212 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Mar. 



and I think yet of that class I had in charge 

 lor a brief half-hour in San Buenaventura. 

 I know I am not mistaken when I say that 

 these boys were well started on the up-grade 

 from earth to heaven. With encouragement 

 and looking-after, I am as sure of the out- 

 come as I should be of a crop of corn with 

 plenty of rain and sunshine, and all that can 

 be asked for in the way of soil and fertilizers. 

 May God bless and strengthen you. Such 

 letters as yours will enourage me to make 

 a more hopeful and brighter and better 

 journal than I could otherwise. 



HOW TO GET BEES OUT OF CRATES 

 OP HONEY-BOXES, ETC. 



ALSO A SUGGESTION IN REGARD TO KEEPING THE 

 MOTH-WORM FROM EMPTY COMBS. 



' Y bees do not seem to like those queen-ex- 

 cluding honey-boards (?). T hived three 

 swarms in a hive with one in, before I 

 could get one to stay, and then only a hat- 

 ful stayed. I let them alone, thinking 

 they had no queen, and would soon die; but when I 

 looked at them a week later they were carrying in 

 pollen. The whole lower part of the hive was filled 

 with empty combs; on top of them I placed the 

 queen-excluder, then another Simplicity body half 

 tilled with new white drone comb; on this a crate 

 with partly filled sections from last year. When I 

 went to prepare them for winter I found the crate 

 empty— the top Simplicity body half filled with 

 what looked like nice white honey— and bees— the 

 lower body containing neither bees nor honey. I 

 thought I could not bother to keep them over win- 

 ter, but would take the white honey from them and 

 let the bees go out at the screen-door along with 

 the other bees. So I had them carried in with the 

 rest, and set on the floor among them. Next day I 

 looked to see if any of the crates were empty of 

 bees, so that tbey might be carried upstairs, and I 

 found that all the crates and hive-bodies were en- 

 tirely empty— not a bee in them, and not many 

 bees were clustered on the screen, as there used to 

 be on such occasions, with the exception of that 

 hive-body that had that white-looking honey in. I 

 lifted up the frames and found that, after about 

 three inches of drone comb filled with honey, there 

 was worker comb with a few cells of unhatched 

 brood. All the bees in those twenty or more dif- 

 ferent boxes had gone in where there was a queen. 

 Now, will bees do this every time? If they will, 

 here is a very easy way to get bees out of sections: 

 Just bring a nucleus with a queen, and put it 

 among the crates, and let all the bees go to her. 

 Perhaps some one has told this before. I do not 

 remember seeing it, and it is perfectly new to me. 



I had the men carry that hive back to its old 

 stand, and fixed it up for winter, like the rest. 

 Last spring, when I found that so many of my bees 

 had died, I knew that I ought to take care of those 

 combs in some way. But I was too sick and weak, 

 and I made up my mind that the moths would have 

 to eat them. Every week I thought I would get 

 Irving to help me smoke them, or get the beeswax 

 out, or something; but there never was an hour 

 when I could have him, nor a day when I could do 

 it alone. This went on till three weeks before 

 swarming time. Then I went one day to look at 

 them, expecting to bo made sick with the sight of 



so many worms; but (would anybody believe it?) 

 not a worm was to be seen. I could scarcely be- 

 lieve my eyes. The combs were molded somewhat 

 where the dead bees still clung to them, but there 

 were no moth webs and no worms. I began taking 

 out the combs, and in every hive I found a colony 

 of little black ants. They were mostly in the out- 

 side combs which contained some drone combs, and 

 the cells were full of white ant-eggs— or larvae— 

 Prof. Cook will please tell me which. I took the 

 empty combs then and placed them over colonies, 

 instead of cooking them up, as I expected to do. 

 Now, then, did those ants keep out the moth? or is 

 all nature going to be kind to me after this, and let 

 my things alone? Mahala B. Chaddock. 



Vermont, 111., Feb. 14, 1889. 



My friend, your invention is not new. 

 The matter has been several times noticed, 

 and I believe, also, several times mentioned 

 in our journals, that, where a queen is by 

 accident or otherwise carried into the honey- 

 house, all the bees from a great stack of sec- 

 tions will find the queen and cluster around 

 her, and sometimes you can make not only 

 a nucleus but a nice little swarm of bees, 

 and such a swarm will work as well as a 

 natural one. Ants or spiders, if allowed ac- 

 cess to empty combs, will keep out the 

 moth-worm. Whether they appropriate the 

 larvse for food, or whether the moth is 

 afraid of them, we are not able to say. 



CAPTAIN HETHERINGTON. 



The Largest Bee-Keeper in the World. 



BY HIS FRIEND P. H. ELWOOD. 



fHB subject of this sketch would have gained 

 distinction in any occupation, for nature has 

 endowed him with indomitable will power, 

 coupled with organizing and executive abili- 

 ties such as would quickly have placed him 

 at the head in any large undertaking. His power 

 of comprehending the whole is no less remarkable 

 than his ability to grasp, at the same time, the 

 minute details of an extensive business. 



John Edwin Hetherington was born January 7, 

 1840, at Cherry Valley, N. Y., where he still resides. 

 He comes of a good ancestry, his father being an 

 educated English gentleman, his mother a member 

 of the old Judd family, of Connecticut. The father 

 dying when the youngest of the three brothers was 

 less than a year old, master John less than three 

 years, the entire care and training of the children 

 fell upon the mother; and the highest tribute we 



CAPTAIN HETHERINGTON'S FIRST LOAD OF BK.ES, 



