77B 



GLEANINGS IN ^EE CULTURE. 



Nov. 



the sun alone, unaided, should melt bees- 

 wax. An arrangement of mirrors, or even 

 some sheets of bright tin, would do it, of 

 course ; but in our experiments with cold 

 frames in greenhouses we never yet have 

 had any heat up to tlie melting-point of wax, 

 that I remember. We see by the A B C 

 book that wax melts at 14-5 \ If the sun's 

 rays are all utilizeil, and the space receiving 

 them closely confined, no doubt we should 

 get this degree, or more, during our warm- 

 est summer days. How many of the friends 

 liave used the sun wax extractor in our lat- 

 itude:* 



A REPORT FROM MRS. AXTELL. 



HEH VISIT TO .MRS. HARRISON. 



;|pTr'|rE have gained much valuable information 

 Wfif ^^"oni Gleanings. The only trouble is, 1 

 <Tr^ can not keep them, as I find them too good 

 "*■•*■ to keep. I send them here and there, 

 and then we find ourselves entirely without 

 a bee-journal for reference, although we take three. 

 Mr. Axtell and I are so glad that Ernest can take 

 the place he is doing by way of help, both on notes 

 on the apiary and children's corner. I think he will 

 succeed in interesting the young folks, and I shall 

 want to be young long enough to read them myself. 



From about the 13th of Sept. to the 23d we had a 

 wonderful honej'-flow. We began to inquire where 

 we could get sugar to feed up for winter, as many 

 of our colonies were almost destitute; but in those 

 few days many colonies that had not more than 10 

 lbs., increased to 40 or 50 lbs. of honey. We hope 

 the bees will winter all right upon it, because it is so 

 well sealed up. We have reduced the size of the 

 hive to 4 and 5 combs spread apart, as some of our 

 best bee-keepers have advised, and set the combs 

 up one inch or more from bottom-board, and the 

 hives to be wintered out of doors are packed on all 

 4 sides with dry chaff and on top, and we hope to es- 

 cape the great loss in bees we sustained last winter. 

 The combs are so solid with honey as to weigh from 

 6 to 13 lbs. I never saw so much brood and so much 

 honey crowded into a brood-nest before. 



We had several small colonies in August, too 

 small to store comb honey, so we set upper stories 

 over them and filled all with brood-combs, 48 combs, 

 to be protected from the moth, combs left by dead 

 colonies. First we partly co\cred the brood-nest, 

 and then set in the combs. There was considerable 

 honey in those combs, which caused brood rearing, 

 and I never saw such enormous colonies about Sept. 

 10, but scarcely any honey. We thought of dividing 

 them into smaller colonies, but did not; but, how 

 they did bring in the honey was astonishing. They 

 had but little inclination to work in bo.xcs; some of 

 the stronger ones did, as we took away all those ex- 

 tra combs to get them to store in brood-nest for 

 winter. 



Last week JJr. Axtell and I made a visit to the 

 home of Mrs. Lucinda Harrison. She is a lady of 

 means, and I should think had no need of caring 

 for bees; but she has a great heart, and docs not 

 live for self alone, but to do good, especially in car- 

 ing for motherless children. Her husband was 

 away from home upon pqp of their farms a few 

 miles from Peoria. They have a young girl with 

 tl}§aj 9 yc^r-s old, they have taken to bring up. She 



is a very sweet, affectionate child. When asked to 

 sing, she sang,— 



" What makes the lamb love Mary so?" 



The eager children cry; 

 " Oh ! Mary loves the lamb, ycu know," 

 The teacher did reply. 



1 thought that was the secret why Mrs. Harrison's 

 lamb loved her so much— because Mrs. H. loved her 

 lamb, for I never saw a more affectionate mother. 

 I think she said she had 70 colonies of bees now. 

 She lost quite a number last winter, and sold some 

 in the spring. She is very determined to try to 

 winter without so great a loss again. In her cellar 

 she has been having a sub-earth ventilator put in. 

 We were so pleased with it that Mr. Axtell, imme- 

 diately on our return, began to arrange for one in 

 our cellar, which begins in the bottom of the mid- 

 dle of the north part, and runs to the north of the 

 house some 70 feet, and will take an 8 or 12 inch tile. 



As Mrs. H. is acquainted with a good many of our 

 prominent bee-keepers, and had visited some of 

 them at their homes, it made a very enjoyable visit 

 to talk with her. She mentioned a visit with Mrs. 

 Mahala Chaddock, who lives in the middle of a 

 beautiful large farm, surrounded with all the nec- 

 essaries of life; a visit with father Langstroth, for 

 whom, when in his presence, she felt such a rever- 

 ence; Mr. A. I. Root, such a meek man, whom all 

 felt constrained to honor; Mr. Heddon, whose cases 

 for box honey she had been trying this summer, 

 were so neatly and well finished. 



CLEANING WAX FRO.M TINWARE. 



Noticing your suggestions in Gleanings, to heat 

 tinware before rubbing off the beeswax, I would 

 add, then pour on lye, and rinse around and wash 

 off, and it will take off all that yellow tint, leaving 

 them looking bright and new. If a box of what we 

 should think was mostly propolis be poured into 

 a boiler of hot water, the propolis will melt and 

 sink, but considerable nice yellow beeswax will 

 arise to the top, so that I always save all my scrap- 

 ings, and much wax may be saved by boiling old 

 bee-sheets covered with propolis, if one wants to bo 

 very saving, and has time. 



In taking oft' our racks of honey it seemed almost 

 impossible to get the bees all out; but the racks 

 with the few remaining bees were put into the 

 honey-house where many crawled out through a 

 place made for them at the top of the window, and 

 ran up the wire cloth; but others found the same 

 way in again, but there were a good many formed 

 into a cluster in the cone of the building. I told my 

 husband I felt almost sure they had a queen, bo- 

 cause they were building worker comb, which you 

 know bees seldom do when they have no queen; so 

 Mr. Axtell took a nail-keg and held it up close un- 

 der the cluster, which would fill a two-quart mea- 

 sure, and quickly brushed them in, comb and all; 

 there were but 3 small bits of comb, the size of the 

 palm of my hand; but it had eggs in, showing that 

 they had a queen. We put two combs of honey 

 into the hive that I am certain had no eggs in, and 

 poured the bees on to a white cloth, a small distance 

 from the entrance to the hive, and let the bees 

 crowd in. I caught and caged the queen, and gave 

 to a queenless colony. I took the three bits of 

 comb, with the eggs and a little honey in, and lai4 

 on top of the tviO combs that had no brood; the 

 bees removed all the honej' and eggs in a few days. 

 I wished to unite them with a weak colony, and 

 thej' bad a njpe ce|l bHJJt, aod an egg in it; oiie oth' 



