1889 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



741 



DOUBLE-DECKED COMBS. 



I have had two cases of this occur in two of my 

 supers this year. They are bars i l A inches deep, 

 and spaced 2 inches apart instead of IV2, and the 

 bees first built out the combs to the ordinary thick- 

 ness, and sealed thom, and afterward built another 

 row of cells on the sealed surface of one side of the 

 comb, and filled that with honey, and sealed the 

 cells the second time. T discovered it when I came 

 to extract, but the bases of the outer row of cells 

 were fiat, not natural based, as illustrated in Glean- 

 ings for April 15. 



EXTRACTING FKOM COMBS THAT HAVE BEEN USED 

 FOB BREEDING. 



Breeding in the combs toughens them considera- 

 bly, and they will bear the extractor much better; 

 but the color of the honey is not so fine, and the 

 bees are far more disposed to store pollen in them 

 than they are cells that have not been bred in. The 

 top corner cells of the frames in the brood-nest are, 

 I may say, never bred in. Did any one ever see 

 any pollen stored in them? Consequently I do not 

 use frames for extracting- if they are pollen-laden 

 and brood-stained the previous year. I have to be 

 very careful over my honey, as I have a good pri- 

 vate trade, and command my price. I can make 

 one shilling per section of the comb honey, and the 

 same price per pound for the extracted when put 

 up in white tlint-glass bottles. I do not mind tell- 

 ing you, as you are not near me to compete with 

 me for price, I allow a storekeeper, who sells about 

 half my crop, 15 per cent discount for his trouble 

 and risk, and am usually cleared out by Christmas. 



I am well content with my harvest, although I 

 have sold lots of bees to a dealer who took as many 

 swarms and queens as I cared to sell, consequently 

 I allowed them to swarm as they chose, and even 

 my nuclei stored surplus some days while the 

 queens were getting fertilized. I have had 200 acres 

 in my radius, of white and alsike clover, and the 

 largest tract lay to the northwest of my bees, and 

 they have had to cross a high road to get at it, and I 

 have been called out by passers-by, who have in- 

 sisted they were swarming, as they boom backward 

 and forward after this clover honey. 



Nature has evidently righted the mortality of last 

 year by causing bees to swarm excessively this 

 year, and the good yield has induced many faint- 

 hearted ones to hold on and not give up yet. 



England, Aug., 1889. Amateur Expert. 



My friend, I quite agree with you in the 

 point you make, that gentle bees may be 

 taught to be cross, and vice versa. I have 

 several times been inclined to conclude that 

 young bees^were'vicious simply because of 

 the example before them from childhood 

 up; notwithstanding, I have several times 

 killed the queen of a cross hybrid stock, just 

 because they were so vindictive. In fact, I 

 have had hives that were the terror of the 

 whole family; but after giving them an 

 Italian queen I have astonished the whole 

 family Jby Itakiug^the ,.hive'"all ; to! 'pieces 

 and showing them only gentle Italians 

 where, butjj a few weeks**before, had been 

 those stinging tigers. I have seen these oc- 

 casional black bees, but u l always sup- 

 posed they were stragglers that were driven 

 from some other colony, although that ex- 

 planation never seemed satisfactory. — I 

 think the idea has been before advanced, 

 that honey from old dry combs is not as 



nice as that extracted from white new 

 combs. I believe, however, that where ex- 

 periments were made for the purpose of 

 getting at this matter directly, just as fine 

 honey was obtained from the old combs as 

 from the other. Any admixture of pollen, 

 however, is surely detrimental. — I am very 

 glad indeed to hear so good a report from 

 clover sown purposely for bees — at least I 

 suppose it was, as you state it. 



McINTYRE'S SCALE-HIVE RECORD. 



DOOLITTLE'S METHOD OF RAISING CELLS. 



INCLOSE my scale-hive record for this season. 

 You see it differs from Mr. Mercer's, page 619, 

 in being longer at both ends, and my best 

 honey days do not come on the same day that 

 his do. I believe his scale-hive was located 

 about 20 miles further from the coast than mine. 

 If those scale-hive records are as interesting to 

 others as they are to me they are worth printing; 

 and if the hive has not been packed to make a big 

 report, they tell very accurately what a location 

 will do. This was one of my best colonies that did 

 not swarm. 



My average for 500 colonies was only 50 lbs. per 

 colony. 



QUEENS AND QUEEN-EXCLUDERS. 



1 put on 25 queen-excluders last month to try 

 Doolittle's method of rearing queens; 5 colonies re- 

 fused to build the cells, although I gave them the 

 second batch of prepared cells. One queen got 

 above the queen-excluder, and the cells were torn 

 down; the rest built out the cells in good shape. I 

 intended to let the young queens supersede the old 

 queen below, so T left a cell to hatch in each super, 

 which it did in due time; when the young queens 

 were about a day old I removed 15 excluders. Two 

 days after, I looked in front of the hives to see if 

 the old queen had been killed. Instead of finding 

 the old queens I found all of the virgins, but one, 

 dead in front of the entrance. The one I did not 

 find, superseded the old queen. The other 5 were 

 left above the excluders, to become fertilized 

 through a hole in the super; but they were all 

 killed. 



Although this part has failed with me, I still feel 

 under great obligations to Mr. Doolittle; for I never 

 before succeeded in getting queens that suited me, 

 from eggs or larv.c intended for workers. Queens 

 reared in the brood-chamber of a colony preparing 

 to swarm or supersede their queen are better than 



