338 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



July 



EXTRACTING THE "WIRES." 



Fdn. received all right, and some of it worked out 

 into nice comb. Will I need to extract the wire 

 from brood frames after the fdn. is worked out? 



F. H. Seares. 



Girard, Pa., June 7, 1880. 



[To be sure not; what ever put such a queer idea 

 as that into your head, friend S.? We want the 

 wires there to keep the frames strong-.] 



DESIRABLE (?) POINTS IN A QUEEN. 



1 want a queen from your own apiary, that you 

 know has the "turpentine" in her, as I have en- 

 gaged a good many queens, and I will have to keep 

 her on the nest all summer, feeding her red peppers 

 and charcoal, and perhaps bone dust, etc. 



A. W. Anderson. 



Cambridgeboro, Crawford Co., Pa., June 2, 1880. 



UNDESERVED KIND WORDS. 



Thank you for three good things,— trust, prompt- 

 itude, kindness. M. T. Mantor. 



Viroqua Junction, Monroe Co., Wis., June 3, 1880. 



[Thanks, friend M.; but your words hurt more 

 than if you had abused me, because I have not been 

 prompt with you all. I shall appreciate it more 

 than I ever did before, when I get once more where 

 I can send all goods right off promptly. Perhaps it 

 is good for me, even if it is bad for you, for it will 

 make me so afraid of some of you, that I shan't 

 dare get proud and overbearing anymore.] 



CYPRIAN QUEENS. 



I see it is claimed in Gleanings that the Cyprian 

 bees are superior to all others. Why could you not 

 raise dollar, Cyprian queens, untested, the same as 

 Italians, and accommodate your subscribers and 

 customers? S. W. Swingle. 



Roseville, Muskingum Co., O., June 9, 1880. 



[I will offer them just as soon as I am satisfied that 

 they are better than the Italians, but I want to make 

 a test of them, before I give them even the endorse- 

 ment of having them in my price list. The one 

 Cyprian queen which we had in our apiary last sea- 

 son was hardly a credit to the race; but I presume 

 she was impurely mated. We sold her at the price 

 of a hybrid.] 



I am in Blasted Hopes with my queen nursery, but 



I won't give up vet. I got 8 queens from 30 queen 



cells; that's "Blasted Hopes." How can I keep my 



bees from destroying- 6 queen cells in 6 days for me? 



Your young friend,— A. Meder, Jr. 



Louisville, Ky., May 31, 1880. 



[Your inquiry' is rather too indefinite, Friend M., 

 but I think you will find the ABC covers the whole 

 ground of preventing the bees from destroying the 

 queen cells.] 



DEAD QUEENS IN FRONT OF THE HIVES. 



I keep finding dead queens in front of the hive. 

 They have not swarmed yet. What is the cause of 

 it? Jerry Moffitt. 



Oxford, Mass., June 8, 1880. 



[If you mean, friend M., that you keep finding old, 

 fertile queens dead in front of the hive, I can only 

 say that it seems to be a feature of the late mortali- 

 ties among the bees, and I do not know of any rea- 

 son to assign for it. If it is young, newly hatched 

 queens, it is doubtless because they have made prep- 

 arations for swarming, that have been upset by a 

 sudden cessation in the honey harvest, and they, in 

 consequence, destroyed the cells, throwing out the 



young queens, and abandoning, for the present, all 

 swarming preparations.] 



I lost one colony last winter, before I got the grape 

 sugar. The combs are full of dead bees. Will they 

 do to put a new swarm on this season without hav- 

 ing the dead bees taken from the cells, before hiv- 

 ing the new swarm? J. P. Watt. 



Duck Creek, 111., May 15, 1880. 



[Your combs filled with dead bees, if given to 

 strong stocks, one or two at a time, as directed in A 

 B C, page 285, will be made as good as new. Do not 

 pick out the dead bees at all.] 



drones and their purity,— a correction. 



Friend Root: — In this month's Gleanings, you 

 speak as if drones from a pure Italian queen that 

 has met a black drone are not pure (see p. 281, June 

 No.); else how can you get % blaod? Iwanttoknow, 

 for I have some very handsome queens that have 

 met black drones, and am of the opinion that their 

 drones are pure, and that queens mated with them, 

 if pure, will produce pure workers. Am I wrong? 



Paterson, N. J , June 2, '80. Langley Claxton. 



[I stand corrected; you are right, and I am wrong, 

 friend C, and I thank you for calling my attention 

 to the blunder. I overlooked the fact that, in the 

 case referred to, only the workers were said to be 

 hybrids. My remarks there will answer for a case 

 where the queen's mother was impurely mated. No 

 accurate experiments have ever given us any cause 

 at all to doubt the truthfulness of the statements 

 laid down by Dzierzone and Berlepsche; viz., that 

 the drone progeny is in no way affected by the fer- 

 tilization of the queen.] 



A NEW SWARM RETURNING TO THE OLD HIVE. 



I had a swarm of bees yesterday which I put into 

 a new hive, on a new stand. After being quiet 

 about 15 minutes, they all came out and returned to 

 the old hive, although I had given them a frame of 

 brood. A. G. Willows. 



Carlingford, Ontario, Can., June 9, 1880. 



[Why, friend W., it seems to me almost unaccount- 

 able, that a swarm thus fixed should go back. Did 

 you make sure that the frame contained unsealed 

 brood, that the hive did not stand in the sun, and 

 that the entrance was large enough to give an 

 abundance of air? If all these points were attend- 

 ed to, it seems to me that they would hardly desert 

 brood right from any hive, even though they had 

 no queen at all with them; yet I know bees, at 

 times, seem to go right contrary to all rules and 

 regulations laid down.] 



LOOK OUT FOR ROBBING. 



I introduced the queen all right, to a rather weak 

 colony. She commenced laying in a few days, but 

 one night we got a frost which stopped honey gath- 

 ering; my bees got to robbing, and, although I stop- 

 ped them before they carried off much honey, I 

 found my Italian queen dead outside of the hive. 

 Some of her young bees are out now, and are nice 

 large bees, but I take them to be hybrids. 



Phillip Lonsley. 



Moose Ear, Wis., June 5, 1880. 



[The death of the queen wa3 undoubtedly caused 

 by the robbing. I scarcely know why it is, but, dur- 

 ing a robbing raid, the queen seems to be passed by 

 and forgotten, and they are often found, at such a 

 time, wandering outside of the hive, and sometimes 

 dead as you have described. Look to your bees ear- 



