1SS5 



GLEANINGS IN nEE CULTUUE, 



233 



not try to avoid the evils of each, and hold 

 fast to tliat which is good in both? I never 

 intended to encourage the idea that we can 

 dispense entirely with legal patents. Where 

 a man has worked hard for a long while on 

 some special idea, and has developed a new 

 field of industry, I think it no more than 

 fair that the government should give him a 

 monopoly of this industry ; that is. so far 

 as he by riglits is entitled to it. The 

 trouble is with those who want large 

 pay for a very little work, and I do not 

 know but this is the great trouble in this 

 world. 



Fi-iend E. strikes upon one point I wish to 

 notice. Many bee-keepers have windows 

 that turn over on simple plvols ; in fact, 

 tliey have many times spoken of them in our 

 bee-journals. Now, where a man suggests 

 that your bee-hive frame should be reversi- 

 ble in the same way. it hardly seems to me 

 as if he ought to think of calling it an in- 

 vention. 1 doubt whetlier our patent-laws 

 would recognize such a thing as an inven- 

 tion ; and while we are about it, has any one 

 of us, all hji himself, worked out a very great 

 result in bee cultured I mean, since Father 

 Langstrotii gave us the movable-frame hive, 

 and the (icnnaiis gave us the extractor and 

 comb foundalion; and in view of the facts 

 that liave been recently brought to light in 

 regard to many of these'inventions. shall we 

 not be a little "modest about saying. '■ Here. 



friend . that is all mine, and I want you 



to let it entirely alone ''?— I have for some 

 time thought that the brick-wall filters were 

 not quite equal to the filters made with 

 powdered charcoal, or periiaps other disin- 

 fecting substances; but they are so good a 

 thing I believe I would have them any way. 

 and "then have a better filter besides, if" I 

 wanted it. 



Where a man invents something which he 

 manufactui'es and keeps constantly before 

 the people, I think it is a very good idea for 

 him to have a legal patent on" it if lie clioos- 

 es ; but the traflic in patents that the real 

 inventor does not care enough about, or 

 pleads he has not the capital to manufacture 

 himself, is, it seems to me, the curse of the 

 system. If a man has invented something 

 good, let him manufacture it, and i)]ace it 

 before the people, and develop it. getting a 

 patent, if he chooses, to keep otliers from in- 

 terference. 



HIVE-COVEES AND OUTDOOR FEED- 

 ING. 



OUIl FKIKND C. C. MILLER GIVES I'S IIIS OPINIONS 

 AND EXPERIENCES. 



^^XITH only a lew colonics, the weight of a hive- 

 cover is a small matter. When, however, 

 it comes to lilting off and on fifty or more 

 covers daily it gets to be a serious matter— 

 a matter of backache; and the covers I 

 have lately made, T have had made as light as possi- 

 ble, 4 lbs. each. They are covered with white oil 

 cloth, and have stood very well for two seasons. 

 Perhaps after two seasons they will need re-cover- 

 ing. I have never succeeded in making a cover of 

 matched boards water-tight, with any amount of 

 paint, so these oil-oloth covers are a comfort to mo 



in that direction. Their lightness, however, didn't 

 seem so nice when one very stormy day I was kept 

 busy a good share of the day in picking up covers 

 and cloths blown off by the wind. 



In your discussion of Heddon's covers, what ap- 

 pears to me a sei-ious objection has not been men- 

 tioned. If I remember rightly he has stated that 

 he keeps a 15-lb. stone on each cover, so of course 

 they don't blow away. I would rather, however, 

 have a 15-lb. cover; and as I have already intimat- 

 ed, that's a thing I can't stand. It some cheap de- 

 vice would hold the cover tightly in place, taking 

 little or no time to fasten and unfasten, 1 think I 

 should like the Heddon cover, especially for cover- 

 ing any thing like the Heddon supers. 



OUTDOOR FEEDING. 



For the last two j'cars I have fed pretty lai-gely in 

 the spring, up to the time fruit-blossoms came. I 

 used best granulated sugar, making a thick syrup, 

 to be thinned as used. After trying the use of a 

 lamp to keep the feed warm, I discarded it for what 

 I thought a better way. I used for feed-dishes, 

 dripping-pans and milk-pans, and finally had some 

 sijuare railk-pans made, about a foot square and i 

 inches deep, made slightly flaring. For floats I used 

 this: Take a thin board which will just fit loosely 

 in the bottom of the pan; let it be of \, thickness, 

 or perhaps half that thickness would be better. 

 Then take a sufUclcnt number of strips of ■'» stuff, 

 as long as the width of the board, and an inch or 

 more wide; nail these on the board with wire nails 

 about ■'/,. inch apart, driving the nails through the 

 boards into the strips, of course having the board 

 uppermost while nailing. When done, place the 

 float in the pan, board side down, and, if rightly 

 proportioned, it will sink into the feed just enough 

 to have a shallow depth of feed all over the board. 

 The strips will, of course, stand up nearly an inch 

 out of the feed. A square piece cut out of one cor- 

 ner leaves a hole in which a funnel can be placed, 

 through which to pour the feed. One of these feed- 

 ers will do for every 10 or 15 colonies. As 1 had a 

 good many to feed I kei)t the stove reservoir filled 

 with hot water, and kept two kettles on the stove to 

 be alternately filled with syrup. Some hot water 

 being in the kettle, about 10 lbs. of sugar was 

 sprinkled and stirred in. When the grains of sugar 

 were dissolved, some of this hot syrup was put into 

 a common watering-can, the rose being taken off, 

 and about twice as much hot water added to the 

 syrup. Then, throughout the day, as often as a feed- 

 pan became partly emptied, the hot syrup was 

 poured into it through the funnel, thus going un- 

 der the float, and warming up the cooler feed in the 

 dish. If the funnel was not used, many bees were 

 scalded. One thing that surprised me was, that, 

 the best I could do, the bees never carried in an 

 average per colony of half a pound of sugar in any 

 one day. Some of the colonies showed very plainly 

 great benefit from the feeding, and these were per- 

 haps all strong colonics in the first place, made 

 stronger by the feeding. Others showed no benefit 

 whatever; and is it not just possible that some of 

 these never found the feed? Possibly these last 

 colonies would have done better with feeding in the 

 hive, and I am thinking somewhat of trying this 

 spring the old-fashioned way of filling combs with 

 syrup to put in hive, and not feed neighbors' bees. 

 C. C. MiLLEU, 200-295. 



Marengo, 111., March 9, 1885. 



You haye hit tlie ditUculty on covers ex- 



