1880 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTUEE. 



367 



they clearly have no idea of following Bible 

 teachings, whether they know of any such 

 doctrine or not. They love their neighbor 

 exactly in proportion to his ability to make 

 himself prolitable to their little common- 

 wealth, and no farther. But how come so 

 many crippled and deformed bees? My 

 friend, that is just what you are to find out, 

 by opening the hives to see. If doctors 

 could take out our stomachs, lungs, and 

 hearts, and lix them and then put them back, 

 what a fine thing it would be. Well, we can 

 do this with a bee hive, and it is just what 

 you are to do forthwith. Very likely your 

 swarm is left queenless. and moth worms 

 have got in ; at any rate it is pretty surely 

 worms that are crippling your young bees 

 that the rest are lugging off. Getting Ital- 

 ians will fix the matter the best, but the A 

 15 C will tell you all what to do without Ital- 

 ians. Look through the hives, friend R., 

 and study your A B C, and you will soon 

 find it all plain sailing and easy, even if you 

 do not come to see me, and are 05 years old. 

 You can master it all, as hundreds have be- 

 fore, if you Avill stick to it and follow it. 



OUR OWN APIARY, HONEY FARM AI\D 

 FACTORY. 



ET is the 7th of July, and, as we have 

 showers almost every day, things are 

 "booming" on the honey farm. Bass- 

 wood has passed, but strong colonies of good 

 Italians are making a fair business on clover, 

 while the blacks and hybrids are trying to 

 rob and steal at every possible opportunity. 

 As Will is sick, Ernest is taking charge of 

 the apiary, and he has said two or three 

 times, "Pa, I wish you would sell or get rid 

 of every black and hybrid bee on the place, 

 and then it would be just fun to work." It 

 is not such an easy matter to do this, for we 

 are short of bees, and when blacks are 

 brought here to be sold, it seems hard to 

 make people take them back again, and 

 where 1 can put an Italian queen right in 

 the place of a black one, you know they will 

 very soon be all Italians. Besides, every 

 day some body is wanting a black or hybrid 

 queen, and you know I always like to ac- 

 commodate. Bees by the lb. is going to be 

 the ruin of our apiary, if we do not, by feed- 

 ing or something else, just " make our 

 queens get up and dust." 



The Simpson plants are higher than my 

 head, and a few of them fairly in bloom. 

 The melilot is in full bloom, and pretty fair- 

 ly covered with bees ; it is so tall it would 

 hide a horse. The catnip has by far the 

 most bees on it, and I would give quite a 

 little money just now for a whole acre as 

 well covered with plants as is our small plat. 

 The spider plant is just in bloom, and I 

 found that well known drop of honey, on 

 almost the first blossom that came out. The 

 bees found it too, for a bee came for the 

 honey almost as soon as I did . Several hun- 

 dred plants will now be in bloom soon, and 

 then look out for business. 



Seven Cyprian and Holy Land queens 

 were received a few days ago, and all but 

 one are introduced safely. A few days ago 

 Ernest asked me to try a colony that would 



not receive a queen. I raised the mat, and 

 took a look at the tops of the combs. 



"Why, this stock has a queen," said I. 



"It certainly has not," said he. 



"Just you wait a bit," said I, and I took 

 out a frame. It was filled with eggs. Anoth- 

 er contained brood and eggs in all stages ; 

 and, on going through the hive, I found it 

 contained a surprising amount of eggs. The 

 fact was that the hive had contained, un- 

 known to the boys, a virgin queen, and this 

 queen had commenced to lay, and filled the 

 hive with eggs, while they were trying to 

 make the bees accept another queen. The 

 last Cyprian queen was found in the same 

 predicament. There was a laying queen in 

 the hive. How would such cases work with 

 the plan of letting the queen out, without 

 looking afterwards, as so many adviser 1 



Well, the new foreigners look precisely 

 like our usual Italians, or, if anything, a lit- 

 tle smaller, and a little darker. Friend 

 Jones was kind enough to mark all the 

 queens from the Holy Land, after the dis- 

 trict or locality from which they came. For 

 instance, one is marked "Mount Ilermon; " 

 another, "West of Damascus ; " still anoth- 

 er, "Lebanon, North-east of the Holy Land, ,, 

 and so on. The bees that came with them 

 looked like small, dark, old Italians ; but, 

 of course, we can judge better when we see 

 them gathering honey. They will be closely 

 watched, you may be sure. 



July 12th. — The Simpson honey-plants are 

 higher than mv head ; in fact, some of them 

 are higher than I can reach. The bees are 

 busy on them from daylight until dark, as 

 they were last year, but, as yet, not in such 

 great numbers. I presume our heavy and 

 frequent rains have had the effect of making 

 the honey thinner, and possibly of retarding 

 the yield. The melilot clover is also higher 

 than I can reach, and humming with bees, 

 but I am somewhat disappointed in it. The 

 bees do not commence working on it for at 

 least two hours after they are on the Simp- 

 son and catnip, and then go so quickly from 

 one plant to another that it seems to me they 

 can not get much honey from it. With the 

 catnip, 1 am perfectly satisfied. Our patch 

 that is on the poorest ground is now in its 

 second year, making a most beautiful mass 

 of blossoms, and the bees are thicker on 

 them than on any other plant on the farm, 

 and they stop long enough to take a good 

 long pull at every flower too. We are going 

 right to work to enlarge our catnip plot, but 

 I do not think I shall plant any more meli- 

 lot. The spider plants are now coming into 

 bloom, and I had quite a curiosity to see if 

 that great drop of honey would reappear 

 this season. They are down by the pond, 

 and, as it was nearly dark, I knelt in the 

 soft, black earth, so as to bring the llowers 

 against the sky as a background. Surely 

 enough, there it was,— a drop so large, even 

 in the evening, that, had I jostled the stalk, 

 it would surely have dropped off. I felt like 

 shouting out "in thankfulness. Dark as it 

 was, a venturesome bee hummed around, but 

 he could not see to make his way among 

 those slender stamens so late. 1 was on 

 hand next morning, and saw them drink 

 their fill. I do not think the honey is as 



