590 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Dec. 



without any rain. Rain will use up flowers very 

 quickly, I think. What do you think, Novice? That 

 id what we knew you by when E. Gallup gave you 

 a crack over the knuckles, and you gave him as good 

 as he sent, in the old A. B.J. My wife thinks you 

 have got that bee in the wrong place on the new 

 cover to correspond with the words, "Peace on earth, 

 good will toward men;" or, at least, that is not the 

 kind of beea we have here. 



W. Lamar Coggshall. 

 West Groton, Tompkins Co., N. Y., Oct. 18, 1880. 



A BARREL OF BEES. 



The two one-dollar queens I ordered were to go 

 with a barrel of bees which a neighbor proposed to 

 give me if I could get them out without destroying 

 the comb. 1 thought I could draw or smoke them 

 out, but by neither process could they be induced to 

 leave their home. 



THE DRUMMING-OUT PROCESS. 



By the way, friend Root, this is one of the points 

 in which the ABC book is wanting. It covers the 

 field of scientific bee culture pretty thoroughly, but 

 it does not reach back to first principles. Perhaps 

 you will say I should write it false principles. Well, 

 so be it; but when you revise the book, just tell us 

 how you would get the bees out of a barrel alive, 

 and without destroying the barrel or cutting the 

 comb. 



Failing to accomplish my purpose with the barrel 

 of bees, I turned my attention to some young swarms 

 which my neighbor thought it advisable to take up, 

 and I soon had four of the old box hives knocked to 

 pieces, and the bees in two separate boxes. 1 had 

 plenty of bees for two strong swarms. I brought 

 them home and turned them loose on some frames 

 of brood and honey from my other hives, and they 

 took up their abode with me at once. I then hunted 

 up the queens; and here, by the way, is another sug- 

 gestion for the ABC. 



HOW TO FIND A BLACK QUEEN. 



It has always been a matter of much difficulty with 

 me to find the queen in a comb among thousands of 

 her progeny. To expedite matters, and make a 

 sure thing of it, therefore, when I want to find a lot 

 of queens I lift the hives from their stand to another 

 directly in front of it, having previously tacked a 

 newspaper between the two stands, on which to 

 shake the bees. I then place an empty hive on the 

 old stand, which I raise from the bottom-board by a 

 couple of wedges just enough to let the workers pass 

 in, but not the queen ; then from the first hive I lift 

 one of the center frames and brush off the bees on 

 the paper, placing the frame at once in the new hive. 

 I then take another frame, while another keeps a 

 sharp lookout for the queen at the entrance, and I 

 usually find her before four frames are placed in the 

 new hive. If a number of queens are to be hunted 

 up, several hives may be thus treated at the same 

 time to advantage. The bees will be crawling in all 

 the time, leaving a less number to conceal the 

 queen. 



FEEDING, TO MAKE BEES ACCEPT A QUEEN. 



One of my queens flew away while 1 was trying to 

 introduce her, and the other I worked with a week, 

 releasing her every day only to have her balled, till, 

 finally, the idea occurred to me to bribe the bees 

 with a dish of sugar syrup to accept the queen. 

 They took the bribe, and accepted the queen at once. 



You were right in regard to the queen-cells which 

 I wrote to you about some time ago. They were all 



hatched out when your card came to hand. Ten 

 days later, all the young queens were laying. 



TOO MUCH BROOD IN THE FALL; IS IT PROFITABLE 

 TO HAVE? 



They have done well since in the egg-laying line,— 

 so well, indeed, that I fear they may devote so much 

 of their winter supply of honey to brood-rearing, 

 that they may find themselves short of stores be- 

 fore spring. Do you think there is any danger of 

 this, with a supply of 21 lbs. of honey? The selected 

 queen which I got from you last July gave up laip ing 

 several weeks ago; and, as her hive was rather light 

 in bees, I have been feeding them maple syrup for 

 the past two weeks, every night, and only yesterday 

 did I discover eggs in the combs. If a pound of 

 maple sugar will make a pound of Italians, as I havo 

 seen it stated in Gleanings, this hive has a fine 

 prospect before it ; for I have fed them about 6 lbs. of 

 the sugar. 



MAILE SYRUP FOR WINTER STORES. 



How is maple syrup for winter stores? Perhaps I 

 have been doing a wrong thing in feeding them so 

 much of it that they have been obliged to store it up 

 in their combs. 



This is my first season with bees. From three 

 hives in the spring I have built up to eight. I took 

 about 00 lbs. of honey from the three hives when 1 

 transferred them, and have fed 3i> lbs. of sugar to 

 furnish them with the necessary stores for winter 

 It has been all outlay with me this year; but next, 

 year I hope to reap some return for my expenditure 

 of money and labor. James McNeill. 



Hudson, N. Y., Oct. 15, 1880. 



Under transferring, you will lind, 

 friend M., directions tor drumming out the 

 bees, but it does not get out all of the bees, 

 and sometimes it gets out only a very small 

 part of them. I do not know of any way to 

 jiet them all out, without destroying the bar- 

 rel, or cutting their combs. Why not trans- 

 fer them in the usual way? — Your plan of 

 linding the queen was added to the A 13 C in 

 the last lot printed.— Maple sugar or syrup 

 is . wholesome for winter, if good ; but a 

 poor article is about like feeding brown 

 sugar. It will do for a warm-weather feed, 

 but not for winter.— Feeding the colony to 

 make them good-natured, when introducing 

 a. queen, has often been recommended, and I 

 have just now penciled it to go in next A B 

 C's printed. Thank you for reminding me 

 of it. 



EARLY-AMBER SYRUI', etc. 



I was reading, in Gleanings, your method of 

 manufacturing the Amber sugar-cane, and it seems 

 to me that you arc a little behind the times down in 

 Medina. We raised about U of an acre of the Am- 

 ber sugar-cane, and it made 115 gallons of nice am- 

 ber-colored syrup. We made it in little over a day. 

 We used the Cincinnati Victor Mill and the Cook 

 pan, copper, 12 feet long, on a tilting arch. We have 

 made sorghum syrup and considerable sugar ever 

 since the seed was introduced into Michigan. We 

 have made as high as 2500 gallons in one season. Tho 

 greater part of our business now in the fall is mak- 

 ing jell from cider. We use no sugar. Mr. Haw- 

 ley, of Napoleon, has a large cider-mill that runs by 

 steam. My son and his son-in-law make jell for 

 him. They run two copper pans. Cook's patent, 12 

 feet long. They average daily 220 gallons of nice 

 jell from apples nothing else. Some days they make 



