1889 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



263 



shingle would have to be fastened down 

 with small nails ; but an ordinary pane of 

 glass has weight enough to keep its place. 

 I think that prevention in case of robbing 

 is much better than cure ; but after they do 

 get to going, the idea is often valuable. It 

 is my opinion that such cases of robbing 

 have more to do with bees being voted a 

 nuisance in a neighborhood than any other 

 one thing. 



JlETiDg 0F Qwilji 



FROM DIFFERENT FIELDS. 



EARLY HATCHING. 



y bees are situated on a western exposure of 

 a hill. March 17th they carried in the first 

 natural pollen that we could see. One col- 

 ony was not carrying pollen. Concluding' 

 that that colony was queenless, I open- 

 ed the hive and found neither brood, larvte, nor 

 eggs. I then searched for the queen, and found a 

 young- one, white as a corpse, certainly not live 

 minutes old. I pushed aside the little cluster of 

 bees where she was, and found two capped queen- 

 cells, and one with its " coffee-pot lid " open where 

 the young' queen had j ust come out. I watched her 

 a few minutes, when she dipped her nose into a cell 

 and started out over the comb. About the queen- 

 cells I found two or three cells of capped brood. 

 Apparently the old queen had just lived until about 

 March 1st, then laid six or seven eggs, and died. As 

 there are no drones flying, and the weather is very 

 bad, I think the chances are against this queen be 

 ing fertilized, and I shall lose the colony, as it is too 

 weak to raise a new queen from eggs in April. At 

 least, I fear it is too weak to raise good queen6. 

 think St. Patrick's Day in the afternoon is rather 

 early for young queens in this latitude. 



Philo S. Dilworth. 

 Bonney, Pa., March 21, 1889. 



SORGHUM MOLASSES TO FEED BEES IN SPRING. 



Please tell me whether sorghum molasses or syr- 

 up is fit to feed bees in the spring. Of course, I 

 know it would be unsafe to give it in the fall for 

 winter supplies, but I thought it might be good in 

 the spring to feed up to stimulate queens, etc. 



Worthington, lad., Feb. 5, 1889. J. A. Minich. 



Sorghum molasses will do for spring feed- 

 ing whenever the bees fly freely ; that is, 

 providing the bees will pay any attention to 

 it. Unless the quality of the sorghum is 

 quite good, and no honey of any sort is to 

 be had in the fields, bees will seldom work 

 on it. During a drouth in the fall, when 

 we are keeping nuclei going for the purpose 

 of raising queens, sorghum molasses will 

 often answer a very good purpose. It is so 

 distasteful to bees that they seldom care 

 enough for it to start robbing, and in this 

 respect it is much better than honey. 



THE NON-REVERSING EXTRACTOR, AND WHAT MR. 

 COWAN SAVS ABOUT IT. 



We take pleasure in making the following 

 extract from a private letter received from 

 our brother-editor, Mr. Thos. Wm. Cowan, 

 of the British Be Journal, relative to the 

 non-reversing extractor mentioned and de- 

 scribed on pages <>S3>nd 773 for 1888 : 



I was interested in your taking up the honey-ex- 

 tractor to extract from both sides at one operation. 

 I have been looking forward to remarks from oth- 

 ers. The diagram of one you have made : s very 

 nearly exactly the same as the one I made and 

 used, and was described in the British Bee Journal. 

 If you like I will send you the extract referring to 

 it. The reason I gave it up at that time was be- 

 cause the combs got damaged unless great care 

 was taken, and it was not safe to put it into the 

 hands of careless people. You know we did not 

 have wired frames, and new combs heavy with hon- 

 ey used to become crushed up toward the top-bar, 

 which was on the outside circle, and toward which 

 the centrifugal force pressed them. With old combs, 

 such a thing would not happen. Otherwise the 

 honey was extracted without any difficulty. This 

 extractor is still in existence, and is in the collec- 

 tion of appliances I presented to the British Bee- 

 Keepers' Association. Thos. Wm. Cowan. 



Boulevard Grancy, Lausanne, Switz., Dec. 22, 18«8. 



ARE BLACKS MORE HARDY THAN ITALIANS? 



Which are the best bees to winter, in your opin- 

 ion? My gray bees are wintering all right. The hives 

 are just full of bees, but the Italians are all dying. 

 A week ago to-day my bees had a good fly, and the 

 Italians would crawl out and get a chill and die. 



Deshler, O., Feb. 23, 1889. T. Oberhitner. 



As a rule, blacks are not more hardy 

 than Italians. The two races of bees, how- 

 ever, are so different in their habits that it 

 is not unfrequent to find one wintering bet- 

 ter than the other. For instance, while the 

 blacks are working on buckwheat, the Ital- 

 ians will often be working on red clover ; 

 and in this case the difference in the kind of 

 stores might make a difference in winter- 

 ing. Italians will also sometimes work on 

 honey-dew while the blacks will not, and I 

 should think likely that that is the trouble 

 in your case. Warm weather, that will 

 enable the Italians to fly, will probably 

 fetch them up all right. 



HOW TO MAKE A START IN BEE-KEEPIN(i. 



I want to get started in the bee-business again, on 

 a very small scale. A number of years ago I 

 bought your ABC and got two hives of bees; but 

 the bees and my bright hopes, one by one, took flight 

 and left me " weeping sad and lonely." There are 

 only black bees around here, and the owners ask 

 $1 .00 per hive for them. But I have not that much 

 to throw away, as my John says. We have all kinds 

 of fruit, large and small, which our neighbors' bees 

 thrive on from the first cherry blossom in May till 

 the last raspberry in August. If I must gather 

 bees by the handful while picking raspberries, I am 

 quite sure that I could do it with greater equanimi- 

 ty if I knew that some of them were my own. Your 

 advice in the A B C is to get two or three pounds of 

 black bees and a fertilized Italian queen. Is that 

 still your advice? If so, I can get the black bees 

 here. Mrs. C. H. Tarbell. 



Bedford, N. H., Mar. 12, L889. 



Yes, my friend, that is still our advice. 

 Almost everybody can get bees of some sort 

 near home ; and all you have to do is to get 

 such a queen as you want, by mail ; and 

 queens are carried by mail safer and quick- 

 er than hives of bees, even by express. 



