Angeles extracted honey, we concluded to try a 

 home-made machine; and it is surprising to see 

 how the people inquire for that "machine honey," 

 and take it in preference to comb honey, and at the 

 same price. But it is very thick and good honey, 

 having stood in the hives all winter. 



QUEEN NURSERY TO PUT OVER OR INTO A HIVE. 



Since the bees here are all natives, and we wish to 

 Italianize right away, we needed a lamp nursery; 

 but, as it costs so much to get one over the moun- 

 tains, I concluded to get up a substitute for one. 

 So I took a frame the size of a honey frame, but 

 about 2 inches broad, and divided it up into small 

 apartments by putting partitions across both per- 

 pendicularly and horizontally. One side of said 

 frame, I then covered with a sheet of wire cloth, and 

 the other side is covered with pieces of wire cloth, 

 bent at the ends so as to spring inside of each apart- 

 ment. Then small beeswax cups are put in each 

 apartment, in which honey can be put with a small 

 zinc oiler, for feed for young queens. Now all I 

 have to do is to lay the queen cells in the small 

 apartments and let them hatch, and stay there till 

 needed, as there is no danger of their murdering 

 their sisters. The whole thing is to be hung in the 

 centre of a strong colony of bees so as to keep up 

 the necessary heat. Now, if you can understand 

 this description, and if you have not published it 

 before, I would like to have everybody know about 

 this kind of nursery, so that patent right men dare 

 not trouble it. It is a handy invention here, where 

 every thing is high priced. 



The Lippia nodiflora is not up much yet, but other 

 tlowers are blooming profusely, and the bees are 

 building comb rapidly. O. S. Davis. 



Lemoore, CaL, April 9, 1830. 



Thanks, friend D. Your plan ofanur- 

 sery is old, and one that has been much dis- 

 cussed in our back volumes. The difficulty 

 here is that we occasionally have cool nights, 

 except in the very warmest part of our sum- 

 mers, and when the weather is just a little 

 cool the bees draw away from the nursery, 



and the queens are chilled. In the even 

 climate or California, it may succeed very 

 well in very powerful colonies. My most 

 successful experiments in that line were 

 with a frame of cages placed right over a 

 strong colony. The queen cells were simply 

 laid in the cages, which had wire cloth bot- 

 toms, and the whole was then covered with 

 a heavy woolen cloth. By simply turning 

 up this cloth, the queens could be picked out 

 as fast as hatched. So well did this work, 

 that I offered them for sale during one sea- 

 son, but at the approach of cool nights it 

 lacked the requisite warmth, and I was 

 forced to adopt the lamp to keep up an even 

 temperature. This was. before the chaff 

 hive was even suggested, and, since you 

 speak of it, it occurs to me that if the same 

 device were put in a chaff hive, and a good 

 chaff cushion placed over it, it might make 

 avast difference. As it is only a frame of 

 the size of the hive, divided into boxes about 

 2 inches square, with a sheet of wire cloth 

 tacked over the whole under side, it can be 

 made and tried very cheaply. To put in 

 cells and take out queens, you have only to 

 uncover it, without opening the hive at all. 



WATER FOB BEES. 



fi HAVE been studying on the problem of giving 

 my bees water at all times inside the hive, but 

 ' have pretty much given the whole thing up. 

 The reasons for this abandonment, I will proceed to 

 give. So far as I can discover, watered bees, like 

 watered stocks, pet below par very soon. There 

 must be some reason for this, and I think I have hit 

 upon it. The instinct of bees very strongly impels 

 them to sip up all moisture found inside the hive, n.s 

 a means of getting rid of it : and they will keep hero- 

 ically at this work until they injure themselves. It 

 thus becomes impossible, or nearly so, to give them, 

 inside the hive, just what water they need and no 

 more. The bee uses his sack indiscriminately as 

 honey-carrier, stomach, or slop-bucket. We should 

 be especially careful how we compel him to make 

 the latter use of it in cold weather, when going out- 

 doors to empty the slop is not practicable. Not 

 only will bees attack as a nuisance all free water in- 

 side, but the experience of friend Simpson, on page 

 8 of the present volume, shows that they will make 

 earnest and long continued efforts to drink dry pud- 

 dles of water they find near the doorway. As these 

 bees came out well, we may conclude that we may 

 give water near the doorway without very much 

 danger that Berious harm will result. Friend Miller, 

 on page 58, also gives a similar ease, and expresses 

 surprise that the bees went at the puddle with a 

 buzz of excitement. They felt just as you would 

 feel, dear Novice, should you suddenly discover wa- 

 ter ankle deep in your front porch. Friend McCord 

 ought to have BUSpected something when he found 

 a colony of lues i iking out of his bottle six or eight 

 ounces of water per day in March. (Page 131, Vol. 7.) 

 The amount of sugar that can be liquefied with eight 

 ounces of water is pretty large. You followed suit, 

 and your experimental colony became extinct. 

 More recently, as we read on page 58, you have been 

 experimenting again, using a sponge instead of a 

 bottle. You have not told us, I believe, what effect 

 it had on the prosperity of the colonies, compared 

 with others not so treated. How did it turn out? I 



