1889 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



i65 



took along quite a number of letters, and 

 fully intended to take both of yours. After 

 I started I did remember your kind invita- 

 tion, and my promise to call on you ; but 

 I knew so little of the names of the places 

 that I could not remember.very much about 

 it. When I stated the matter to friend Wil- 

 kin he said you would doubtless all be at 

 the bee-keepers' picnic he had planned, and 

 that he sent invitations through the bee- 

 men in the vicinity. Well, you were not at 

 the picnic, and 1 had made arrangements so 

 that my allotted time was up and more too ; 

 and before I knew it the time had gone by. 

 Mr. J. S. Harbison did tell me, the night 

 before I left San Diego, that I could not 

 very well go without seeing Mr. Osburn ; 

 but arrangements were then made so that it 

 was next to impossible ; and friend Wilkin 

 did tell me that I surely ought to visit Santa 

 Barbara before I went home. Please for- 

 give your old friend for his awkwardness 

 this time, especially when he tells you that 

 he is now planning" another and longer visit, 

 and this time Mrs. Root is going. She is 

 pretty sure she can not follow over all the 

 mountains, but possibly we can leave her to 

 visit with some of the women-folks while 

 we do the climbing. Won't this do, friends 

 G. and O.? Please don't feel mad any more. 



CELLAR -WINTERING. 



LOSING BEES IN LOCATING ON NEW STANDS. 



fHERE is one thing that has always been a 

 wonder to me in my experience in keeping 

 bees; that is, how they are carried around 

 and piled up in cellars, like so many potato- 

 barrels; carried out again some warm day 

 for a fly, then packed back again in the evening 

 and ricked up, and not one word about losing bees 

 in all the years I have been reading bee-papers. 

 My experience since I have been in the business is, 

 that if I pick a hive up and carry it to a new loca- 

 tion—no difference if it is from 4 ft. to 300, quanti- 

 ties of bees will go back and cluster around in lit, 

 tie bunches, apparently lost entirely. Night com- 

 ing on, I have often, out of pure sorrow for the lit- 

 tle fellows, put back the hive in its place, to see 

 them apparently made happy. Now, is that un- 

 necessary sympathy in me? This may be very un- 

 mportant, as there seems to be so little said on this 

 point; but I tell you, it is something to me. I have 

 invariably, in moving my hives, had to move them 

 little at a time, and tole them, as it were, till I got 

 them where I wanted them. Is that unnecessary? 

 I used to think instinct taught them to follow their 

 queen; but I've learned better. 



Now, the case in point is just this: I had two 

 hives set off by themselves (for convenience and 

 room), say about 3 rods. I moved them back to the 

 main apiary in November, to pack for winter. 

 They had not had a fly for about five weeks, which 

 proved to be rather chilly in the evening. I was 

 not at home; but when I came, my wife asked me 

 what the matter was with my bees— they had been 

 swarming around that new place till dark, and 

 great piles of them were clustering on the fence 

 and shed. The night w»s cold and windy, with 

 some rain. I looked after them as soon as I could 

 see, to find what hadn't blown away of them ; but 



bunches and piles were huddled together dead, on 

 posts, fence, roof, and everywhere. Njw, am I to 

 expect such losses, and let those that hadn't sense 

 enough to go home out of the rain take the conse- 

 quences of their own folly, and think nothing about 

 it? or am I to blame myself for part of it? 



If this is not important enough to notice in 

 Gleanings, a word from you will suffice; but I 

 want light on the above subject. 



By the way, friend Root, I am an old Californian, 

 having crossed the Great American Plains in 1852. 

 I should really like to have a good talk with you 

 about experiences; but I am rather surprised at a 

 man of your cloth, at this late day, lying out in 

 barns and sheds at night with strangers, even 

 sleeping with them— deaf ones at that. I have 

 been put to the necessity of slipping off by myself 

 to the mountains, and building me a Are to keep 

 off grizzlies, to put in a night when 1 couldn't do 

 better; but I wouldn't have trusted any strange 

 man, for fear he would have killed me for my 

 boots. At some future time I should like to com- 

 pare notes with you, if you like. Let me hear from 

 you. S. Daniels. 



Pine Grove, O., Feb. 7, 1889. 



Friend D., if you will turn to page 81 of 

 our issue for Feb. 1 you will see that our ex- 

 perience is just about like yours. I do not 

 believe in moving bees, any more than you 

 do, and that is one reason why I made the 

 chaff hive to be a permanent home for each 

 colony. When I want to move a colony, 

 one that is in a chaff hive, I take as many 

 combs and bees as I want, and start a 

 nucleus in that chaff hive with the bees 

 that returned to their homes — that is, 

 where I want to move bees short distances. 

 — You must have forgotten that I said the 

 man I stayed with in the barn got out his 

 old well-thumbed family Bible, and read a 

 chapter before we went to bed. You see, 

 that made us not only well acquainted, but 

 brothers, and so I was not " away off among 

 strangers " at all. 



THE NAMELESS BEE-DISEASE. 



A MALADY WHICH IS WORKING HAVOC IN A CALI- 

 FORNIA APIARY. 



fRIEND ROOT:— I am somewhat in the frame 

 of mind the man in the ABC was whose 

 hopes were blasted, and thinks of emigrating. 

 Some of our bee-men here wish me to state 

 the case, as they are somewhat anxious. 

 Last September I began to notice that my bees 

 were dying, a whole swarm going at once, seeming- 

 ly. It was toward the last of my run of honey, and 

 pretty hot weather. In the course of a month, 10 or 

 12 swarms had gone, some of which were full of hon- 

 ey at the last extracting. In December some 50 more 

 died, and at this writing another hundred is added 

 to the list of dead. The brood-combs, as a general 

 thing, are left clean of brood, with the exception of 

 some dead at the advanced stage of growth, where 

 the bees had begun to gnaw out, or have the head 

 out. The mature bees seem to have what you 

 term dysentery, voiding the yellow excrement. 

 The abdomen is distended, and sometimes filled 

 with white or almost transparent fluid. The bees 

 fall in a pile at the bottom of the hive; in fact, 

 your description fills the bill, except as to the con- 



