U68 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



June 



venture the prediction that no good was visible. 

 The fact that has the strongest tendency to mislead 

 is that bees will take more candy where water is 

 given. A bee overloaded with water naturally tries 

 to get it off his hands somehow. "When we get wise 

 enough, and have our arrangements perfect enough 

 to water our bees just as men water valuable horses, 

 giving just enough to suffice, and at proper inter- 

 vals, no doubt the cause will be benefitted; until 

 then probably not. 



Thirst and untimely brood-rearing are, I think, the 

 causes of failure in wintering bees in warm cham- 

 bers. When we can meet these difficulties success- 

 fully, wintering bees in warm rooms is likely to be a 

 favorite method. At present, without water they 

 die of thirst, and with water they drink themselves 

 to death, it may be. The remnant of a colony with 

 damp combs and thinned honey cau be preserved for 

 some time in a warm room. Sitting near me, as I 

 write (April 15th), is a hive with a hybrid queen and 

 about 100 bees. They were brought in the 10th of 

 March, and at that time numbered perhaps 500. For 

 the tirst 12 days only a few of them died; but they 

 reared brood, and, in this last effort to save their ru- 

 ined fortunes, they exhausted themselves so that 

 they have died rapidly of late. 



The whole business of stimulating bees to raise 

 early brood, whether by candy and water, or by flour 

 and honey, is an abomination, I believe. The pro- 

 cess of preparing chyme to feed the young larvae is 

 an exhausting one— and much more so in cold 

 weather— and the result is that the old bees are used 

 up a month earlier than they ought to be. After they 

 are gone, the colony falls behind the others that 

 have not raised brood; or, perhaps, dwindles and 

 perishes. The true policy I imagine to be to make 

 the bees supremely comfortable, and to see that 

 they have sealed honey, not only enough to keep 

 them from starvation but enough to keep them from 

 the sense of poverty. Then, if they raise a little 

 brood it is well, and if they choose to postpone it till 

 warm weather, just as well. During this warm win- 

 ter, every black and hybrid colony I have— unless 

 very weak, or quecnless, or cursed with a leaky 

 roof— has been rearing brood. My solitary Italian 

 stock did not raise a single larva until along in 

 March. They had only about 1,000, April 1st; but, 

 by April 13th, they had surpassed nearly every colo- 

 in the yard in the total amount of brood raised. Let 

 U3 save the vitality of the bees until it can be ex- 

 pended with the largest results. 



I have been experimenting with bunches of capil- 

 lary tubes to hold a supply of water for a caged 

 queen and bees, but attain to nothing but failure as 

 yet. The water all dries out in a day's time. I am 

 impressed with the idea that moisture not mechan- 

 ically in the condition of water can be contrived for 

 the use of our queens and bees that go by mail. 

 Some vegetables contain three-fourths of their 

 weight of water. Possibly a tin vial corked with a 

 bit of sponge and tilled with minced raw potato or 

 apple would be a help to the little voyagers. You 

 ask me about a honey-bearing corn. I think every 

 acre of our immense acreage of corn might be made 

 to yield a good lot of honey just as well as not. I 

 have the matter mentally booked as the very next 

 thing to work for; but the fear of getting too many 

 irons in the fire restrains me at present. Is there 

 not somebody else that can find time to take the 

 corn plant in charge? 



My late clover plants most of them perished last 

 winter, and I shall have to fall back on this spring's 

 planting. Fortunately I have a pretty good stock of 

 seeds. I didn't just know whether clover would 

 bear to be littered for protection or not. I found 

 out to my sorrow that it is one of the most particu- 

 lar plants in this respect. The warm spells, and re- 

 peated freezing and thawing of last winter would 

 have killed a great part of them any way; but it is 

 clear that more would have survived if I had not 

 scattered corn stalks over them. Melilotus, alfalfa, 

 and yellow clover endured both the winter and the 

 covering; and, what seems remarkable in a foreign 

 annual, Italian clover where entirely unprotected 

 lived through, but every plant died where any cov- 

 ering was over it. 



To say good bye with, let me tell you of the best 

 and cheapest self binder for Gleanings, or any 

 other magazine. Tt is a carpet hammer and a paper 

 of wire nails. E. E. Hasty. 



Richards, Lucas Co., O. 



Thanks, friend II. I am prepared to en- 

 dorse some of your ideas on water for bees, 

 but not all of them. The colony to which I 

 gave water in a sponge, as well as candy, is 

 all right, and it did not dwindle at all; but 

 I did "not give it any great quantity of water. 

 If we can supply water, pollen, and sugar 

 just about as they come from natural sour- 

 ces, we can rear brood at pleasure, at any 

 time of the year; but I admit we often do 

 harm instead of good, in this kind of artifi- 

 cial helping. I am glad you tried the bunch 

 of glass capillary tubes ; I have many times 

 studied over it, but concluded it would be 

 likely to do as you say. So it seems that al- 

 though a mulch is a benefit to strawberries 

 and the like, it is not necessarily so with all 

 of the clovers. 



FRIEND JOKES, AND A SKETCH OF THE 

 WAY HE IS RANSACKING THE EN- 

 TIRE FACE OF OLD MOTHER 

 EARTH AFTER THE REST 

 HONEY REES. 



PALESTINE. 



ff%EAR FRIEND ROOT:-As I am on a trip 

 J-LJy ) through the Holy Land, to examine the bees, 

 and import some, I thought I would drop you 

 a line about holy bees, or the bees of Palestine. I 

 am now sending some of my party, or rather some 

 of my guides and several muleteers, with bees across 

 the country to Jerusalem, thence to Jaffa, where 

 they are to be shipped to Cyprus, to Mr. Benton, 

 who has charge of them until I return to Cyprus. I 

 shall try in future to give you a description of them, 

 or rather perhaps send you some of the bees of the 

 Holy Land. I have got some from Jerusalem and 

 various other places in Judea, some from Jaffa, 

 some from east of the Jordan and Dead Sea, some 

 from Damascus, and some from Mount Lebanon 

 and other places. 1 am determined to get them 

 safely to Canada, so I can test their qualities. I 

 have secured enough, I hope, so there will be no 

 mistake about my getting some home alive, and, if 

 I was not sanguine about their good points, I would 

 not go to the great expense I have to secure them. 

 They are very handsome bees, fly much farther for 

 honey than ours, and fly wonderfully fast; in fact, 

 I found bees an incredible distance from their hives. 



