822 



GLEAXINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Dec. 



Falsehood will traverse The globe while truth is 

 bitching up her horse. 



The trouble is this : When such a wonder- 

 ful statement comes out in the papers, every- 

 body reads it, holds up the hands in wonder, 

 and every paper copies it. When the false- 

 hood is corrected, however, it is a matter of 

 but little interest to any one, and so nobody 

 cares to read it, and therefore the editors 

 let it drop as (juietly as possible ; for it is a 

 little humiliating for an editor to admit that 

 he publicly exposed his ignorance. But 1 

 tell you, my friends, an editor will make 

 more money in tlu; long run, and get a 

 larger subscription, by being strictly honest, 

 and coming right down to the bed-rock of 

 truth, whenever the cause demands it. The 

 woi'ld will stand by a man who. Avith truth- 

 ful candor, exposes his mistakes, in a way 

 they will by no means do, if the man is too 

 proud to stoop to undo the mischief he has, 

 may be iniconsciously, made. We thank the 

 editors of the Bund New-Yorka\ however, 

 for what they have done. 



AN ABC SCHOLAR-S EXPERIENCE. 



FINDING queens; CHAFF PACKING. 



|i^OW that the season is over, and the bees 

 snugly tucked up in their winter blankets of 

 chafT, I feel like summing up results, and re- 

 poi-ting to our preceptor. I imagine j'ou 

 holding a kind of inquiry meeting of the 

 ABC class; and having had " 'sperience," I feel 

 like " speakin' right out in meetia'." 



I went into winter quarters last year with ten col- 

 onies of blacks and one Italian. All came out in the 

 spring with bees in; but on Easter Sunday one 

 swarmed out and went in with another colony, 

 leaving me ten, two of which were pretty weak; 

 but by dint of feeding and building up I got them 

 all to storing surplus on the white clover. Then 

 came the (to me) most embarrassing work: i. e., rais- 

 ing queens, and Italianizing. I approached the 

 first stand for this purpose, with a good deal of 

 trepidation and misgivings, somewhat as a young 

 man ventures to see his best girl for the first time ; for 

 although I have had a passing acquaintance with 

 bees all my life I had only once before had an inter- 

 view, and that very brief, with her majesty the 

 queen. Still, I have succeeded in increasing my 

 ten colonies to 24, good and strong; raising and in- 

 troducing, lor myself and neighbors, 35 queens, 

 with not one laying queen lost in introducing, al- 

 though I lost several virgin queens in various ways, 

 besides getting a surplus of 1000 lbs. of comb and 

 extracted honey. So much for one of the A B C's. 

 Can any of the W Y Z's beat it? 



fikst: how to find black queens. 

 I have found a way of finding the queen in ten 

 minutes, without staring your eyes out, and, I al- 

 most said, to an absolute certainty— at least, it has 

 not failed in a single instance of half a dozen trials. 

 My neighbor, A. C. Moore, is the inventor of the 

 scheme. We help one another a good deal in bee- 

 work, and mutually profit by one another's e.xperi- 

 cnce. I had three or four hives I had worn myself 

 out on, trying to find the black queens, and get 

 them out. He had liad pretty good success with 

 his own, and proffered to help me. After spending 

 the whole of a hot afternoon in August, without 



finding a single queen, most of his conceit oozed 

 out along with the sweat of his face. Next day he 

 tried one of his own, with the same result, when he 

 thought of fastening a perforated zinc honei'-board 

 into the bottom of a Simplicity story, in such a way 

 as to sit down over the brood frames, leaving no 

 way of egress around it. Into this he lifted all the 

 frames and bees, and also brushing in all bees from 

 brood box and bottom-board; then putting bottom- 

 board and brood-box In place, he took up brood- 

 combs one by one, and brushed all bees back into 

 the Simplicity story, with zinc in bottom, and plac- 

 ing frames in brood-box, again. As soon as all 

 were out he put the cover on the box that had the 

 bees in it, and set it on the brood-chamber. Thus 

 he left them 20 minutes or so; and on taking up the 

 cover he found all the bees had gone down through 

 the honey-board into the brood-chamber, except 

 the queen and a few retainers, among which she 

 was easily seen and caught; but when 1 tried It 



THE BEES didn't GO DOWN 



Of themselves; so instead of the cover I drew over 

 them some mosquito netting and smoked them 

 down. At first I had my doubts, thinking the 

 queen could get through the perforations if she 

 would try seriously; but after watching a not very 

 large queen try for several minutes, I concluded it 

 would be a very small one that did. Of course, the 

 queen might fly up into the air, as many of the 

 bees do, and escape the trap; but so far they never 

 have. 

 second: a simplicity body filled with chaff. 



Instead of chaff cushions I cut a piece of burlap, 

 an inch ami a half larger all round than the outside 

 of Simplicity cover. I then take a lath and cut two 

 pieces, one inch shorter than inside length of Sim- 

 plicity box, and two of them one inch shorter than 

 the inside width of box. To these strips I tack the 

 edges of the burlap— the long edges to long strips, 

 short ones to short strips. Of course, the edges of 

 burlap are much longer than the strips of lath. 

 The excess is equally divided at the ends. I use a 

 frame of lath over the frames similar to Hill's de- 

 vice. After this is put on, and the top box set in 

 place, I put the burlap, with strips to it, down inside 

 of the top box, turn the strips up edgewise against 

 the sides of the box, and with a single lath-nail in 

 each strip, tack them to the lower edge of top box. 

 The ends of the strips come now almost together, 

 leaving just room for the corners of the burlap to 

 gather between the ends of the lath, and leaving 

 the cloth loose enough to drop down over my Hill 

 device, and be pressed down on the frames and 

 cushions at ends and sides. I then fill the upper 

 box with chaft', pressed down. The bees can be 

 gotten at any time by lifting the top box. 1 think 

 it is cheaper and more convenient than cushions. 

 In the spring, chaff can be thrown out, nails drawn 

 out of lath, and the whole piled up like empty 

 grain-sacks, occupying little space. 

 impohtance of constant attention to the 

 bees. 



Of course, I have given a good de^l of time to 

 the bees— much more than would be necessary to 

 an experienced apiarist. My wife complained that 

 I did not give the bees any time to gather honey 

 last year. In deference to her view I stayed away 

 from them for three weeks, during harvest. At 

 the end of that time, when I brought in a box of 

 moths to burn, her opinion modified somewhat. 

 This year the weaker colonies had my assistance to 



