520 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Aug. 



business, and I never have even thought of tryinur 

 it again. Old queens will die, and young ones will 

 appear, no matter how closely watched, unless, in- 

 deed, you handle them ofteuer than once a week, 

 and life is too short for me to think of handling 

 them oftener than necessary. Bees always alight. 

 I have no doubt about it; they never go off without 

 clustering. Hundreds of swarms have I hived 

 without losing a single one that I saw issue. These 

 fancy things for catching swarms are of no pos- 

 sible account. I have hived fourteen before 

 dinner, with only a single pair uniting, and those I 

 could easily have separated if I had desired. 



TELEPHONES. 



Two or three years since I received, with other 

 articles sent me by you, a cheap 75-cent telephone. 

 I erected it between my house and honey-house so 

 that the good wife could easily call me to dinner. 

 I thought I tilled all directions about its proper 

 erection, but I could hear her call outside of the 

 telephone, and nary a sound distinctly through it; so, 

 down it came, and went among other useless i-elics 

 of curiosity. Gleanings mentioned within the past 

 year its use in bee swarming, so out it came again, 

 one mouth-piece near my table in second story of 

 honey-house where I keep papers and something of 

 a library, while the other was in lower story near 

 the extracting-table, and the v/ire was made to pass, 

 say, ten feet high above second row of bee-hives 

 down nearly to the end of my apiary, then over the 

 second row across the end to the third row on op- 

 posite side, and around over that to honey-house. 

 It works to a charm. I can always tell whei> a 

 swarm is in the air. Of course, when young bees 

 are taking the first flight the wire gets touched oc- 

 casionally; but when the touches come like an 

 alarm bell I can go down, "for they've got there." 



SEASON. 



This has not been a good honey season thus far. 

 With abundance of white clover and linden now 

 well in bloom, the cold rains and cool days of near- 

 ly the entire month of June have decidedly hin- 

 dered and impeded the work of the little insects. 

 Bees have not had the swarming fever, only 27 

 having issued naturally, increasing my number of 

 colonies by 31. Two small swarms I always unite, 

 and the colony casting a second swarm is sure to 

 receive the ne.xt swarm that appears. I used to re- 

 turn second swarms to the parent colony, but 

 found they would swarm again, whereas a strange 

 swarm would always remain and give such strength 

 and vigor to the exhausted colony as to insure a 

 fair yield of surplus nectar. I find no difficulty in 

 uniting colonies during the honey and swarming 

 season; and as to the (luecns, I trust to the princi- 

 ple of "survival of the fittest." 



BEE CONGRESS. 



I expected to see something more extended in 

 Gleanings in reference to the convention at New 

 Orleans. Probably no other body of bee-keepers of 

 equal or superior number, or of equal reputation 

 and intelligence, was ever assembled. The proceed 

 ings were conducted in good taste, and must result 

 beneficially. S. W. Salisbuky. 



Kansas City, Mo. 



Friend 8., there is a good itn)ral to your ar- 

 ticle ; and one couimeiices to sct^ tlie moral 

 wlien you start out by coiidcniuinic so many 

 things. All of us beo-kccpers get notions— 

 myself among the rest. We get a notion 

 that a thitig is good for notlung, aud hastily 



throw it aside, just as you did that tele- 

 phone, because you did not put it up the fust 

 lime according to direi-tions. or ti y it till you 

 made it work. Andoii theotlier hand, some- 

 times we get hold of a thing that is hardly 

 practicable, and not protitable, aud we take 

 a notion to it, so we stick to it until we make 

 it do very fairly ; whereas we could have 

 done much better had we thrown it away in 

 the iirst place. The friends who have some 

 patented notion of their own are an illustra- 

 tion of this. Now, the golden mean would 

 be to look fairly on all sides, and judge im- 

 partially. So long as we are human, howev- 

 er, I presume we shall go througli life witii 

 more or less of these notions sticking to us. 

 Briefly, it seems to me you have got a notion 

 that clialf hives are of iio beiielit ; and possi- 

 bly tl'.ey will not pay so far south as you are. 

 You have a notion, too, that you want the 

 bottoms of your hives movable, while a great 

 many of the brethren will declare that they 

 never want another movable bottom around; 

 and the same with wired frames. We have 

 decided, over and over, that we want no 

 frame in the apiary that is not built on wires. 

 But our business is shipping bees, principal- 

 ly, so we may both be right. It seems to me 

 that if we are going to have a movable frame 

 the best way is to have it movable and re- 

 movable ; bi\t a great many do not agree 

 w'ith me. They titid the movable corners too 

 movable, and upon incjuiry they are accus- 

 tomed to moving their hives around here 

 and there. We have our hives located as 

 shown in the ABC book, and I might al- 

 most say we never move them unless a colo- 

 ny has to be shipped. In tluit cnse, of course, 

 we use the spacing-boards. Neither do we 

 have our hives overturned by frightened an- 

 imals. AVe never had such an occurrence in 

 our experience, that I recollect. We expect 

 our hives to have a good solid standing- 

 place, and we expect them to stand there, 

 winter and summer. I am astonished at 

 what you say in regard to reversible frames ; 

 for it seems to me I could make the bees 

 build those combs up against the bottom- 

 bar by reversing the frame, in L't or 48 hours, 

 during a flow of honey, without a possibility 

 of mistake.— In regard to fancy honey-boards 

 and moth or drone traps, 1 should partly 

 agree with you. luiless you mean to inchule 

 the Jones eiitraiice-guard. The latter is a 

 valuable thing to have iu an apiary, without 

 (pieslion.— Our notions happen to be much 

 alike in regard to clipping queens" wings ; 

 but a good inany others will have different 

 notions, as you tiotice.— Now, friend S., in 

 regard to bees (dirdi/s alighting, that sen- 

 tence caps the cliinax in helping us to decide 

 that you ;irc greatly given to notions. Have 

 you forgotten tl'.e lii'rfect hailstorm of facts 

 rained ui)i)n tlic head of poor " Old Fogy "' a 

 year or two ago, and the way in which we 

 hiadc him come out of his cover and own up 

 and take back his words V — I am glad you 

 have learned to maiuige the telephone.— In 

 regard to the bee-keepers" congress, I believe 

 you are right about it ; an<l the reason why I 

 did not have something extended in tJLEAN- 

 iN(is iu regard to the matter was, that there 

 was so much of it I gave up and advised all 

 to send to friend Newman for a copy of the 



