588 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



July 



server of the facts in the case, and a practical fruit- 

 grower for the last 35 years, and with several colo- 

 nies of bees quite a portion of the time, I am pre- 

 pared to say that those experiments are not conclu- 

 sive. Bees have striking peculiarities, and in none 

 are they more peculiar than in their tastes. They 

 attack certain varieties of peaches with great avidi- 

 ty, working through the skin and eating into the 

 flesh even before the fruit is thoroughly ripe, while 

 other varieties, to our taste sweeter and riper, are 

 left untouched. Hale's Early is always a favorite 

 with them, without reference to the supply of oth- 

 er food. Grapes they do not attack, except under 

 certain conditions. These conditions apparently 

 are that the fruit must be very ripe, the weather 

 dry and warm, and other food scarce. They have 

 sometimes destroyed, or rendered unfit for market, 

 tons of grapes in our vineyards in a single day, 

 puncturing the skin so that .juice would ooze from 

 several grapes in almost every cluster. 

 Lake County, Ohio. H.G.Thyon. 



Friend A., I am glad you have called our 

 attention to this matter. Mr. Tryon is not 

 only one of the foremost horticulturists in 

 the State of Ohio, hut he is most excellent 

 authority on any such subject. Perhaps 

 after he reads over what I said some years 

 ago about bees working on the peaches he 

 may change his views a little. I quite agree 

 with him in saying that Prof. McLain's ex- 

 periments, to see if bees would eat fruit, 

 amount to just nothing at all, and I was 

 well aware of it at the time. Bees will not 

 exercise their powers of pulling things to 

 pieces when shut up in a wire-cloth house ; 

 and they may not exercise these powers, 

 either, in the open air. If the experiment 

 were made with all possible care, perhaps it 

 would fail a hundred times ; but for all that, 

 I am satisfied there are times when bees de- 

 stroy enough grapes to be quite a nuisance 

 in a vineyard. I am aware, however, that 

 they are blamed hundreds of times for what 

 they never did at all. Perhaps friend Try- 

 on is not aware that the bee-keepers and 

 horticulturists of Michigan met in a joint 

 convention some years ago, to talk over this 

 matter. A great many grape-growers are 

 bee-keepers also. Quite a number of them 

 were present at this convention ; but not 

 one of them that I know of ever discarded 

 bees because the bees troubled his grapes. 

 Where both the grapes and the bees were 

 his own property, he managed with very lit- 

 tle difficulty so as to have no interference to 

 amount to any thing. 



MINERAL WAX; WILL IT COMPETE WITH THE AR- 

 TICLE FROM THE HIVE? 



I inclose a newspaper clipping, cut from the 

 Southern Mercury, published at Dallas, Texas, con- 

 cerning a mineral wax. Can you tell us something 

 about it? W. A. Cartmell. 



Crowley, Texas, June 24, 1889. 



A curious illustration of the treasures of the soil, 

 often overlooked for a long time, is the discovery of 

 mineral wax in Utah. It was discovered three 

 years ago on the line of the Denver & Kio Grande 

 Railroad, covering an area of 150 acres. Over 1000 

 tons a year are secured. It looks like the wax that 

 is made by bees, and can be used for the same pur- 

 poses. It is mixed with parafflne in making can- 

 dles, and is used in the insulation of electric wires. 

 It needs no refining for ordinary uses. The discov- 

 ery is a hint to our land owners, that their farms 

 often contain riches that are overlooked. The 

 Pennsylvania farmers worked the oil-fields for gen- 

 erations without a dream of the wealth under foot. 



I heard about the mineral wax when I 

 was in California, and 1 believe that some 

 samples were shown me ; but I can not now 



tell just where or under what circumstanc- 

 es. I think, however, some of the bee-men 

 assured me that it would not answer for 

 foundation. Will some of our friends in 

 Texas, California, or Utah, give us more 

 light on the subject ? 



CANNING CORN. 



Some time since, I noticed a short article on can- 

 ning corn. It said it is almost impossible to keep it 

 from spoiling, and also expensive— too expensive 

 for common practice. I will take the liberty of 

 sending you a recipe for canning corn, that I have 

 used with perfect success for five years, canning 

 from 10 to 40 qts. each year. 



Take the corn when it contains the most milk; 

 cut carefully, so as not to get any of the cob, and 

 can as soon after pulling as possible. To every 6 

 qts. of cut corn take one ounce of tartaric acid; do 

 not can more than two quarts at a time, using acid 

 in proportion. Your success is sure if you boil but 2 

 qts. or 3 pts. or 1 qt. in a vessel at a time. Have 

 your right proportion of acid dissolved, and add it to 

 the corn when the corn begins to boil. Boil the 

 corn till done, using just water enough to cook the 

 corn; do not have any juice left over when you put 

 it in your can; close quickly. I cover the can with 

 a little patch of muslin before placing on the cover. 

 I prefer tin cans, and I do not have the sealingwax 

 too brittle. 



HOW TO PREPARE CANNED CORN FOR THE TABLE. 



Remove the cover, drain off what little juice 

 there maybe, into a teacup, and save: pour the 

 corn into a vessel; add sugar, salt, butter, pepper, 

 and reserve the cream till you lift it for the table. 

 Have dissolved in a cup a teaspoonful of soda. Add 

 some of it, and let the corn cook slowly. Taste a 

 kernel occasionally; as long as it is sour, add more 

 of the soda water; boil the corn a good while. In 

 case you should get too much soda into the corn, 

 add some of the water you had poured off at first 

 and saved; that is all the reserved juice is good for. 



Mrs. J. A. Lowe. 



Hutchinson, Kan., June 28, 1889. 



Very likely your plan will work, my 

 friend ; but is there not a good deal of fuss 

 and bother about it, especially if one wanted 

 to put up considerable? Our corn and to- 

 matoes canned together, as described a year 

 ago, have kept perfectly. The only difficulty 

 we meet is, that the tomatoes are cooked tit 

 for the table a good deal before the corn ; 

 therefore the corn must be separated from 

 the tomatoes and cooked by itself, to have it 

 real nice. 



THE GOLDEN BEE-HIVE, AND BY WHOM PATENTED. 



I see in Gleanings you are getling after the 

 Golden bee-hive men. They threatened to prose- 

 cute me last season for infringements on the Gold- 

 en hive, but I told the persons who told me, I had 

 books to show the model of my hive. Mr. Henry 

 Weaks, Dover, Tenn., has the couuty right for this 

 county, and Mr. John Parker, same address, sells 

 them for him. They sold to several neighboring 

 bee-keepers. I have made some of the Golden 

 hives, and have transferred and divided some for 

 my bee-keeping neighbors. They furnished one of 

 A. I. Root's cold-blast smokers and a little pamphlet 

 with the hive. The book doesn't say any thing 

 about the Golden hive, I think, but it is a treatise 

 on bees. I have never read the book. The patent 



