18S0 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



487 



I always clip the queen's wing-, but this will not pre- 

 vent their trying to go. 1 have known them to go 

 to a tree and go in and stay half an hour without 

 their queen. On one occasion, I had to cut a tree 

 before I could get them to stay at home. 



Leroy Van Kirk. 

 Washington. Pa., Sept. 1, 1883. 



You say, friend V., that they consume 

 their stores in raising a lot of useless consu- 

 mers; is not a pound of bees worth more 

 than a pound of stores? Bees should cer- 

 tainly be worth ,5uc a lb., it seems to me, at 

 any season. If a hive has too many, divide 

 it; but I do not know that I ever saw too 

 many in one hive, that were the progeny of 

 a single queen. Give them plenty of stores, 

 and have a rousing colony to begin with in 

 the spring. Housing colonies are a grand 

 thing for almost any purpose, either queens 

 or honey. 



I commented the season with 4 Langstroth, and i 

 old box hives. 1 had Italians in one of the L. hives, 

 from which I have raised some 20-odd queens, and 

 also got 21 frames (that is, of brood and honey), and 

 have increased my number to 16 colonies, all of 

 which are in condition for winter, although honey is 

 coming in lively from buckwheat and Iron Weed. 

 By the way, our father-in-law has a shrub growing 

 in his yard, which beats any thing I have ever seen 

 to yield honey. We call it "Pride of London." It 

 commences blooming in May, and is still blooming. 

 The bees are on it from morn till night, whenever it 

 is not raining, and just as thick, too, as you ever 

 saw on Simpson Honey Plant. J. W. Shull. 



Pleasant Dale, Hampshire Co., W. Va., Sept. 1, '80. 



ROCKY-MOUNTAIN BEE PLANT, ETC. SOME VALUA- 

 BLE FACTS. 



The Rocky Mountain Bee Plant grows plentifully 

 here. Mr. O. B. Smith brought seed of it from Col- 

 orado, and sowed in his garden 21 years ago, and 

 from that it has spread 20 miles up and down this 

 river. It affords lots of honey. The apiary here is 

 storing honey fast, while the others 3 and 6 miles 

 above here, where this bee plant is not so plenty, 

 are not doing near so well. With the exception of a 

 rosin weed and Monarda, the Rocky Mountain Bee 

 Plant is furnishin? all the honey they get now. The 

 early golden rod is blooming, but they don't work 

 on it yet. Could any amount of the seed be sold? I 

 have employed some of the boys and girls to gather 

 it for me to take to Kansas, and they wished to know 

 if there would be sale for it and the Simpson honey 

 plant and the Monarda punctata seed. I don't think 

 much of the Simpson honey plant. It is not so good 

 as buck bush {Sym/phoricarpus vuluaris). It may do 

 better if cultivated. It seems to me that, with 

 the Rocky Mountain Bee Plant, melilot clover, 

 rape, and buckwheat, a man ought to do a fair 

 business in getting honey. W. S. Van Meter. 



Smitbland, Iowa, Aug. 28, 1.380. 



GIVING COUNTIES, ETC. 



You arc right about our not giving the county. 

 You just scold until we all obey orders. I can find 

 most of the countiesby referring to the U. S. map. 

 but I don't like to do so, for the print is so very fine 

 that it takes sharp looking. But now, after all, this 

 is just the way I got your county,— by the map. If 

 yi>u had a map as large as one side of your factory, 

 It would be nice to see where we stay. 



Well, well, honey is coming in at last, just as you 

 told E. A. Gastman it would some time. I had given 

 up getting any this season, but, if it continues com- 

 ing, I will have some extracted honey, though not 

 much in the comb. A. Grabill. 



Oakley, Macon Co., Ills., Aug. 31, 1880. 



A WORKING COLONY OP BEES WITHOUT ANY IUVE 

 AROUND THEM. 



Some weeks ago, one of my neighbors came in just 

 at night, and asked me if I had lost any of my bees. 

 I went with him, and he showed me a monstrous 

 swarm about 8 ft. from the ground, under a large 

 horizontal limb of an apple tree in his garden. I 

 told him they were not mine, as they were black, 

 while mine are all Italians. Then he wanted me to 

 hive them for him. After getting an old, box hive 

 ready (he had no other), I took my hiving box, and 

 attempted to brush them off into it. To my sur- 

 prise, I found the bunch was solid with comb. I 

 then smoked them so that I could see the combs, 

 and found there were six. The center ones were 

 filled with brood mostly capped over, showing that 

 they had been there siuce some time in the spring. 



The honey crop has been very light here this sea- 

 son. An experienced bee-keeper near here, who 

 got as high as 60 lbs. from some hives last year (also 

 a poor season) reports no surplus, or next to none, 

 this year. 1 took from my one hive, 24 lbs. the 3d of 

 July, and then divided it into three; but I will have 

 to feed them for the winter. 



ARE ITALIAN QUEENS SOMETIMES BLACK? 



I have a young-, laying queen, as black as the ace 

 of spades (supposed to be), the daughter of a pure 

 Italian. Her mother and sisters are a beautiful yel- 

 low, and the workers are all three-banded. 



Wm. O. Post. 



Essex, Middlesex Co., Vt., Sept. 10, 1880. 



The case you mention is not entirely new, 

 several having been given in our back vol- 

 umes. It seems to indicate that our honey 

 bees, at some time in past ages, may have 

 been in the habit of building in the open air ; 

 possibly in a warmer climate. A curious 

 feature with these open air colonies is 

 their method of shedding rain, by clustering 

 with their wings in such a position that they 

 act like shingles. Hence, even driving 

 storms seem to harm them but little.— Ital- 

 ian queens, and drones, too, for that matter, 

 may be almost any color, and still produce 

 regularly marked worker bees. Ignorance 

 of this fact has caused a great deal of use- 

 less complaining. The majority of the 

 queens that come from Italy, are dark, and 

 some of them fully as black as our common 

 queens. Pure, common queens are also of- 

 ten so light, that one would call them Ital- 

 ians, without seeing their worker progeny. 



MAKING BEES ACCEPT A QUEEN. 



I have a very fine swarm of three-banded bees 

 from the dollar queen you sent me about the 6th of 

 July. It was my first attempt, but I had good suc- 

 cess. The colony accepted her on the first trial. 

 This gave me so much pleasure that I ordered 

 another queen which came Aug. 13th. But this one 

 I was very unfortunate with. I took her out from 

 the centre of a ball of bees no less than three times, 

 but I was determined that the swarm should be ex- 

 terminated by old age, or accept my yellow queen. 

 It was fully a week, however, before they came to 

 my terms, and I can assure you I don't want another 



