738 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE, 



Kov 



will not be a death-blow to the honej- trade any 

 more than the sale of oleomarg-arine and similar 

 imitations has been a death-blow to the dairy busi- 

 ness. Of course, such frauds injure lair trade, but 

 they can not destroy it. 



Many thanks, friend V.. for the clipping 

 you send us. You are ri},'ht in protesting, 

 when things come to such a pass that men 

 so well posted as the managers of the liural 

 3'ei'>yor^'C/' should print such things. I re- 

 fer to the single expression in their answer, 

 •• It is probably true." Now, friends of the 

 Bund Neic-T<n-kei\ and the rest of the agri- 

 cultural press of America, if nothing else 

 will satisfy you that you are misled and 

 humbugged, 1 will pay SIOOO to any man or 

 woman who will show me an establishment 

 where they make and sell comb honey in 

 which neither wax nor honey is used. Now, 

 will our friends of the agricultural joifrnals 

 please be as willing to put down a damaging 

 slander as they have been to give it publici- 

 ty? They can, any of them, easily satisfy 

 themselves as to whether I am good for the 

 offer I have made. 



To show the estimation in which fraudu- 

 lent bee-keepers are held by the different 

 bee-journals, and by apiarians as a class, we 

 have only to clip the following item from 

 the very next column of the Tribune from 

 which the extract on preceding page was 

 made: 



Mrs. Lizzie E. Cotton. West Gorham, Maine, is re- 

 ferred to as a "fraud" by The InduKtriHl Ji>urnal, 

 which states that all the apiciultural papers reject 

 her advertisement, and accuses her, amonp other 

 delinquencies, of having' "advocated feeding- bees 

 BUg-ar and calling it honey." 



A BEGINNERS EXPERIENCE. 



SOMETHING PIIOM THE PLACE WHERE .MH. r.AXa- 

 STHOTH LIVES. 



"T HAVE a few suggestions regai-ding- bee-keeping:, 

 M and I thoug-ht I would submit them to you for 

 ^l your opinion. In bee-keeping I do not claim 

 "*■ to be any thing but an amateur. Three years 

 ago I bought one swarm from Bro. Mc Cord, of 

 this place. By close attention, and the assistance of 

 the A B (", I got along flnelj', losing but one swarm 

 in hiving-. Last fall I closed the season with 33 

 swarms in good condition. I was called away from 

 home in October for some three weeks, and busi- 

 ness was i)res8iug me so close I did not find time to 

 look at bees again until January, when on opening 

 1 found two swarms starved to death, and several 

 short of honey; but 1 began feeding strong, and 

 j)ulled them through till April, when they began to 

 drop otr, and continued to until 1 had only five 

 stands, and they in a weak condition. One of them 

 was queenless. I succeeded in saving the live, and 

 now have increased them to tlfteen. All have lay- 

 ing queens, and, as father Langstroth says, my 

 chances are good to pull them througli by a little 

 feeding. 



1 came near being a blind bee-man a couple of 

 weeks ago. I found that the moths were working in 

 some of our frames, and concluded to sulphur 

 them on a large scale, so I gathered u\) seven Sim- 

 plicity hives, leaving the lower two empty. I then 

 placed a coal-oil cook-stove in the bottom of the 

 bive, with a small iron vessel to hold the sulphur. 

 The sulphur part was a success, of course. A col- 



umn of niue Simplicity hives, one on top of the 

 other, with a cover on the top, made a splendid 

 smoke-house. So far, so good. 1 took my hives 

 down, and found the moths all dead. I then put the 

 frames away; but when I went to put the stove 

 away it would not move. 1 think in raising the 

 stove out of the bottom hive I threw the flame 

 down in the stove, which caused the explosion. 1 

 was burned pretty badly on head and face, but my 

 eyes were not injured, though my eyelashes were 

 singed. I would advise all persons to put out the 

 flame entirely when they attempt to move a stove. 

 I shall the next time. 



I send you a sample feeder. A bee can not drown 

 in it. You can use it outside or inside of hives. 

 You. can regulate the flow just as you want it. 

 You can use it to furnish water inside of hives, 

 when' j'ou are feeding sugar; and the beauty of it 

 is, almost every home in the land has feeders on 

 hand. I send you a small one for sample. 1 have 

 them up to a qiutrt in size. If you wish a freer 

 flow of honey, you have only to take the scissors and 

 cut a few more notches, and bend those back. I 

 send you one more miniature sample of my winter 

 feeder, embracing the Hill device for clustering, 

 and feed at hand in shape of candied sugar, 

 r also claim that the candj- will absorb some if not 

 all the moisture, which is so damaging to bees, and 

 also keep the candy in better shape for food. My 

 object in dividing the sugar-frame is, that when 

 one portion is taken out, by having- a duplicate 

 mold you can make another cake of candy, and in- 

 sert it when needed. The first expense would be 

 trifling; anj' bee-keeper could make the frame and 

 the mold to run his candy blocks in. I think bj- 

 using this, if extremely cold weather should catch 

 a swarm in a part of the hive where honey is scarce, 

 they would have feed at hand. If hung in the shape 

 of the Hill device, would it not tend to cluster them 

 more in the center of the hives? This feeder is in- 

 tended to cover all the frames in the hive. I have 

 put a portable portico to some of your chaff hives, 

 to rest the feeder on, and to others a simple rest for 

 feeder. 



Father Langstroth was out yesterday, and says 

 my stocks are in splendid condition, and I certainly 

 have the bees. With a little more feeding 1 am 

 safe. The season has been poor here. One of our 

 largest bee-keepers has lost some stands from 

 starvation this summer. Horace WEr.r.s. 



Oxford, Ohio, Sept. 3, 188.'.. 



Fiiend W., I am inclined to tliink that 

 the oil used in yom- coal-oil stove was of a 

 poor quality, or such an explosi(m would not 

 lune resulted. I ha\e often fumigated 

 comlts in the way you mention, only 1 had 

 a box at the bottom, with a door init, so a 

 dish of live coals cotild be set in through the 

 door, and a roll of brimstone afterward 

 thrown on the coals.— The sample feeder 

 you send is only a modilication of the 

 Haines feeder, shown in our price list and 

 A 15 C book. .V glass tumbler inverted in a 

 saucer will answer the same i>urpose, only 

 you can not snip into the edge of the tum- 

 bler with a i>air of scissors, as you can a tin 

 cup or tin can. 1 will explain to" our readers, 

 that the winter feeder is a little frame with 

 partitions across, and the space between the 

 partitions is tilled with candy. This might 

 have some advantages, but lumps of candy 



