1889 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



161 



more propolis on them; and after years of careful 

 watching- 1 fail to see any difference as to which 

 will grow watery, or sweat the quickest; and I know 

 that I can get one-third more honey from a hive 

 having comb supplied them than 1 can from one 

 which has only foundation. All will sweat if the 

 honey-room is damp and of a low temperature, 

 while all will be growing better if the room is kept 

 right. Reader, while the above is not well written 

 there is more truth than poetry in it. 



G. M. Doolittle. 

 Borodino, N. Y.,Feb. 18, 1889. 



Friend D., it is very certain that bees do, 

 during the night time, get rid of a very 

 large amount of water contained in the nec- 

 tar as it is brought in from the flowers. 

 When the hive is large, and the colony very 

 populous, with the cracks and joints all 

 closed, so there is no ventilation except at 

 the entrance, I have seen a pool of water 

 collect around the entrance on the alight- 

 ing-board, sufficient for the bees to fall into 

 when they started out in the morning. 

 This occurs especially after a cool night, so 

 that the alighting-brard becomes so cold as 

 to condense the moisture from the warm 

 air that is blown out of the hive by the 

 ventilating process. Now, although it may 

 be true that the bees do evaporate a large 

 amount of water from their nectar by the 

 process you mention, I can not think it is 

 all done in that way, because the sheets of 

 new honey, nearly ready to cap, oftentimes 

 look like the surface of a liquid, only the 

 contents of each cell present a convex 

 shape, so as to look like a lot of beads laid 

 in a tray. Arranging the honey in this way 

 offers such a facility for rapid evaporation 

 that I can- not but think that this is a part 

 of the process, and I can not see how they 

 can operate in the same way where the cells 

 are too deep. In old box hives we some- 

 times find cells two inches deep or more. I 

 think it is pretty certain that such combs 

 are not profitable; for if, during a great 

 flow of honey, comb of two inches should be 

 filled with raw nectar, what an amount of 

 labor it would be to evaporate it, no matter 

 which way the bees did it, compared with 

 sheets of ordinary worker comb ! The old 

 honey you speak of, found in old box hives, 

 I have always supposed owed this fine quali- 

 ty to its age, while the honey in new combs 

 or shallow combs is almost always of the 

 previous season's storing. Had you attend- 

 ed the conventions where this matter of 

 partly filled sections was discussed, friend 

 D., I hardly think you would be so severe 

 on those who have had an experience differ- 

 ent from your own. Old veterans, who sell 

 honey by the ton, even such men as friend 

 Elwood, said, if I am correct, they were 

 obliged to call all honey second grade that 

 was made from sections partly filled out the 

 year previous. Of course, a good deal de- 

 pends on how much difference between first 

 and second grade in price. Now, I think 

 the best way to get at the truth of this mat- 

 ter, especially as it is one in which doctors 

 disagree, is to get as many testimonies as 

 we can in the shape of reports from those 

 who have experimented carefully. There 

 are several reports in this issue. I am sor- 

 ry to say that a good many of them have not 



tried both ways, and at the same time been 

 careful to use a few partly filled sections in 

 every hive by way of a decoy, to induce 

 the bees, especially Italians, to go above 

 and store promptly. See the report of C. B. 

 Jackson, in this issue. 



W. Z. HUTCHINSON 



AS AN EARLY GLEANINGS CONTRIBUTOR. 



JN Gleanings for Dec. 15, among other 

 biographical sketches was that of the 

 subject as above. The portrait was a 

 wood - engraving. Since that time, 

 friend Hutchinson has had one of those 

 Ives reproductions made from a recent pho- 

 tograph, for his own paper. As this is much 

 superior to the wood-engraving found in our 

 biographical sketches, we take pleasure in 

 reproducing it here. 



Friend Hutchinson began to write for 

 Gleanings a few years after it started, and 

 as he grew up, so to speak, with this journal, 

 we feel more than an ordinary interest in 

 him, and a few additional facts concerning 

 his career as a writer on apicultural sub- 

 jects will perhaps be of interest. The first 

 item from our friend which appeared in 

 Gleanings print will be found oh page 247 

 of the volume for 1877. This was only a 

 short note expressing his pleasure over an 

 extractor we sent him. The next we see of 

 him in print— at leaBt in the pages of 

 Gleanings— is in our issue for Jan. 1st, 

 1878. At this time he began a series of arti- 

 cles full of his " experiences." These were 



