1880 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTUEE. 



381 



heart's-ease as a honey plant, rape, etc. 



I received fdn. in good order. Your mode of 

 packing is good, and freight charges were very 

 reasonable. I have 54 sheets of the fdn. built out in 

 12 days, and have extracted from them once. I 

 have one acre of rape in bloom. It does splendidly 

 here. There is a kind of weed growing here called 

 heart's-ease, that yields large quantities of a red- 

 dish colored honey. Chaff hives, plenty of shade, 

 and combs that won't break down,— that is what my 

 bees have. We have a large yield of basswood hon- 

 ey just now. W. C. Forrest. 



Harlan, Iowa, July 2, 1880. 



HYBRIDS VERSUS PURE ITALIANS FOR HONEY. 



My bees wintered well, but the season hai been so 

 poor that only one has given any box honey. White 

 clover does not produce any this year, dry weather 

 having ruined it early in the spring. The recent 

 rains have revived it until the fields are white, but 

 no honey comes worth speaking of. The one that 

 has made surplus honey is a hybrid that I bought 

 for pure last fall. My fine bees have filled their 

 hives and built a little comb in sections, but did not 

 fill them. I have not had any swarms ; in fact, there 

 have been very few swarms in this section. Linn 

 came and went, and we hardly knew it. I am an A 

 B C scholar, and have been in the business 3 years, 

 two of which have been very poor. I transferred 2 

 colonies in the spring that are doing well consider- 

 ing the chance they have had. H. S. Shull. 



Wellsville, Columbiana Co., O., July 5, 1880. 



For several seasons, I have had the same 

 experience, friend S., and, in view of this, I 

 can not think it a very great misfortune, 

 even if your young queens do meet a black 

 drone, or if, with all your care, there should 

 be a taint of black blood, if you are working 

 solely for honey. If you are going to sell 

 queens, of course, you must be able to fur- 

 nish queens that are pure, and therefore you 

 need an imported queen ; but I have many 

 times thought it might improve the bees of 

 Italy, to take a few blacks among them. 

 Perhaps I am not very "orthodox" on 

 breeding u to a feather," but I believe I am 

 on breeding bees for bus/nets. I do not like 

 stinging and robbing bees, I confess, but I 

 do like bees that always have their hives full 

 in the fall without feeding. 



QUEENS THAT DON'T LAY, ETC. 



Send me another bee. The one you sent me re- 

 mained in the hive apparently content for six or 

 seven days, but did not lay any. She suddenly dis- 

 appeared, and I don't know whether the other bees 

 killed her, or whether she got up and "dusted." 



B. F. Jacobs. 



Waterville, Marshall Co., Kan., July 3, 1880. 



It is a fact, that queens that were laying 

 as nicely as could be, when taken out of our 

 apiary, will sometimes refuse to lay at all 

 after a long journey. I should say perhaps 

 one in a hundred do this. At first, our boys 

 were in the habit of saying they did not be- 

 lieve it, when a customer so reported, but I 

 reminded them that it would be most im- 

 probable that any one should say a queen 

 would not lay. just for the sake of getting 

 another, and chid them for their thoughtless 

 want of charity. A queen that will not lay 

 is, of course, worse than none at all ; and I 

 have always been in the habit of sending 



another at once, even with dollar queens. 

 This reminds me that, in the Growlery for 

 last month, I omitted to say to friend Mead, 

 that when he found his dollar queen did not 

 lay, he should have reported promptly, and 

 received another; and, although nearly a 

 year has passed, I will yet gladly send him 

 another, whenever he is ready to receive 

 her. For every dollar I receive, I wish to 

 render a fair equivalent. Some may think 

 there is a pretty good profit in paying 60c for 

 queens and selling them for a dollar, but, if 

 any one will try it and make all his custom- 

 ers good in the way of losses in shipment, 

 queens that won't lay, mistakes and errors in 

 handling such perishable, risky property, 

 etc., I think he will decide it is none too 

 much. 



BUTTON BALL AS A HONBY PLANT. 



I enclose with this, 2 full blossoms, and several 

 buds, with the leaves, of a bush that is growing on 

 my little place, and it beats all the blossoms I have 

 ever seen for honey. The bees are perfectly swarm- 

 ing on it. It is a rather scraggy bush, 3 to 6 ft. high, 

 and grows along a small stream. It is now spread- 

 ing rapidly, and I will soon have a large lot of it. I 

 wish you could see it just as it is here. The blossom 

 is perfectly round and very sweet. The bees do not 

 have to move from flower to flower but seem to get 

 their till without moving. Will you please inform 

 me through Gleanings what it is. You will see by 

 the buds just started that it blossoms very profuse- 

 ly. Bees here are doing extra well; this flower will 

 last them until the middle of August. 



Syracuse, Neb., July 7, '80. L. E. Sinsabaugh. 



The plant is the common button ball, sev- 

 eral times mentioned in our back volumes. 

 If I am correct, Prof. Cook once called ita bet- 

 ter honey plant than the basswood. It grows 

 within a half mile of our honey farm - , and 

 since you have called attention to it, friend 

 S., I will set right about seeing how the bees 

 work on it here, and getting some of the 

 bushes for planting down by the pond. I be- 

 lieve it generally grows in swamps and wet 

 places. 



I feel like giving you and your class a little light 

 on two points, pages 338 and 339, July No. 



DEAD QUEENS IN FRONT OF HIVES. 



The dead queens in front of the hive were killed 

 by a young queen just hatched. The swarm waited 

 too long, and the young one came out. I have had 

 lots of such work. 



ABSCONDING SWARMS. 



Wait 15 minutes before you give a new swarm a 

 card of brood, and don't get it from the old hive. 

 Be sure that you havn't got a queen cell, and have 

 eggs and larvae too. If they go back to the old hive 

 within 15 minutes after being hived, their queen is 

 on the ground somewhere. If they stay, give them 

 the card of brood, and set them on their stand, and 

 shade them. I had a swarm which stayed 3 days and 

 then came out. I changed the cards of brood with 

 another hive, and they stayed. You should select 

 very young larvas. 



I had one colony that swarmed 4 times with only 1 

 queen, and not even a queen cell in the hive. I 

 have 20 new swarms from 32, making 52 in all. The 

 basswood is in bloom now, and it is loaded. 



Fayette Lee. 



Cokato, Wright Co., Minn., July 5, 1880. 



