281 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTUEE. 



June 



HOW ANABC SCHOLAR USES THE CHEIROGRAPH. 



I am a subscriber to Gleanings, and also an A B 

 C scholar. I commenced last year with one swarm 

 and increased to 2, but did not get much honey. I 

 have a swarm that I traded for in the winter, but 

 found a few days since that it had no queen. I gave 

 them brood from my other swarms, which set them 

 to work nicely. I sent you an order for a cheiro- 

 graph when I renewed my subscription. The case 

 was pretty badly jammed when 1 received it, but I 

 straightened it the best I could and melted it over. 

 Thirty-five copies is the most I could get from one 

 impression. I will send you a sample. I read every 

 word in Gleanings and think a great deal of it. 

 But I suppose you will be tired of reading before 

 you get this far. G. P. Ho ward. 



Hilliard, O., May, 1880. 



Thank you, friend H. We now put up the 

 cheirograph much more substantially to go 

 by mail, and if you will send us your bill for 

 the trouble it has made you, I will pay it. 

 "With the new ink we send you, I think you 

 will get 100 impressions without trouble. I 

 am so much pleased with the specimen of 

 your work, that I have had our engraver 

 make an outline of it, for the convenience of 

 the ''brethren." 



BBS HWK^% I 



section boxes 



VORSALE AT LOWEST CASH PRICES ! ^ 

 , VWV.fi ^— ALSO Jf: , k 



I g; . WOOD WOR\<, .<*<£ 



\Wm done on shoht notice^ 



"With a little practice, almost any one 

 should be able to make a pretty and attrac- 

 tive circular, giving rude pictures of the 

 goods they have for sale, with prices at- 

 tached. If prices change add a postscript. 

 If you cannot draw with a pen, hunt up 

 some smart boy or girl in the neighborhood 

 who can. And right here is a new industry 

 opening for good writers. The pile of let- 

 ters right before me shows that there are 

 getting to be a good many of them, of late. 



"tinkering" bees to death. 

 Friend Root:— Please send your price list to John 

 Waggoner, Franklin Grove, Lee Co., 111. He has a 

 notion to buy bees by the pound, and queens for 

 $1.00, to fill bis empty combs, as his bees "gave up 

 the ghost" this last winter, —tinkered to death in 

 my estimation, as he was trying to feed them du- 

 ring the coldest weather we had, disturbing them 

 every day as long as they lived,— a practice I never 

 approve of. I never, if I can help it, open a hive 

 with the thermometer below 40°. My bees (43 

 stocks) wintered all right, with no loss except one 

 queen, and I found a strange queen on one of my 

 alighting boards, balled, which I rescued and intro- 

 duced into my queenless stock all right. My neigh- 

 bor lost a swarm that day, and I surmise that the 

 queen came from them. 



spring dwindling. 



Many apiarists have lost all their bees this spring; 

 they starved out, and died off by degrees. They 

 would crawl out with their abdomen all swollen up, 

 and flutter and try to fly, but could not, and they 

 would finally chill and die at the entrance, often a 

 pint a day, until they were all gone. 



I also noticed a large fly which the boys call the 

 "■Devil's darning needle," catching bees on the wing. 

 They would suck them out in a moment, then drop 

 them and try it over. It took 12 or 14 bees to satisfy 

 the one I saw, and my daughter saw many of them 

 in the middle of the day. The fly is about 2V4 in. 

 long, with 4 large strong wings, and is very active. 

 shot guns, versus fountain pumps. 



I have read a good deal about fountain pumps as 

 swarm arresters. Now, I use a breach-loading shot 

 gun with blank cartridge, and I have never had a 

 failure with it. Just try it when a swarm tries to 

 go off. Send a puff of smoke up just ahead of them 

 or among the foremost ones, and you will see them 

 turn the other way "mighty sudden." It is the 

 smoke and not the noise. B. F. Pratt. 



Dixon, 111., May IS, 1880. 



"WHEN SHALL WE HANG SHEETS OF FDN. IN THE 

 HIVE?" 



On p. 223, of May No., M. Simons, of Brocton, N. 

 Y., asks the above question. I for one would say, 

 hang them in as soon as the bees or hives are crowd- 

 ed for want of room; or, as soon as the outside 

 sheets arc full of honey, remove them and spread 

 the brood nest, and hang one or two full sheets (not 

 over 1 hat number) in between the brood combs. I 

 have been expeiimentinsr on this same thing. Last 

 Thursday, May loth. I nung a new sheet of fdn., L. 

 size, in the centre of a swarm of Italians in a chaff 

 hi%e, and to-day, May 17th, I examined them, and 

 found this sheet worked neaily out, and the queen 

 had it nearly full of eggs. I am so well pleased 

 with the chafl' hive that I am going to put my bees 

 into those hives. 1 built one last fall, and put two 

 swarms into it. They are the black bees, and now 

 Ihey are storing honey from fruit blossoms in those 

 one pound sections. I started in the winter with 14 

 swarms packed in chaff, and they have wintered 

 nicely. 1 have my bees, frames, section boxes, and 

 fdn. all in readiness for swarming time. 



Harmony, N. Y., May 18, 1880. B. G. Watkins. 



CHAFF PACKING. 



Bees in this section are generally in good condi- 

 tion, even those that were wintered on summer 

 stands without protection. My Italians were win- 

 tered on 5 frames of sealed honey, contracted by di- 

 vision board, the space behind the board being filled 

 with chaff cushions. The covers and second stories 

 were taken off, and replaced with pieces of old 

 carpet, and the hives placed in large dry-goods 

 boxes. The hives were then surrounded by dry 

 wheat chaff, except a space of 3 by 4 inches, which 

 was occupied by wooden tubes through which the 

 bees could pass when necessary. A cover was then 

 placed upon the box, and the bees permitted to re- 

 main until the last week in April, when the hives 

 were taken out. On examining the bees, I found 

 every frame filled with brood, and hundreds of Ital- 

 ian drones hatched. I then spread the brood giving 

 each colony a frame of sealed honey. Thus I con- 

 tinued to give a frame of honey every two days un- 

 til the hive was full. My father's bees that were 



