1885 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTUKE. 



45S 



indicating the presence of fishes all over the 

 pond. Sometimes they would swing around 

 so quickly as to make quite a loud '• chug ; '' 

 and once in a while a nose would come up 

 clear out of the water, and their brilliant 

 shining scales would glisten in the sun. 



The next morning I provided myself with 

 some crackers, to see if they would eat, and 

 pretty soon I was abundantly satisfied. Of 

 course, you have to keep still, if you want to 

 see them behave themselves as if they were 

 at home. If you do not, or if they catch a 

 sight of you, they disappear in a second, 

 sometimes with a tremendous swash of the 

 water. I did not know whether I could 

 keep Iluber still enough to get a sight of 

 tliem , but he took it all in an instant. "Oh! 

 oh! oh! Hungry as little bears, aren't they, 

 papaV" No wonder he thought they weie 

 " hungry as little bears," for I should think 

 all the large ones in the pond were after the 

 broken crackers I had Hung upon the sur- 

 face of the water ; and such a nosing as they 

 made, to gather up the fragments! The only 

 way a fish has for telling whether a thing is 

 good, is to swallow it part way; and if it 

 does not suit him, he blows it out with a 

 stream of water. On one occasion a black 

 stick a couple of inches long came shooting 

 right up in the middle of liie ])ond. After- 

 ward came the nose of one of those large 

 carp. lie shot it out as being unsavory, but 

 inunediatcly sucked in the crackers, witii 

 great satisfaction. No doubt we shall soon 

 have them perfectly tame. 



Now, there is one other thing I iiave dis- 

 covered about our carp-pond, and I wish 

 that Prof, ('ook, or somebody else, would en- 

 lighten me if possil)le. Early in spring I 

 saw great (piantities of what I took to be 

 frog's eggs— a disagreeable f- cum (loatiiigon 

 the pond, full of little round balls about the 

 size of shot. I remember of thinking I would 

 skim them all off, so as to avoid raising such 

 an army of frogs; but it was neglected, and 

 l)y and by we had little polliwogs —millions 

 of them. They came up in the shallow wa- 

 ter, where we had provided a place for the 

 carp to breed, and the little wigglers made a 

 black fringe all around the edge of the i)ond. 

 They just lay in heaps in sliallow water. 

 Well, some of them grew into large polli- 

 wogs, perhaps two inches long ; but the most 

 of them did not get larger tiian a common 

 cricket, some not larger than house-liies, be- 

 fore they turned into veritable hopping 

 toads, and they covered the bank so they re- 

 sembled a swarm of bees—little black toads 

 the size of crickets, or smaller; and when I 

 came down among them^ instead of i)luuging 

 back into the water they climbed over' the 

 bank of the pond and hopix'd olT into the 

 woods. Now. then, do tadpoles (we call 

 them polliwogs) undergo transformation at 

 all ages and sizes? There can not be as 

 many different varieties as there are sizes, 

 because they lose their tails and put on legs 

 at every possible size fioni that of a house- 

 fly up to two inches in length. Some of 

 them seemed to tmn into frogs, and some 

 into toads, or tree-toads, any way ; and the 

 whole lot came from one batch of eggs, evi- 

 dently. I had rather hoped the carp would 

 turn in and gobble them up, so as to rid my 



pond of their presence ; but the carp seemed 

 to very much prefer rooting around among 

 tlie weeds and rubbish in the bottom and 

 along the edges of the pond, not troubling 

 themselves about anything in the shape of 

 animal life. Our carp seem to be vegetari- 

 ans. No wonder they grow enormously dur- 

 ing a single season. If you should see them 

 around with their great mouths, taKing in 

 all sorts of trash, every or any day, the won- 

 der would be if they did not grow. 



A BUNDLE CSP QUERIES FROM ONE 

 OF OUR ABC SCHOLARS. 



ARE QUEENS OFTEN SUPERSEDED BECAUSE THEIR 

 WINGS ARE CLIPPED? 



T AM very much pleased with Mrs. Culp's plan of 

 ,£|P nianaf^ing an apiary. ]f we farmers can 

 ^l practice the same successfully, we can keep a 

 '^ few colonies without being compelled to stay 

 within hailing distance of the house all through 

 swarming time; but with me it has not proved 

 successful with the Italians. Of course, I am only a 

 beginner, and may have made a great many serious 

 mistakes; for instance, last season I had one col- 

 ony that would persist in building queen-cells; and 

 when I put the sections on I could not examine 

 them until I took them off in the fail, so I forgot all 

 about iiueen-cells until one warm day in February, 

 when the bees carried out the old queen and two 

 young ones; then I looked, and found three emp- 

 ty cells and a young ((ucen that proved to be un- 

 fertilized. I should like to know if bees often su- 

 I)erscde their (jueen because her wing is clipped. 

 Also, when there are two <iueens in one hive, does 

 the younger generally kill the older, or the reverse? 

 Why does Mr. Doolittle say, "llcmove all the drone- 

 comb from the hive, except an inch or so"? Why 

 leave that inch? and why does hv charge twice as 

 much for a tested queen two years old as one only 

 one year old? I thou^-lit (lueens lived only about 

 three years. 



What do you mean by the German, or brown boe? 

 Are they the common black bee? 



Is alsike clover a biennial or perennial? and 

 does it propagate by runners, like the white, or 

 from seed only ? It is a new thing with us, the first 

 being sown this spring. 



Is alfalfa a good honey-plant? It does well here, 

 but there is none within range of our bees. 



Urock, Neb., June 8, iaS5. J. S. Johnston. 



We have sometimes thought that the bees 

 objected to a clipped (lueen ; and as a good 

 many people have their own notions in re- 

 gard to tiie matter, we have discontinued 

 clipjiing (pieens.— My experience has been, 

 tiiat wiien there are two queens in a hive, 

 mother and daughter, there is no killing at 

 all. The old queen lives at home peaceably 

 until she dies and is carried out.— Why leave 

 a little drone-comb in the Ivive? Friend J., 

 Mr. Doolittle recommends a little drone- 

 comb, to satisfy the bees. If you cut it all 

 out entirely, they will tear down worker- 

 combs and work them over into drone.— Mr. 

 Doolittle charges as he does for those two- 

 year-old queens, because they have been 

 tested for queen-rearing ; and when you 

 have one, you can go right to work and start 

 a hundred queens if you wish, being pretty 



