1880 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



431 



From Different Fields. 



WIRE-CLOTH SEPARATORS. 



HAVE noticed that somebody has used wire rloth 

 with large meshes for divisions between sec- 

 tions, and claims it to be a success. I further 

 notice you intend making- a loom to weave them. 

 Now, would it not be well to give the plan a pretty 

 thorough trial before incurring the expense of a 

 loom? This gentleman who gave it one trial un- 

 doubtedly had the honey built out quite nicely. It is 

 a fact, too, that bees will sometimes build out comb 

 evenly and nicely without divisions at all; but this 

 will not work as a rule, neither will the wire cloth 

 with large meshes. I feel confident from the exper- 

 iments I have made this season. I conceived the no- 

 tion that narrow strips of tin placed ?g inch apart 

 would be more convenient than whole pieces; and 

 so they are. The strips are l A inch wide, and one 

 would suppose this would cause them to build as 

 evenly as a solid piece of tin; but it didn't. The lit- 

 tle rascals bulged out the comb at every opening in 

 the tin, giving the sections a sort of corrugated ap- 

 pearance, and at places they bulged it so far as to at- 

 tach it to the edge of the tin strips. A neighbor 

 tried the same plan, and the result was the same. 

 Therefore, we have decided here that openings large 

 enough for a bee to pass must not occur anywhere 

 except near the edges of the section. If wire cloth 

 is used, the meshes over the main portion of the sec- 

 tion must be too small for a bee to pass. 

 Kollersville, O., July 19, 1880. D. B. Baker. 



ANTS AND QUEENS. 



You will have to put something different under 

 "Ants" in your next edition of ABC, if you wish 

 to make it all right for the South. Here is my expe- 

 rience: I sent for an imported, $ i.00 queen from Dr. 

 Brown, Augusta, Ga. She came all right, and, to 

 guard against all possible danger in introducing, I 

 followed directions in A B C, and shut up the queen 

 and her attendants in a hive with hatching brood, and 

 no other bees. A shower coming up, I did not look 

 at them for about an hour, and then, on listening at 

 the closed hive, I heard a great buzzing, which 

 alarmed me. On looking in, I found the queen and 

 about half the bees stretched out on the bottom, cov- 

 ered with little black ants, and in their last gasp. 

 The other bees were buzzing around, shaking their 

 wings, and doing the best they could to rid them- 

 selves of ants, which were clinging to them and bit- 

 ing constantly. You can imagine how I felt, to see 

 my $6.00 queen, with all her beautiful yellow proge- 

 ny (unhatched, save in my imagination) vanishing so 

 suddenly. She had survived all the perils of the At- 

 lantic to meet an ignominious death at last, at the 

 hands of little Alabama ants. I sent on at once for 

 a nucleus hive with imported queen, determining not 

 to risk any more introducing just yet. They arrived 

 safely, and I have a fine colony of yellow-banded 

 workers, and good prospects for queen-rearing. I 

 searched ABC and Cook's Manual very thoroughly 

 after that, to see whether I had gone contrary to in- 

 structions, but both authorities think that ants nev- 

 er do any particular harm. On writing to Dr. 

 Brown, he said that in shipping bees to Florida he 

 had found it necessary to have the express compa- 



nies carry them " over water," in order to keep out 

 ants, before he could succeed; and for that, among 

 other reasons, he opposes clipping the queen's wing. 

 I think you ought to put some caution in A B C. 



Oh! by the way, I forgot to say that a good many 

 of the larvae in the frames of brood had been dug 

 out by the ants also, in that short time. I have 

 never detected any trouble yet in strong colonies, as 

 you say in July Gleanings; but they might do some 

 damage even then without its being noticed, as the 

 bees would repair damages so fast. C. B. Curtis. 



Selma, Dallas Co., Ala., July 9, 1880. 



The queens came by mail safe and sound. There 

 were but 2 dead bees in the whole lot. There was 

 plenty of water and sugar to last them another trip. 

 Two of them are safely introduced and laying; the 

 other, the ants killed. I left the cage on the safe in 

 the kitchen, while I was introducing the other two, 

 and the ants ate up queen, bees, and all. 



Lancaster, Tex., July 19, 1880. E. J. Atchley. 



The same thing has been noticed in Glean- 

 ings before, and I have this minute put it 

 into the A B C. Thanks, friends C. and A. 



mats for covering the frames. 



I have made some wooden mats for covering 

 frames, having the slats run across the tops of the 

 frames, and I like them much better than those in 

 which the slats run the same as the frames. 



D. S. Oiler. 



Shamburg, Venango Co., Pa., Aug. 9, 1880. 



The principal reason why I wished them 

 to run lengthwise with the frames, friend O., 

 was that we might be able to fold them up, 

 so as to accommodate nicely a few frames, 

 as well as a whole hive full. I know run- 

 ning them the way you suggest has its ad- 

 vantages. I have discarded them in our 

 apiary in favor of the enameled sheets, be- 

 cause we open the hives so often, in queen 

 rearing. Where hives are used for honey in- 

 stead of queens, very likely the mats will 

 answer very well. When they get covered 

 with wax, they are very apt to kill bees, un- 

 less considerable time is taken to replace 

 them. Those who prefer a porous covering 

 for winter will likely prefer the mats, but I 

 am satisfied the enameled cloth sheet is per- 

 fectly safe for chaff hives, and others simi- 

 larly protected. 



THE ABC TEST OF ITALIANS. 



On your postal of Aug. 3d, you ask if I judged my 

 queens as per test given in A B C. On page 121, we 

 read, "Others, among whom was our friend Quinby, 

 admit that a part of the bees would show it only," 

 etc. Now, Mr. Root,.if the above quotation means 

 that a part of the workers from the same queen 

 show the 3d band only when filled with honey, while 

 the balance have a broad yellow band plainly to be 

 seen on a hungry bee, I do not judge my queens by 

 that test, because, somehow, I have got it into my 

 head that the worker progeny from a pure Italian 

 queen ought to be marked alike. The last tested 

 queen received of you produces workers a part, per- 

 haps the most, of which have the three yellow bands 

 plainly to be seen, while the others have but two 

 that can be seen without the test of feeding, which I 

 have not tried. Chas. C. Miller. 



Akron, O., Aug. 7, 1880. 



Friend M., you are certainly demanding 

 something of a tested queen, that our im- 



