782 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Oct. 



ed him, before resorting to such an extreme mea- 

 sure, to be so good as to wait until I had consulted 

 good authority as to the best steps to take; and as 

 it is much to the interest of the bee-keeper to pro- 

 tect a business that is evidently suffering, I should 

 feel much obliged to you if you would kindly sug- 

 gest a remedy. Frederick L. Cirtler. 

 Alexandria, Va., Aug. 8, 1889. 



The pie-maker is greatly mistaken. Bees 

 could not possibly go ten miles to bother 

 him, and I very much doubt if they go one 

 mile. His complaint, as you give it, would 

 seem to indicate that his trade has gone 

 down from some other cause, and he is seek- 

 ing to saddle it upon bee-keepers. The 

 number of bees he poisons can not do any 

 harm, I think, even though there is an api- 

 ary within one mile of him. I should tell 

 him to poison them if he chooses. Very 

 likely the nuisance has all abated before 

 this reaches him. When bees in large num- 

 bers are kept, say, within I mile or nearer, 

 thev sometimes prove annoying during a 

 drouth, or when there is no honey to be had, 

 but such things are an exception and not 

 the rule. If you could visit his establish- 

 ment I am quite certain you would find he 

 is greatly exaggerating the matter in regard 

 to the bees doing him harm financially. 



BUCKWHEAT HONEY; WINTER PACKING; UPWARD 

 VENTILATION. 



1. Do you consider it advisable to make your bees 

 winter on buckwheat honey, if you have plenty of 

 it? 



2. What material is best for packing a double- 

 walled hive above and at sides'? 



3. Is upward ventilation desirable for outdoor 

 wintering? C. H. Hoyt. 



Irving, Mich., Aug. 5, 1889. 



1. Buckwheat honey, if well ripened, is as 

 good as any honey for wintering. White 

 honey is preferred, as a general thing; but 

 so far as we are able to discover from re- 

 ports, bees winter about as well on one as 

 on the other. 



2. Wheat chaff is about as good as any 

 thing for packing around hives. It is light 

 and porous, and in most localities it is the 

 best and cheapest. Almost any porous ma- 

 terial such as chaff of any kind, or sawdust, 

 will answer tolerably well. 



3. Upward ventilation, aside from what is 

 obtained through the chaff cushion, in out- 

 door wintering, is not necessary. Give 

 them a good full-width entrance and they 

 will have all the ventilation they need. Up- 

 ward ventilation, both for outdoor and cel- 

 lar wintering, is now generally abandoned. 

 Plenty of bottom ventilation seems to be all 

 that is required. 



TO BIND GLEANINGS. 



Take a strip of heavy manilla paper, pasteboard, 

 or light tin, 1 inch wide and 10J4 inches long, for a 

 pattern; make a line % inch from one edge. Start 

 the first hole on the line with an awl or punch, 1^ 4 

 inches from one end (mark that " top end"), and 

 make the rest of the holes W% inches apart (6 in all). 

 Lay this pattern on a copy of Gleanings, the ed#e 

 closest to the line parallel with the back edge of 

 the book. Mark through the holes of the pattern 

 with a pencil or awl, then take six copies and prick 

 through as marked, with an awl, and sew together 



with a running stitch. Six copies are nice for read- 

 ing or reference. When the year is up, cut the 

 stitches and sew 24 together. A cover made to suit 

 your fancy may be sewed on at the same time. 

 The above-described pattern is to make all the holes 

 for stitching alike. No matter how many packages 

 you make, it forms a square book, provided you 

 punch the holes through every six copies straight. 

 W. Lewisburg, O., Aug. 19, 1889. F. Wehe. 



In my travels I saw Gleaning.s many 

 times, put up in home binders. At Thomas 

 Arundel's, in California, whole volumes 

 were so neatly arranged with ornamented 

 backs, that I could hardly believe they were 

 home-made. 



QUEENS FERTILIZED ABOVE THE ZINC NOT A SUC- 

 CESS; A CORRECTION. 



In Gleanings, page 685, in your comments on 

 Heddon's paragraph, you evidently made a mistake 

 in saying that he had "succeeded in having a 

 queen reared and fertilized above the perforated 

 metal." In the paragraph quoted, the queen was 

 reared, hatched, and fertilized below. You will no- 

 tice that the statement in nowise differs from the 

 views I have expressed on the subject. 1 have had 

 the same experience over and over; but in numer- 

 ous trials I never had a queen fertilized above the 

 excluder without a coincident loss of the old queen 

 below. It can occur only when the queen in the 

 brood chamber is about to be superseded. You 

 will see, therefore, that the idea you have conveyed 

 may lead some one to try that very thing and fail 

 also. There is no fact better established, than that 

 a queen can not be " reared and fertilized above 

 the perforated metal " while a good laying queen 

 is below in the brood-chamber. It may be possible 

 in a good honey-flow, but we have had no honey- 

 flow in this locality good enough for it to be possi- 

 ble, in the past four seasons that I have tried it. 



G. L. Tinker. 



New Philadelphia, O., Sept. 2, 1889. 



Thanks, friend T. We accept the correc- 

 tion ; but it is true that Heddon, as early as 

 1885, or perhaps earlier, had cells reared and 

 hatched above the excluder. But some one, 

 it seems, has anticipated Heddon on this 

 point. See a short article from A. A. Era- 

 denburg, pages 742, 754, Sept. 15. 



IN FAVOR OF CARNIOLANS. 



During the present season I have been testing 

 several different races of bees in the same yard, 

 and find that the Carniolans are away ahead, and 

 will give me quite a nice crop of surplus. This is 

 my second season with them, and thus far I am 

 very much pleased. 1 find them peaceable, indus- 

 trious, and very prolific, gather but little propolis, 

 and, so far as my experience goes, they winter bet- 

 ter than the Italians. I have had considerable ex- 

 perience with bees, having Kept them from my 

 boyhood up to the present time. I had at one time 

 118 colonies, mostly Italians, and their crosses. I 

 have also tried several races, with more or less sat- 

 isfaction. T. I. DUGDALE. 



West Galway, N. Y., Sept. 3, 1889. 



THE SENSITIVE PLANT THAT BEARS HONEY. 



I send to-day some seeds and specimens of leaves 

 and flowers of Mimosa pudica, or sensitive plant; 

 very rough seed-pod, flowers globular, about 'i 

 inch in diameter, very sweet flavor, probably a pol- 

 len-plant. Bees love to climb all over it and wal- 



