1889 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



70S 



and devote the remainder of what I have to say, 

 more in a " bee-line." 



a. j. king's apiaries. 

 On my first trip to Cuba I took 100 colonies of 

 Italians, and located them near Havana; but as 

 this apiary has been noticed in several back num- 

 bers of Gleanings, I refer the reader to those no- 

 tices. The second apiary I located near Puerto 

 Principe, about 500 miles east of Havana, starting 

 with less than 2J stocks of Italians, and transferring 

 native bees. They were increased to 400 stocks; 

 but as I could not remain, and the help provided 

 for their care being mostly native, and all inexperi- 

 enced in modern bee-keeping, they have not pros- 

 pered as they surely would have done under proper 

 management. The third and fourth apiaries I es- 

 tablished near Sagua la Grande, 180 miles east of 

 Havana, on the headwaters of the Sagua River, 

 midway between Toboca on the north and Cien- 

 fuegos on the south side of the island. One of 

 these was fitted up on the best principles, and with 

 all modern appliances, at a cost of over $3000. It 

 had just commenced to realize our most sanguine 

 expectations, and would to-day, I believe, be the 

 finest apiary in the world, had it not been for that 



TERRIBLE CYCLONE 



which last year devastated many parts of the is- 

 land, and of which Sagua was the center. The hur- 

 ricane, accompanied by a terrible downpour of 

 water, continued with unabated fury for many 

 hours, completely wrecking every thing in its 

 course. Sagua alone, a place of 6000 inhabitants, 

 suffered to the extent of 100 lives lost, and $4,000,000 

 worth of property destroyed. The forests were 

 wrecked. The water in the river backed up and 

 covered large spaces never before inundated, and 

 of course tne new apiaries shared in the general 

 ruin. 



A WELL-EQUIPPED APIARY DESTROYED. 



The main shed in our best apiary was 300 feet 

 long, 12 feet wide, and 10 feet high. The posts were 

 10 inches in diameter, set 10 feet apart and 3%. feet 

 in the ground. The peak roof was well provided 

 with rafters, and heavily thatched with the leaves 

 of the fan palm, which extended down below the 

 eaves to within four feet of the ground. The ex- 

 tracting-room, connected with one end of this shed, 

 was a frame building 20 feet high, of fine propor- 

 tions, and built in the most substantial manner. 

 Throughout the length of this shed and extraeting- 

 room, and 500 feet further, down to the shipping- 

 room on the river-bank, was a narrow-guage rail- 

 road track, provided with low platform cars on 

 which the long boxes of comb were carried to and 

 from the apiary to the extracting-room and thence 

 with their 1200-lb. tierces of honey to the shipping- 

 room. Our extracting-room was provided with a 

 receiving-pan of galvanized boiler iron, 14 feet long, 

 7 feet wide, and 14 inches deep, with large faucet at 

 one end by which the honey was conveyed into the 

 bungs of the tierces, with no dipping or lifting at 

 all. The honey from the uncapping-table, after 

 passing through a strainer, also emptied into this 

 pan. The two-story hives, one foot apart, were 

 placed just inside the line of the eaves of the sheds, 

 and faced outward from each side, so that the 

 sheds were comparatively free from bees, and were 

 cool and invigorating, even in the hottest weather. 

 The frames in the upper story came flush with the 

 top of the hive, were covered with enameled cloth 

 on which the flat cover fit closely, and were kept 



from warping by two cleats, which also held them 

 securely in place. By this arrangement the cover 

 is never stuck fast, and the tops of the frames are 

 always clean. The fact that, with an assistant, I 

 have extracted 120 of these top stories in a single 

 day, and replaced the combs, will give the reader 

 some idea of the value of the most perfect appli- 

 ances possible in our work. This apiary is rebuild- 

 ing, and replenished under the direction of an 

 American, although born in Cuba, and will doubt- 

 less speak for itself soon. A. J. King. 

 New York, August, 1889. 



To be continued. 



Why, friend King, what a grand place 

 Cuba would be for gardening— no frost, no 

 prolonged drouths, and, to crown it all, no 

 need of fertilizers or manure ! Why should 

 she not furnish the world with sugar, or al- 

 most any thing else? I confess that I for 

 one am greatly obliged to you for these in- 

 teresting particulars. No wonder that Cu- 

 ban honey can be sold at a low price. 



H. K. BOAEDMAN REVIEWS THE SEA- 

 SOW. 



MIGRATORY BEE-KEEPING, AND ITS POSSIBILITIES. 



T AM always quite anxious, at the close of the 

 ||j> honey season, to compare notes with my 

 W neighbors; and especially is this so when 1 am 

 ■*■ short in my honey crop, as is the case again 

 this year. If any one has a larger yield than I 

 have, I want to know it and find out how he got it; 

 accordingly, when the season closed and I had tak- 

 en a long breath and a brief inventory of what had 

 been accomplished in my own apiaries, I started 

 out on a tour of inspection among my neighbors. I 

 have been able to gain but the one consolation— 

 that I am no worse off than my unfortunate neigh- 

 bors, or, in other words, that my neighbors have 

 done as poorly as I have. I found about the same 

 condition everywhere I went. At every apiary I 

 visited it was the same story of cold and wet weath- 

 er in the fore part of the season; starvation at the 

 critical time when breeding would have furnished 

 bees for the harvest, and little or no surplus is the 

 universal result. Where colonies were braced up 

 by a little judicious feeding at the proper time, the 

 extra care and expense of such feeding was liberal- 

 ly repaid, as it always is. 



I was pleased to find in one instance an exception 

 to this general poor condition of the apiaries. It 

 was in the Bronson apiary of Mr. S. P. Newman, of 

 Norwalk. You may remember that he reported 

 quite a boom at that apiary last season on pea-vine 

 clover, which is extensively raised in that locality. 

 This apiary is again showing the advantages of lo- 

 cation at particular seasons. I found the bees at 

 this place doing good work in storing surplus, while 

 they were almost entirely idle at other localities 

 only a few miles distant. Mr. Newman was quite 

 pleased over his good prospects, as well he might 

 be. 



This suggests the subject that was uppermost in 

 my mind in my excursions, and about which bee- 

 keepers seem anxious at the present time to learn 

 more. 



MIGRATORY BEE-KEEPING. 



Does it pay to move bees to catch the local honey- 

 flow? and If so, how can we best make it pay? I 



