JJ14 



GLEAKLftGS IK BEE CULTURE. 



July 



LOUISIANA, AND A TALK FROM ONE OF 

 HER BEE MEN. 



JR. A. I. ROOT: — Bee-keepers are once more 

 happy here, as 1880 gives every prospect of a 

 "boss" yield of honey. We begin extracting 



June 1st, and continue, if the season is favorable, 



until August 15th. 



WHERE DOES THE HONEY COME FROM? 



With the commencement of the honey season, I 

 have asked myself, and neighbors too, where does 

 our honey come from? Some say they don't know; 

 they are satisfied with getting it. Others look wise, 

 and say it comes from the woods. Still others sug- 

 gest corn as the source. Among the latter number 

 is your humble servant, and I think the facts sus- 

 tain that opinion pretty well. 



HONEY FROM CORN. 



We begin extracting as soon as corn begins bloom- 

 ing. Walk into the corn fields and you will find two 

 or three bees on every blossom. True, each one has 

 a load of pollen, but, watch it, and you see it busily 

 probing each little flower with its probocis; and, 

 smash it, and you will find it has a nice load of hon- 

 ey. The honey season continues just so long as corn 

 continues to bloom, which is until about the mid- 

 dle of August. 



HONEY FROM COTTON. 



Some one might suggest cotton as the source of 

 our honey. Prof. Cook says we reap a rich harvest 

 from it. I live in a cotton district, with thousands 

 of acres of it all around me, and, although I have 

 walked in the fields many a time to see if the bees 

 did visit the cotton flowers, I have never had the 

 pleasure of seeing the bees on one. If it does con- 

 tain honey, and I suppose it does since Prof. Cook 

 says so, the bees prefer the honey from whatever 

 else it is that they do get honey from. 1 would 

 like to hear from some one in the West, where corn 

 is plenty, as to how it does as a honey plant there, 

 and, by all means, friend Novice, let me hear your 

 opinion. 



A BARREL OF HONEY FROM A COLONY OF BEES IN 



ONE SEASON. 



It is no very uncommon thing here for one colony 

 to make one barrel of honey, or 480 lbs. Of the 

 spring honey plants, of which we have a goodly 

 number, the honey is all used up in brood rearing. 

 Among them is the willow, which blooms from Feb. 

 10th until Apr. 20th; then we have fruit trees, China- 

 ball trees, and two kinds of locust. Basswoed does 

 not grow here, and clover is pretty much used up in 

 brood rearing. Besides those mentioned, there is 

 very little forage here. I have just killed a very 

 fine Ital ian queen for laying only drone eggs. I had 

 kept her more than a month, thinking she would 

 "get over it." This queen was one of a "batch" of 

 17, and began laying as soon as the others,— in 21 or 

 22 days after the cells were started. Have you ever 

 heard of such a thing before? 



I have used 15 lbs. of comb foundation this season, 

 and found that the bees in some hives did not like 

 it much. After it was built out, it would remain a 

 couple of weeks before it would be used. I think, 

 however, that the foundation was not good. I have 

 used it when the bees just rushed for it. I tried 

 wiring the frames and then pressing the foundation 

 into it, but gave it up as a bad job, since it is such 

 an awful trouble to put the wire into my frames, the 

 top and bottom bars of which are an inch square. 

 If the foundation does not have honey put into it, 



until it has been strengthened by brood rearing, it 

 won't sag. 



THE COUNTER STORE. 



I am a subscriber to Gleanings, and consider it 

 worth much more than its cost, in advertising so 

 many cheap articles; for instance, I bought a pair 

 of five cent scissors for clipping queens' wings that 

 are just splendid. If I had not taken Gleanings, I 

 would have paid at least 50c for a pair. My brother 

 paid $1.25 for a pair that, for clipping queens' 

 wings arc no better than mine, and, as he lost them 

 the same evening that he got them, it did not pay at 

 all. Louisiana. 



Lakeland, La., May 30, 1880. 



We are sorry you did not sign your name, 

 friend — , but, after all, 1 do not know but 

 that your ideas are just as good as if you 

 had. I think you need a little more charity; 

 cotton may not yield any honey with you, 

 but may yield a great deal in other locali- 

 ties, or at other times. I presume many 

 will laugh at your idea of honey coming 

 from corn, but I know pretty well that some 

 corn, or corn at some seasons, does yield 

 honey. The matter of having a corn that 

 will yield honey every season is one that 

 sadly needs working up. I am experiment- 

 ing on it a little. Please have charity, and 

 be slow to censure, my friends. One of you 

 wrote that the sunflower is a great honey 

 plant, but some one who planted largely of 

 it talked hard, because the bees never went 

 near the blossoms when they had planted a 

 half acre. — Is not your statement about a 

 barrel of honey from one colony a pretty 

 large estimate?— Is it not that the honey was 

 coming at one time, and not coming at an- 

 other time, which made the difference in 

 the way the bees took to the fdn., friend — , 

 there, I don't know your name, after all. 

 If I were you, I would take those great 

 sticks out of your combs, and "reconstruct." 

 —I am very glad to know that the five cent 

 scissors are good to clip queens' wings. I 

 had never tried them, but I hardly dared 

 recommend for the purpose anything that 

 cost so little. Thanks for your kind words. 

 Your remark to the effect that expensive 

 tools are as easily lost as cheap ones is a 

 good point. You can buy ten pairs of cheap 

 scissors, for less than you can buy one pair 

 of high priced ones, and then, if one is bro- 

 ken or lost, you can take a new pair without 

 waste of time. 



THE THISTLE "BUSINESS," ETC. 



ALSO SOMETHING ABOUT WEEDS. 



ITH your indulgence, I hope to make myself 

 understood this time. 1 did not intend to 

 say that blue thistle was like Canada this- 

 tle. I referred to the bad qualities of Canada this- 

 tle in order to put the public upon their guard 

 against trifling with a thistle which may prove 

 equally injurious to the farming community, al- 

 though quite unlike Canada thistle in its habits. 



That "it dies root and branch after the second 

 year" is, to my mind, no argument that it is a harm- 

 less weed. Ragweed, wild oats, yellow mustard, and 

 many other troublesome weeds die root and branch 

 the first year. Pigeon-weed, or red root, as well as 

 some other bad weeds, die after the second year, 



