1901 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



399 



red-clover honey that was good ? Some years 

 my bees gather quite a lot from the second- 

 crop bloom when the weather is dry and the 

 bloom stunted. I have also eaten red clover 

 honey in Missouri, and it all tastes alike to 

 me — like bumble-bee honey. Am I right, or 

 is it owing to locality ? M. F. TaTman. 



Rossville, Kan. 



[Yes, I have tasted what was said to be 

 simon-pure red-clover honey. While the fla- 

 vor is not quite up to that of white clover, 

 yet I would call it good honey. If I could, 

 by long-tongued bees, increase my honey- 

 crop by 25 or 50 per cent of such honey, I 

 should consider I was adding a big percent- 

 age to my income. Buckwheat honey has a 

 large demand in the East, and I am sure red- 

 clover honey would outrank buckwheat sev- 

 eral times over. — Ed.] 



HATCHING CHICKENS OVER COI.ONIES OF 

 BEES. 



I take the liberty to send you something 

 new in the bee and poultry line. Please tell 

 me what you think of this. What style of 

 hive do you think is used ? I have no bees — 

 have always been afraid of them, but think I 

 should like them if I could use them for 

 hatching chickens. JESSIE Neill. 



Benzonia, Mich., Mar. 8. 



John McDonald, three miles south of Mahalasville, 

 has on his preftiises 12 stands of bees. The tops of 

 the bee-hives are so constructed that they receive the 

 proper amount of heat for incubators. These tops are 

 filled with eggs, and all that is to be done is to see that 

 the eggs are turned in order to have a fine brood of 

 chicks. He experimented last season with good suc- 

 cess, and this year has his hives made about two feet 

 square, so that more eggs can be accommodated, and 

 is going into the business on a large scale. It is 

 claimed, and has been satisfactorily demonstrated by 

 Mr. McDonald, that bees furnish exactly the required 

 amount of heat for the hatching of the eggs. 



[I have heard of this being done, and see 

 no reason why it could not be done success- 

 fully, as the temperature over a powerful col- 

 ony of bees is about the same as that under 

 an old hen. But Mr. McDonald and every- 

 body else will find out the bees can not main- 

 tain heat enough to keep their own brood 

 thriving, and hatch hen's eggs at the same 

 time. What is gained in chickens will be 

 lost in young bees or something near it. 



RESUI.T OF WINTERING BEES IN A CAVE 

 BLASTED FROM SOLID ROCK. 



You wished me to report how my bees win- 

 tered in the new cellar blasted out of the 

 solid rock. I put in 32 colonies Nov. 20 ; 

 took out 32 April 1, all strong. In the Port- 

 age apiary we put in 153 ; took out 149. In 

 the Mauston apiary we put in 152 ; took out 

 146. C. H. PIERCE. 



Kilbourn, Wis., April 8. 



In paragraph beginning on page 225 I aimed 

 to make it clear that the queen is left in the 

 lower story and the extra brood is left to hatch 

 in the third story and upward. The brood 

 being left to stimulate the bees to greater act- 

 ivity is a help, in my judgment. 



Grayson, Cal. W. A. H. GilsTrap. 



W.J. S., Okla. — I should be inclined to 

 believe that a distillery in the immediate 

 neighborhood of the bees might be somewhat 

 prejudicial to the business of bee-keeping. 

 We once lost a large number of our colonies 

 because the bees helped themselves liberally 

 to the juices of the apples at a cider-mill. If 

 the liquor that they get is alcoholic, then the 

 effect on the bees is certainly injurious ; but 

 whether they would come to like it or not, I 

 could not say. 



E. IV. L., A/ass.— This question of how 

 much freezing bees can stand is a hard one 

 for even veterans in the business to answer. 

 We only know this : That, the less exposure 

 and the nearer the temperature is kept down 

 to 50 deg. during the winter, the less the con- 

 sumption of stores. The lower the tempera- 

 ture and the greater variation in temperature, 

 the greater the loss in stores and loss in bees. 

 If the temperature is too great, and the cold 

 weather is long-continued, and below zero, the 

 bees will succumb. 



HOW THE TONGUES OF BEES ARE MEASURED 

 AT MEDINA. 



//. E. //., Fla. — All that is required to 

 measure bees' tongues is a steel rule with hun- 

 dredths of an inch marked off on one side ; a 

 glass magnifying five or ten diameters ; a pair 

 of tweezers and a darning-needle, and a dime's 

 worth of chloroform. Put up about a dozen 

 bees of mature age in a common mailing-cage. 

 Avoid taking young ones, as the tongues of 

 such are not quite as long as those that are 

 able to go to the fields. Pour a few drops of 

 chloroform on a handkerchief and lay this 

 over the bees. In about a minute the bees 

 will be sufficiently stupefied so they can be 

 handled, and the tongues will, from suffoca- 

 tion, be protruded almost their whole length. 

 Pick up a bee and decapitate it. Lay the head 

 and tongue on the steel rule just above the 

 graduations of hundredths, face upward. 

 With one hand exert a gentle pressure on the 

 head of the bee, and, with the other, comb 

 the tongue out straight, using needles or tweez- 

 ers in either case. The pressure on the face 

 is to cause the tongue to protrude its full 

 length. Now, while the tongue is carefully 

 combed out, take the glass, focus it on the 

 tongue, and count off the hundreths, begin- 

 ning from the ends of the mandibles or jaws, 

 and ending with the end of the tongue. Pro- 

 ceed thus with all the bees in the cage, put- 

 ting down on paper the exact results after each 

 measurement. Strike a general average, and 

 this average gives the measurement by which 

 we go. As a rule I find there is but very little 

 variation -in the tongue-reach of the bees in 

 any one colony. Sometimes they are all alike; 

 but in the case of some individual bees it is 

 more difficult to get the tongue combed out 

 its full length. 



