074 



GLEANINGS IN JiEE CULT UUE. 



Oct. 



FROM DIFFERENT FIELDS, 



THE QUEEN THAT T.IVED TO BE FIVE YEARS OLD; 

 MORE ABOUT HER, ETC. 



foil ask if I may not have been deceived in the 

 queen reported to be five years old. Possibly 

 I may by a young queen entering- the hive 

 and taking- her place; but I have no idea that 

 I was, lor I watched her closely, and I think 

 1 should have known her from any other queen I 

 ever saw. Her swarm did not dwindle. The only 

 time I ever had spring- dwindling- in my apiary was 

 when I lost 16 out of 32 by it. I bought her mother 

 of a Mr. King-, in Columbus, Ind. I do not know 

 how old she was, but the hive was marked, "Com- 

 menced laying- June 0." She remained in my apia- 

 ry three years and ten months, leading out a swarm 

 each year, dying- 50 days after her last swarm issued. 

 1 bought her the last of September. Her wing 

 was clipped, so I am certain she was not superseded. 

 Since you referred to it, I do remember having 

 read Mr. Doolittle's statement, that "queens raised 

 in a hive with an old queen are always good." 1 

 have now in my apiary an imported queen which I 

 bought of Messrs. Charles Dadant & Son, in April, 

 188;j, which must now be in her fourth year; and 

 notwithstanding her long ocean ti-ip she shows no 

 signs of decay at this writing. 



Gleanings, Sept. 1, 188.">, page 587, first column, 

 bottom line, read " mother " instead of "other;" se- 

 cond line from bottom, leave out " raised." The 

 way it reads, it would imply that fall raised queens 

 are rarely superseded, but I intended to say that 

 (jueens are rarely superseded In the fall. 

 Patterson, Texas, Sept. 15, 1885. E. S. Auvixk. 



( OMB FOI^NDATION WITH LONG CELf-S. 



Why do not some of you bee-men get uj) a found- 

 ation-mill that will make cells longer one way than 

 the other, for the surplus department, something- 

 like stretched foundation ? as experience shows 

 that beesneveruse misshapen cells foreither brood 

 or bee-bread, as also that they never put pollen in 

 drone-cells. 



We had honey-dew stored with such a strong- res- 

 inous taste and smell as to be nauseating. 



I have sections, regular size, 4',! X 4i.i x 2, as you 

 term them, while wluit you call odd sizes, 4'o x i'., 

 X 1^4, sell readily. Reason, bees cap the honey more 

 l)romptly, and it sells more promptly, being a more 

 showy-shaped pound, although containing slightly 

 less cubical contents. H. R. SPEintv. 



Nokomis, Montgomery Co., 111. 



Friend S., we made just exactly tlie kind 

 of Idn. you describe, in some of our earlier 

 experiments, but we did it by accident, and 

 because we could not do any better. The 

 fdii. did work, too, a good deal as yon men- 

 tion ; tlial is, bees would not put brood in it, 

 and for that reason no one wanted it, and the 

 rolls were l)roken up and worked over.— We 

 suppose you make your section boxes larger 

 wliile you make them narrower, so as tore- 

 tain the weight at as nearly a poimd as pos- 

 sible ; but all tiie comb honey we are selling 

 this season is in the usual -1} by 4i-, by a little 

 less tlian i' in thickness. Of course,' tiiey do 

 not liold (juite a i)ound ; but instead <if bi'iiig 

 an objection, it seems lather to jtlcase our 

 cust(uuers better. 



SPAFFORD'S dhone-excluder. 



I notice in last Gleanings a communication of 

 my esteemed fellow-townsman B. F. Spafford, de- 

 scribing his drone-excluder. I wish to say it does 

 the work. I favor a niodifieation of it - a very sim- 

 ple one, I herewith send you, which is a diminutive 

 model. This gives two drone and two worker pas- 

 sages. In experimenting I found that the drones in 

 trying to get out would So obstruct the passage as 

 togi-eatly hinder and annoy the bees. 1 found, on re- 

 moving the excluder, a row of drones all along the 

 passage, and there would be a frantic rush by all to 

 get out. The form I send can very easily be made 

 of tin or zinc at a trifling expense. S. Y. Orr. 



Moi-ning Sun, Jowa, Aug. 21, 1885. 



I will explain to the friends, that the little 

 model sent by friend O. amounts to about 

 the same thing as the Jones entrance-guard, 

 only it is quite a little longer, and the ends 

 are'left open. The drones, being unable to 

 get through the perforated metal, linally go 

 out at the ends ; but on coming back they 

 try to enter at the usual place of the worker- 

 bees. >J o doubt this will work all right, and 

 obviate the difficulty mentioned. The only 

 point to be determined would be the proper 

 length. If made too long, the drones might 

 not find their way out through the open 

 ends ; and if too short, they would get in 

 where they go out. To determine this, many 

 experimeiits will be needed. Meanwhile we 

 extend our thanks to friend O. 



AVIIV DID THEV SWARM OCT? 



A few days ago, about 10 o'clock my little brother 

 came running- to me and told me the bees were 

 swarming. Well, thought T, something's wrong. 

 They were coming out of a hive containing a first 

 swarm, hived June 11 on 8 sheets of fdn., the queen 

 at least a year old, and having a crippled wing. I 

 couldn't find the queen, high nor low. The bees at I 

 came back. Upon examining the hive I found that 

 they had not more than a pound or so of honey in 

 all, so 1 first thought Jt was starvation. But by re- 

 moving the frames I found three solid full of cap- 

 ped brood, others containing unsealed larvtv, lots 

 of capped drone-brood (this was a frame of natural 

 comb), and many queen-cells capped. 



Now, what I should like to know is, were they try- 

 ing to supersede the old queen, or was it starvation, 

 or something else'/ 1 have but 3 colonies of my own, 

 and 3 belonging to father, to attend to (am as yet an 

 embryo apiarist). Five out of the six, including 

 the one descrilied above, have drones, or drone- 

 brood; 3 have queen-cells started; none of them 

 have half enough winter stores. They are strong in 

 bees, ha\ing good prolific Italian queens, all but 

 two being young. We have had a very poor honey 

 season ; not a drop of surplus. Bees have consum- 

 ed stores in brood-rearing; plenty of corn ])ollen. 

 Please tell me what's wrong, and what to do. 



Chandler, Ind.. Aug. 21, 1885. Ai.vix L. Heixe. 



Friend II . my imiiression is that it was 

 the dearth of honey that caused the swai'm- 

 ing-oiit. Wiien no honey is (-(miing in, and 

 especially when none comes for a period of 

 several weeks, bees oftentimes show strange 

 freaks; and it is not infrc(iuent for them to 

 swarm as you describe, just because their 

 stores are going daily, and are almost gone. 

 They seem to get desperate, as it were, and 

 want to do something, even if that some- 



