420 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Sept. 



The bees have enough to winter on, and that is all. 

 This is the case all over the country. Now this is 

 certainly not due to mismanagement as you seemed 

 to intimate last month, as our bees were carefully 

 attended to by our bee-keeper, who was to receive 

 half. He even fed grape sugar in the spring to 

 stimulate breeding, but his labor is all lost. Now 

 isn't this "beesness" ! He will go to Florida in the 

 fall. D. B. Ulery. 



North Hampton, O., Aug. 8, 1880. 



We have 105 colonies of bees, and have taken off 

 but 40 lbs. of surplus honey. But little honey has 

 been made in this vicinity. We have reports from 

 over 50 apiarists. B. Salisbury & Co. 



Battle Creek, Mich., Aug. 0, 1880. 



I have had very poor luck this year with my bees. 

 If I never had any better, I wouldn't give a snap for 

 the biggest apiary in the country, all in Simplicity 

 hives, as mine are. Albert Greely. 



Foster's Crossing, O., Aug. 16, 1880. 



Honey crop a failure. — 

 Peoria, 111., Aug. 10, 1880. 



Mrs. L. Hakrison. 



I have 40 stands of bees, and not one ounce of hon- 

 ey for me. White clover has been in blossom plen- 

 tifully since the first of June, yet there is but very 

 little honey in it. R. H. Phelps. 



Edgerton, Rock Co., Wis., Aug. 7, 1880. 



We have no use for fdn. here, as far as honey is 

 concerned. I have one young swarm, and do not 

 know of more than 7 or 8 within several miles of 

 here. I looked over 6 colonies this morning, the 

 poorest I have, and they were about half filled with 

 bees, and had not more than 541b. of honey each. 

 We had no clover honey. It has been very wet, but 

 is now dry. Not very many colonies can live through 

 the winter, without feeding, unless we have honey 

 dew, or a flow from fall flowers. A. G. Foster. 



• Ottawa, 111., Aug. 9, 1880. 



HOW TO MAKE MONEY, AND HONEY 

 (BEES) IN JULY AND AUGUST. 



AND QUEENS' EGGS UNDER THE MICRO- 

 SCOPE. 



#|&,NE of the small apiaries of 7 hives was 

 ^M) given me to care for, and one would 

 naturally suppose that it should thrive 

 heyond precedent, under ttie direct super- 

 vision of such a weight of knowledge and 

 experience. Ahem ! In less than a week 

 one of them "thruv" so exceedingly that 

 they sucked the juices from all of the un- 

 sealed brood, and were uncapping the cap- 

 ped in the vain hope of finding a little nour- 

 ishment wherewith to keep them one day 

 more from starving. I discovered the situa- 

 tion at a time when I expected every mo- 

 ment to hear a call that the printers were 

 out of copy, and the clerks waiting to have 

 letters read, so they could go on with their 

 work, so I just "cut" into the honey house 

 and got a frame of maple sugar, and hung 

 on the outside of the cluster. They were so 

 weak that, had I given them anysort of liq- 

 uid food, they would have been robbed out 

 at once. When I hung the frame in, the 

 bees were scattered in a demoralized condi- 

 tion all over the hive, and the queen was 



alone by herself, away down in one corner. 

 When I got time to go out again, what a 

 change ! The few scattered bees had select- 

 ed a spot in one of the empty combs, and the 

 queen was in the centre of the little circle, 

 laying eggs, evidently with a view of mak- 

 ing up for lost time. What few could be 

 spared were bringing water at a great rate, 

 rows of maple sugar honey encircled 

 the empty cells made ready for the queen, 

 and, as I moved the combs, they showed 

 fight in such a true bee-hive style, that I ac- 

 tually had to laugh. As the weather was 

 very warm, the queen kept on enlarging her 

 circle, and as soon as brood was capped in 

 the centre, they paid no further attention to 

 it, but kept nursing the young larva?, until 

 we had the queer spectacle of a hive con- 

 taining considerable sheets of sealed brood, 

 with only a few hundred bees around the 

 outside edges. The young bees are now out. 

 and the swarm has rapidly run up to respec- 

 table numbers, but they have used up all 

 their sugar, and have scarcely an ounce of 

 honey in the hive again. The frame of 

 sugar was transformed into yellow Italians. 

 I have since done the same thing with the 

 best quality of grape sugar, and it works al- 

 most as well. I do not know but that neigh- 

 bor H. was pretty nearly right, when he 

 said a pound of maple sugar would make a 

 pound of Italian bees. With the pollen 

 gathered from corn and other sources thrown 

 in, I rather think it would. The sugar 

 is worth 10c. a lb., and the bees a dollar. 

 What sort of a chance is that for making 

 money, during these dry, hot days, my 

 friends? Eh? To save the bees the labor of 

 carrying water, I now put a Simplicity feed- 

 er full of water right by the side of the frame 

 of sugar, and use none but wired frames for 

 sugar, that it may not fall out on the bees. 

 I had some rare fun with my apiary, I tell 

 you, even if it was dry weather, and since 

 the honey yield has opened again, I tell you 

 they have all "thruv." 



Oh yes ! That queen laid such large eggs 

 that I had Ernest examine them under the 

 microscope, and below, our engraver has 

 given you a picture of what they looked like. 



A QUEEN'S EGG UNDER THE MICROSCOPE. 



The lace penciling is so line and delicate, 

 our engraver could not well make it; but 

 the net work is about correct, only the lines 

 should have been much lighter. Eggs from 

 other hives showed about the same, only 

 these are considerably larger. AVe find that 

 eggs differ much in shape even from the 

 same queen, as well as in size. 



P. S. — AV by cannot any queen and a few 

 bees be built up, as was the above? I only 

 know that I have not always succeeded so 

 well, but I do not know whether the fault 

 was with the queen, or bees, or both. 



