1889 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



169 



and I started out on tours around the coun- 

 ty, to buy up bees. Having selected the 

 bees and having completed arrangements 

 as to prices, etc., Mr. Spafford and our 

 teamster. Mr. Ward, were to go out, gather 

 them up, and locate them in the basswood 

 apiary. By another fortunate accident, our 

 market- wagon, although constructed spe- 

 cially for cai'rying vegetables, I found was 

 made just right to take a lot of the new 

 Dovetailed hives. If the wagon had been 

 built expressly for moving bees it could 

 scarcely be improved. The first time, in 

 one load, our boys brought with it 2y colo- 

 nies from a distance of 11 miles; with no 

 very great crowding, it could be made to 

 take 40. With only two loads we could es- 

 tablish an out-apiary, and the expense of 

 hauling would, of course, be reduced corre- 

 spondingly. Perhaps in the next issue I can 

 give you a photographic view of our next 

 load of bees, with the Dovetailed hives, on 

 their way to the basswoods. 



BASSWOOD APIARY. 



Seventeen years ago our basswood or- 

 chard was set out on a piece of ground con- 

 taining ten acres. I remember very dis- 

 tinctly helping to mark the rows, riding 

 horseback while a stout, sturdy German 

 held the cultivator. For my services I was 

 rewarded 2-5 cents a day. As the ' k 2o cents 1 ' 

 began to heap up, I remember with what 

 pleasure I thought I should get money, not 

 to buy bees with, but to buy a gun. Little 

 did I then appreciate the scheme of a bass- 

 wood orchard which now looks so inviting 

 to an apiarist. The trees have not grown 

 as rapidly nor as thriftily as some of the 

 trees that have been set out around the 

 Home of the Honey-bees later ; but it is a 

 very pretty sight, I assure you, to look up 

 the long rows of basswood-trees. I will try 

 to give you a view later. 



THE DOVETAILED HIVE. 



As previously stated, we have nothing but 

 the Dovetailed hive in use in the basswood 

 orchard. The more I use them, the more I 

 like them; and as I see the great piles of 

 them in the flat moving off by freight, every 

 day, it makes me feel glad to think how 

 pleased the customers will be when they re- 

 ceive them. Our apiarist, Mr. Spafford, is 

 equally pleased with them, both for moving 

 bees and for general manipulation. 



HONEY (JUEEN.* 



In the basswood orchard, many of the col- 

 onies have had to be fed, to prevent curtail- 

 ing of brood-rearing and starvation. While 

 almost all of the other colonies are working 

 from hand to mouth, one colony in particu- 

 lar required no feeding, but had secured so 

 much honey that all the brood-combs in the 

 brood-nest were bulged with honey that 

 was evidently gathered recently. Besides 

 all this, said colony was building little white 

 burr combs over the tops of the frames. An 

 examination of the brood-nest showed that 

 swarming-cells were being built out. The 

 stock was average in strength, and the bees 

 were purely marked Italians. The queen 

 herself is large and yellow. After I had ex- 

 amined the hive I came to the conclusion 

 that that queen should not be sold — no, not 



for any price, just now. If her bees pan out 

 as well as they have been doing, we shall of- 

 fer her queens for sale, and call them " hon- 

 ey " queens. You will please understand 

 that we have no daughters of this queen for 

 sale yet. We first want to determine wheth- 

 er her bees will do as well proportionately 

 on clover, and finally on basswood. 



Gleanings in Bee Culture, 



Published Semi- Monthly. 



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 EDITOR AND PUBLISHER, 



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Let all things be done decently and in order. — .1 Cor. M : 40. 



PATENTS ON BEEHIVES. 



We extract the following from Langstroth's book, 

 newly revised by Dadant: 



In closing this chapter on hives, we can not refrain from ad 

 vising beginners in bee culture to be very cautious about buy- 

 ing [latent hives. More than 800 patents on bee-hives and 

 implements have been issued in the United States since .Ian 

 uary, 1873. Not ten of these have proved to lie of any use t" 

 bee-keepers. The mention of this fact will suffice to show the 

 small value of these 790 patents, and the loss incurred by those 

 who have bought them before they were able to judge of 

 their merits. 



It seems to me that the above is a clincher; but I 

 do nor. know where the ten are. There may be, 

 however, 10 out of the 800 that some bee-keepers 

 think are better than hives that are not patented. 



MAKING IMPROVEMENTS. 



We are constantly receiving devices, purporting 

 to be some improvement upon implements already 

 in use. Scarcely one of them is practicable. The 

 majority of them are so expensive that no bee- 

 keeper who looks to his bees for support can possi- 

 bly afford to use them. In making improvements, 

 we should ask ourselves, " Will the small profits at 

 which honey is now sold warrant the cost and 

 the introduction of the device?" Devices and im- 

 plements for hives those that are to be used in any 

 quantity in the apiary, should be inexpensive— as a 

 general rule, the simpler the better. Expensive 

 hives and expensive devices will never reach a very 

 popular demand. If honey could be sold at 75 cents 

 or a dollar a pound, perhaps we might afford some 

 of the alleged improvements. 



THE BLACK SHINY ROUBER-BEES— SEE PAGE 45b. 



Prof. Cook takes it for granted that these bees 

 are a kind cf wild bee. Now, perhaps he is right in 

 regard to those described by friend Callings; but I 

 have noticed that some seasons, when robbing gets 

 to be a fashion in an apiary or several apiaries, a 

 good many bees seem to abandon honey-gathering 

 entirely, and devote their whole time and attention 

 and abilities to stealing. These bees, by their un- 

 natural habits, lose their downy fur, and get slim 

 anil frreasy looking, so that many people have sug- 

 gested to me that they were not honey-bees at all. 

 I have proved, however, that they were veritable 

 honey-bees; for when basswood and clover began 



