432 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



May 15 



mends what is here known as the Dadant hive 

 and system. He translated Mr. Bertrand's 

 " Guide to Apiculture " into Russian. These 

 two men are very close friends. It is to be 

 hoped he can make a visit to this country 

 some time. 



Prof. Cook's talk for the home circle, now 

 running in the Old Reliable, constitutes a 

 most excellent feature of it. They bear large- 

 ly on the proper management of children, and 

 home conduct in general. All who have Mr. 

 York's paper will do well to read these lines of 

 Prof. Cook the first thing, as they fit one for 

 what follows. Best of all, we know that the 

 writer speaks from experience, and in his dai- 

 ly life is an exponent of what he enjoins. 



BEE-KEEPING IN CUBA. 



Some Remarkable Figures; Unoccupied Fields 

 among the Mosquitoes. 



BY H. G. OSBURN. 



You will remember that, a few months ago, 

 I took charge of this wreck of what was once 

 the finest apiary in the world so far as we 

 could find out. Well, the crop is off for this 

 year. What I have done this winter is only a 

 drop in the bucket compared with what can 

 be done in good locations by one who under- 

 stands how to work his bees in this stubborn 

 climate. 



In the five months past I have increased to 

 105 colonies ; raised 95 young laying queens, 

 and taken a crop of 40,500 lbs. of honey on a 

 range that is supporting at present 1200 hives 

 of bees ; or, in other words, within a radius of 

 three miles of this apiary there are over 1200 

 colonies, and we had a cold spring too. But 

 this is 15,000 lbs. short of what it ought to 

 have been ; but I shall try to make up for it 

 next winter, as I expect to take 100,000 lbs. 

 of honey from 1000 colonies in three apiaries. 

 I have already 5000 gallons of honey sold for 

 next year's crop, so the reduced price doesn't 

 worry me much. The cheaper it gets, the 

 more we have got to raise in order to make 

 our ends meet. 



It may interest some of your readers to 

 know what this apiary has produced in its 15 

 years of existence. I myself became anxious 

 to know, the other day, so I began to go over 

 my father's old records, and, after running 

 them all up, and those of smaller bee-keepers 

 who have had charge of this place for a short 

 period from time to time, I find that this one 

 ranch has produced almost a million pounds 

 of honey. The exact figures are about 800,000 

 lbs. I should like to hear from anybody who 

 can show a similar record for 15 successive 

 years. Had I been able to run this ranch dur- 

 ing the war, or the winter of 1898, I should 



have beaten any record the world has ever 

 seen in the honey line. As it was, there was 

 over 50,000 lbs. taken from 200 hives. 



I notice a 69 hive bee-keeper, p. 136, taking 

 some of us old experienced chaps by the neck 

 for not printing a truthful picture of the real 

 state of the bee-industry in Cuba. I do not 

 wish to offend him ; but does the man really 

 know what a bee location for 300 or 500 colo- 

 nies means? Does he know that here the 

 average force of a good working colony is 

 about 10,000 bees, or three million workers, 

 for a 300-hive apiary, or three million drops of 

 honey every half hour, and six million every 

 hour? or from 300 to 600 lbs. every 30 or 60 

 minutes ? Now, from a close observation I 

 have come to the conclusion that 15 blossoms 

 of this bellflower will, as a rule, furnish a bee 

 its load, and some mornings it will not take 

 half this number. Now we see that, in order 

 to furnish our three million workers a load 

 every half-hour we must have 45 million blos- 

 soms at their disposal, or 90 million for one 

 hour's work ; and for 6 hours' work it would 

 take the grand total of 540 million flowers, or 

 blossoms, to furnish our 300-hiv.e apiary six 

 hours' work, representing 3600 lbs. for the six 

 hours' work. These figures do not include 

 the enormous amount of honey consumed by 

 these 300 colonies every 24 hours. These fig- 

 ures are not very far from correct, as nearly as 

 we can make calculations, for in years gone 

 by we have had to extract from 2000 to 2500 

 lbs. every day, six days in the week, to keep 

 up with our 500-hive apiary ; then there was 

 the honey they stored in the brood-chamber 

 and fed to the brood, which, I think, is about 

 a third of what they gather every day. 



Now, if Mr. Luaces knows more about what 

 is required for a large apiary to feed upon I 

 shall feel that my 15 years of practical expe- 

 rience and close observation have not been al- 

 together void of good. I am well aware of the 

 fact that there are hundreds of good locations 

 here yet unclaimed, where 500 and even 1000 

 colonies can't clean up the range ; but, where 

 are they ? I can answer this question myself. 

 They are in the middle and along the south- 

 ern and southwest coast of the island, where 

 nobody but colored people can live, on ac- 

 count of the insects. Then they are almost 

 entirely shut off from communication with 

 any of the large cities. I expect to penetrate 

 some of them next year, and then I can tell 

 the readers of this journal more about the 

 honey resources of Cuba. 

 . Punta Brava, Cuba, Mar. 5. 



[Your figures and estimates in regard to the 

 honey resources of Cuba may be and probably 

 are correct; but you have made a strange mis- 

 take, apparently, in your estimate as to " the 

 average working force of a good colony " as 

 being about 10,000 bees. From other things 

 you say in this connection I judge you consid- 

 er this a large force. If so, you are certainly 

 wrong. If you will turn to page 380 you will 

 see that we must place the number of a good 

 colony at anywhere from 40,000 to 90,000 ; 

 and you have allowed only a little over a tenth 

 of the largest figure ; or, in other words, your 



