1889 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



645 



I discovered, I think, the reason why my 

 bees built no queen-cells while they bad a 

 laying queen in the hive. The doctor com- 

 menced caging his queens just when swarm- 

 ing began. I lis colonies were also crammed 

 with bees and crammed with honey. They 

 were up to swarming pitch, as they have to 

 be to work fairly in boxes. In my experi- 

 ments, both honey and bees were kept out 

 of the way by extracting and selling bees 

 by the pound. 



If no cells are destroy ed until 11 days 

 after the queen was caged, most colonies 

 will, during a honey-llow, start a nice lot of 

 cells, and on the 11th day these can be cut 

 out, or, as often happens, you can pick them 

 open and get live virgin queens to introduce 

 to nuclei. We got half a dozen line queens 

 from one hive where the queen had been 

 caged 11 days before. Dr. Miller keeps some 

 laying queens constantly on hand in nuclei, 

 for emergencies. These nuclei are simple 

 L. hives, with a thin wood division-board 

 in the middle. This division-board is made 

 to stay absolutely tight, by slipping a strip 

 of folded tin on each end and the lower edge. 

 Now, instead of tacking this tin to the di- 

 vision board, it is tacked to the hive, there- 

 fore the board can be slid out or put back, 

 and no bee can ever pass under or around 

 the ends. Along the top edge of this divi- 

 sion-board a quilt, or enamel sheet is tacked, 

 so the loose sides will cover the nuclei. The 

 entrances are, as usual, on the portico, only 

 they are as far apart as they can be, while 

 the two nuclei are as close up to the thin 

 division-board as they can be, so as to make 

 them virtually one cluster of bees, so far as 

 saving the animal heat is concerned. I 

 know this is all old, but the doctor uses 

 such nuclei very successfully. 



A DAY WITH E. FRANCE. 



Friend F. has at present seven apiaries, 

 and has extracted 24,000 lbs. of honey. He 

 is somewhat eccentric, as original geniuses 

 usually are. It is amusing to see how wide- 

 ly the plans differ among different bee-keep- 

 ers. Dr. Miller works for comb honey only, 

 therefore he has every thing adapted to it. 

 When I first saw him work I criticised and 

 found fault with a good many things ; but 

 when he gave me his reasons for so doing, 

 and especially after I had worked with him 

 one day, I became gradually quite a convert 

 to his methods. Well, it has been so with 

 friend France. The latter produces only 

 extracted honey, and his out-apiaries and 

 every thing else are specially adapted to it. 

 First, he says he would rather have all black 

 bees than either Italians or hybrids; next, 

 he prefers a frame about 21 inches high by 

 about 12 wide, and this frame stands on 

 end. Lastly, he prefers tenement hives, 

 tall enough to take this tall frame, two stories 

 high. These hives are so tall and "tower" 

 like, that his boys have christened them 

 " shot-tower " hives. Each hive contains 72 

 of these great frames, and the outside is all 

 chaff-packed. He has used them now four 

 years, and sa3S all the hives he makes for 

 the future shall be these. He lets the bees 

 have both upper and lower story for winter. 

 He has, of course, rousing colonies, and has 

 never lost a colony in wintering in them. 



When he extracts a " shot- tower " he some- 

 times gets a barrel of honey. The bees 

 (four colonies to each hive) have entrances 

 on each of the four sides. Each colony has 

 an upper and lower entrance. The upper 

 one at the bottom of the upper frames. The 

 bees work about equal at each entrance. 



At Dr. Miller's I found they were using 

 the cold-blast smoker. They were not us- 

 ing them because they expected me to come 

 around there, for I came a week before I 

 promised to. I laughed at them some about 

 it, especially as they had before decided in 

 favor of the Bingham smoker. They said, 

 however, that, after trying first the largest 

 Bingham smoker, then the Clark, and 

 changing from one to the other repeatedly, 

 they had at last settled down in favor of 

 the cold-blast smoker. Please, dear friends, 

 do not think that I mention this solely be- 

 cause I want to recommend the Clark 

 sm( ker. We bee-keepers, the best of us, 

 have not only lots of notions, but we also 

 change about and get into habits. I am not 

 sure but that Dr. Miller and his helper will 

 eventually come back to the largest-sized 

 Bingham again. At one place where I stop- 

 ped, when I mentioned that the doctor had 

 laid aside the Bingham and was using the 

 cold-blast, they turned on me so vehement- 

 ly, and abused the cheap Clark smoker so 

 emphatically, that I was almost sorry I had 

 said any thing about it. A higher- pi iced 

 smoker ought to be better; and for very 

 large apiaries, they will doubtless be con- 

 sidered better in the hands of many ; but 

 the cold-blast surely does very well for a 

 moderate number of colonies. But some of 

 the friends of the Bingham will hardly ad- 

 mit that Now, then, I am coming to a 

 point. What do you suppose E. France, 

 with his seven large apiaries, uses in the 

 way of a smoker? I do not believe you 

 could guess in a week ? Well, it is the old- 

 fashioned mouth-smoker, used by Doolittle, 

 only a little bit modified. A block of wood, 

 perhaps four or five inches long, has a hole 

 bored in it, may be an inch and a half in 

 diameter. Near the bottom a small tube is 

 put through the side. The mouth is placed 

 over the large opening, and the smoke is 

 blown out through the small tube. Tobac- 

 co is used exclusively, and friend France 

 buys a cheap grade of it by the wheelbar- 

 row-load, if not by the wagon-load. A very 

 little smoke from tobacco, of course, does a 

 very large business with cross hybrids ; and 

 friend France has more cross hybrids than 

 any other man in the State of Wisconsin, 

 without question. I at once suggested that 

 his boys would learn to use tobacco by hav- 

 ing the mouth so near tobacco smoke. Im- 

 agine my surprise, then, when told by 

 friend France that he never used tobacco 

 in any shape. One of his boys admitted 

 that he used tobacco, but he said he did not 

 think that the tobacco smoker had any thing 

 to do with it. This thing is certain, how- 

 ever : A young man who is breaking away 

 from the bondage of tobacco would find it a 

 pretty hard matter if he kept on using 

 friend France's tobacco smoker. 



When I first arrived I found a good deal 

 of fault with friend France's plans, just as 



