GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Feb. 



^W5Eg 



37 BUSHELS OF JAPANESE BUCKWHEAT FROM V 2 

 BUSHEL OF SEED. 



I got one bushel of Japanese buckwheat of you 

 last summer. I let a neighbor have half of it. I 

 sowed the other half on one acre of land, and har- 

 vested 37 bushels of nice buckwheat. I am sure 

 there would have been over 40 bushels if it had 

 been well saved. Other buckwheat didn't yield 

 half as much. I could not tell any difference in 

 bees working on the two Mnds. I sowed on the 26th 

 of June. C J. Evans. 



Jonesboro, Ind. 



43 BUSHELS OF JAPANESE BUCKWHEAT IN TWO 

 YEARS. 



I started with M lb. of Japanese buckwheat, 

 which I got of you two years ago. From the % lb. 

 I harvested 47 lbs. I sowed the 47 lbs. on % of an 

 acre, and it yielded 43 bushels, or about 50 bushels 

 per acre. Perley Langworthy. 



Riceville, Pa., Jan. 9, 1889. 



In addition to the above, and what is said 

 about this buckwheat in the last issue (pp. 

 58 and 63), we would refer you to pages 95 

 and 99 of this issue. 



BEARS AND HONEY. 



setting out fruit-trees ; MOVING bees short 



DISTANCES. 



r HAVE just been reading with much interest 

 |lf A. I. Root's travels in California, and his visits 

 W with the bee-keepers. Oh how I should like 

 just such a trip! But 1 should have to stay 

 long enough to kill some of those bears and 

 other wild animals. The idea of a man letting a 

 bear come to an apiary of 11 colonies and eat them 

 all up, and then letting the old fellow go away in 

 peace is amusing. If it had been my case, I would 

 have made him pay for the bees, if there was mon- 

 ey value enough in his hide and meat and tallow to 

 do it. But if there was no value in the old fellow, 

 why, then I would have killed him to get even with 

 him, and get him out of the way. 



HOW TO SET OUT STRAIGHT ROWS. 



On page 979, Dec. 15, Mr. Root speaks of seeing 

 orange-trees that were set in such perfectly 

 straight rows, and wants to know if some of the 

 readers of Gleanings can tell how to do it. If the 

 ground is not too hilly, or surface too rolling, get 

 out as many small stakes as you propose to set 

 trees. Make the stakes about one inch in size, pref- 

 erably round, and in length about two feet. The 

 next thing to do is to get those stakes stuck in 

 straight rows. You can accomplish it very nearly 

 by markine off the ground with a corn-marker, 

 marking the ground both ways. Stick the stakes in 

 the crossing at every third or fourth crossing, ac- 

 cording to how close you want the trees. With a 

 man to sight through the rows, and another man 

 to move the stakes a trifle one way or the other, if 

 they are not quite right, straighten the rows. It is 

 a great deal easier to move a stake a little than to 

 move a tree a little after it is set. Having straight- 

 ened the rows, set the trees. First we want a set- 

 ting-board, which can be made out of a piece of 

 fencing, 6 inches wide and 8 feet long for small 

 trees. Bore a l'/a-inch hole exactly in the center of 

 the board, both endwise and sidewise; then, say 3 

 inches from each end of the board, bore a l^-inch 

 hole. Saw out a strip crosswise, Wi inches wide, 

 the center of the board, on one side, until it meets 

 the auger-hole. Our board will now have a notch 

 in the center and a hole in each end, like this: 



o 



r\ 



O 



We want two stakes, about a foot long, and small 

 enough to go through the end holes of the board. 



Lay the board on the ground and crowd it up till 

 the stake is in the center notch, snug into the notch 

 in the board. Let the stake be in the notch as far 

 as it will go, then stick your two short stakes into 

 the holes in the end of the board, and down into 

 the ground firmly. Pull up the center stake and 

 take away the board. Dig out the place for the 

 tree to stand in, then put the board back again, 

 so that the two small stakes are in the end holes of 

 the boards as before. Place your tree in the cen- 

 ter notch of the boa^d, and fill in with dirt. Be sure 

 that the tree stands straight When the place is 

 about filled up, the board can be taken away so 

 that a nice job can be made. The tree will, of 

 course, stand in exactly the same place that the 

 stake did. We can now pull up our two small 

 stakes, and go to another stake and set another 

 tree in the same way. 



MOVING BEES SHORT DISTANCES. 



We often read in the bee-papers directions for 

 moving a hive of bees in the apiary, something 

 like this: Move the hive a foot or two a day, until 

 it is in the exact place where it is wanted. Now, 

 friends, I would not do any such thing. Some 

 time when the bees are all in the hive I would just 

 pick it up and put it where I wanted it, and done 

 with it. We move bees more or less every spring, 

 to equalize our yards; in that case we move them 

 four or five miles or so. But last spring we wanted 

 to move about half of one of our out-apiaries, to 

 get them further from the public highway. There 

 were, in quadruple hives, 69 colonies in 4 rows, run- 

 ning east and west. We wanted to move the east 



