528 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Jl'l.Y 



1 need not say that such a stopper is Dot suitable 



forall hives. For hives with loose bottom-boards, 

 there might be special bottom-boards made, to be 

 used only in carrying, in which should be a liberal 

 allowance of wire cloth. C. C. Miller. 



Marengo, 111. 



Friend M.,a good many of us have had 

 experience with bees so nearly smothered 

 that they crawled out of the hive and off 

 through the dirt, in every direction. Now, 

 if they are allowed to go off through the 

 dirt it is a dead loss, for they are dead bees. 

 But there is a way of saving them. I have 

 given it with full particulars in our little 

 book, "Mr. Merrybanks and his Neighbor." 

 I have saved bees so nearly suffocated they 

 were wet and daubed with honey, a great 

 many times, in the same way. Our boys 

 once put up some nuclei during very hot 

 weather. The combs were heavy with hon- 

 ey, and the bees were gorged. Bees from 

 the apiary soon began hanging around the 

 wire cloth, and making a bother; and to 

 keep them away, somebody set them inside 

 of a chaff hive and laid a cover on, flunking 

 that the ventilating holes in the cover would 

 give them air enough. Not so. When I 

 found them they were almost too hot to 

 touch, and dripping with honey, having that 

 black sticky appearance. I took a nucleus 

 under each arm and rushed to the apiary, 

 and found two queenless colonies in chaff 

 hives. I raised the cover and set a nucleus 

 inside of each one. As soon as I pried off 

 the wire cloth, the bees boiled out all over 

 the sides of the hives, too wet to take wing ; 

 but before they could get outside of the 

 chaff hive the cover was put on. Of course, 

 the brood-combs to the chaff hives were un- 

 covered. Now the sticky bees could not get 

 to the open air without crawling through 

 a good populous colony, and I expected that 

 this good populous colony would lick them 

 clean and reconcile them to staying indoors 

 before they had a chance to find an entrance. 

 It turned but exactly as I expected. Every 

 bee, including the queen, had his face wash- 

 ed and hair combed, and looked quite re- 

 spectable by next morning ; but they had a 

 black, shiny look that they never got entire- 

 ly rid of. None crawled out of the entrance 

 to go off and die, that I could discover, at 

 all. After you have got a good quantity of 

 bees, of course it will take a good strong 

 healthy colony to slick them all up. During 

 hot weather we place a sheet of wire cloth 

 over both top and bottom, and have the bot- 

 tom so arranged that it can not be set on the 

 floor so as to cut off ventilation. With plen- 

 ty of air, the hottest weather does no harm. 



WHAT CAUSES SWARMING? 



FRIEND DOOLITTLE TAKES SOME EXCEPTIONS TO 



DR. MILLER'S INTERPRETATION OE FRIEND 



HASTY. 



TT was with no little interest that I read the arti- 

 M cle by Dr. Miller, found on pages 441 and 445 of 

 ]Il Gleanings, in which he tries to interpret what 

 ■*" friend Hasty says about what causes swarm- 

 ing, in a most singular way, which interpreta- 

 tion is fallen in %vith by the editor, to a certain ex- 

 teat at least. Apropos of this 1 flqd an article ia 



the June Guide, written by the editor, in which he 

 says, " If from any cause the food secreted by the 

 nurse-bees is more than ia required to feed the 

 larvae and queen, it is stored in abundance in cer- 

 tain cells which become queen-cells, and hatch 

 queens. The capping of the queen-cells, or closing 

 the doors to these storehouses for the food secret- 

 ed by the nurse-bees, causes a commotion in the 

 hive which results in swarming." Dr. Miller con- 

 fesses that he " had never thought of just that rea- 

 son" before, and lor this reason he is excusable for 

 being " taken in " so easily. Let us see what there 

 is against accepting such a theory as that inter- 

 pretation of Bro. Hasty's words by the doctor, and 

 that brought out by friend Hill, in the Guitir. In 

 the first place, "these storehouses" (queen-cups) 

 are built weeks before any food is placed in them, 

 and long before the hive is tilled with brood, and 

 also when the unsealed brood largely predominates 

 over that which is sealed, this showing that prep- 

 aration for swarming is commenced long before 

 the nurse-bees think of having more chyme in their 

 stomachs than they have use for; showing, also, 

 that preparations are being made to " multiply and 

 replenish the earth " nearly as soon as the assur- 

 ance of something for the sustenance of a new 

 colony is warranted by the blooming of the first 

 flowers. Now let us watch these embryo queen- 

 cells and see what becomes of them. When the 

 colony gets a little stronger, and are yet spreading 

 their brood far more rapidly than at any other time 

 in the season, so there is no cramping of the unseal- 

 ed brood as yet, for the same has not yet reached 

 the outside of the brood-nest, we find the queen 

 placing eggs in these "storehouses," yet so far 

 there has not been a particle of food stored in them, 

 nor will there be till these eggs are about to hatch 

 into larvre. At this time the bees begin to feed 

 these larv;r, destined to become queens, the same 

 as they do those iu the worker-cells, gradually in- 

 creasing this food, till at the end of 48 hours they 

 do assume the appearance of being storehouses; 

 yet in this, no one, it seems to me, can see any 

 thing but a plan to perfect the queen larva accord- 

 ing to the laws which govern the bees, if they will 

 look at it iu a reasonable light. 



\gain, according to the old adage that "corn will 

 tassel out at about such an age, even if the stalks 

 are not six inches high," we see weak colonies of 

 bees making preparations, and swarming with 

 these "storehouses " well filled with royal jelly, 

 when the hive is scarcely three-fourths full of 

 brood, half of which is in the unsealed state. I 

 have so repeatedly had these weaker colonies of 

 spring swarm, that I long ago gave up the idea 

 which I used to entertain, that a part of my colo- 

 nies were so weak that they would not swarm. 



Once more: We have had a very peculiar season 

 here in Central New York this year, in which some- 

 thing has happened which I never knew to happen 

 before to so great an extent as it has done this 

 year. Prior to May 20th we had the most splendid 

 spring for bees which T ever saw, and brood rear- 

 ing went on at a lively pace, till, at the date above 

 referred to, all of the stronger colonies had their 

 hives from two-thirds to three fourths full of brood. 

 With the 20th of May came a rainstorm which kept 

 the bees in their hives for nearly a week, at the 

 end of which it became so oold that ice formed in 

 places a quarter of an inch thick. The cold kept on 

 to a greater or less extent, together with rain, rain, 



