1889 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



989 



don't lose their bees either. I practiced it in one 

 apiary myself ever since 1877, and it is the apiary 

 where I always have the strongest colonies, the tirst 

 drones, and raise the earliest queens, and lose the 

 fewest colonies in winter or spring, and yet they 

 have all the pollen that I can give them. I think 

 that question til will set many to looking for some 

 of their winter losses among these very active and 

 naturally uneasy colonies, and find not a few of 

 their most unprofitable ones among the same class. 

 I have found it so, and so have some other bee- 

 keepers. Just look around you; keep watch, and 

 see if I have not told you a grain of truth this time. 



One thing more: While 1 was looking over the 

 bees in the Grove Street Apiary in New Milford 

 last week, one of those pleasant days (the ther- 

 mometer told 60 in the shade), it was very plain to 

 be seen that those stocks having used the least 

 amount of stores were in the best condition, were 

 the strongest, had the fewest dead bees on the bot- 

 tom-board, and, besides that, could be traced by the 

 register for the past four seasons to stock possess- 

 ing those qualities, and just the same could those 

 of the active and weak stocks be traced out in their 

 qualities. H. L. Jeffrey. 



New Milford, Ct., Mar. 18, 1889. 



AN ABC SCHOLAR'S EXPERIENCE. 



HIS UPS AND DOWNS. 



MDITOR GLEANINGS:— Do your students of 

 the grammar class, bee-college graduates, 

 "and all that," ever look back to the time 

 when you did not know a drone from an eye- 

 bunger bumble-bee, or a worker from a yel- 

 low-jacket? I am pretty sure you do, judging from 

 the kindly sympathy and infinite patience with 

 which you answer our questions and rehearse the 

 (to you) monotonous beginnings of bee-lore. I 

 suppose I am beginning much as some of you did — 

 knowing almost nothing on the subject. I am not 

 much given to enthusiasms, so when this fever 

 struck me the attack was something serious. There 

 was no incipient stage, such as is common to 

 fevers, and my system seemed unable to resist the 

 contagion in the least. I caught the disease from a 

 stray copy of a book which I found in the 

 Y. M. C. A. library of our town; viz., "Blessed 

 Bees," by John Allen. Being favorably disposed 

 toward Hahnemann's " Similia similibus curantur, 

 the medicine I took was Quinby's Mysteries of Bee- 

 keeping, Boot's ABC, and a subscription for 

 Gleanings, full doses of each, daily. As pulse 

 and temperature seemed to increase under this 

 treatment I prescribed for myself a remedy which 

 is said to often effect a cure when all else fails; 

 viz., a swarm of bees. I had a deal of faith in this 

 last medicine. I thought, if it both does and does 

 not cure rheumatism, there is at least a good 

 chance that a few stings will cure the bee-fever. 



But like failed to cure like in my case; on the 

 contrary, the prescription worked up an enthusi- 

 asm which as yet shows no signs of abatement. 

 There was unalloyed pleasure in the hours that I 

 watched them, investigated, experimented, blun- 

 dered, and rejoiced to see how docile and patient 

 they were with me; how quietly they repaired my 

 mistakes, and recovered from the effects of my 

 mismanagement. 

 My first task was to transfer them from the bar- 



rel in which they were brought to me, to an L. hive. 

 I bad every thing at hand that I expected to use. 

 Even my better half, in gloves and mosquito-net 

 veil, was there as assistant. It was seven o'clock 

 of a bright August morning when I inverted the 

 barrel and began operations. I may as well con- 

 fess I was " scared of them," as our colored girl put 

 it. It was no with little trepidation that I sawed the 

 hoops away and put a carving-knife into the combs 

 and my bare fingers among the bees. But they re- 

 spected my sentiments, and I got but two stings 

 that day. What a mess I made of it! By the time 

 I was half done, the barrel fell to pieces, and there 

 were about two robbers to every home bee. I could 

 not keep them off a comb long enough to lay it 

 down on the table, and was obliged to fit and tie, 

 with every thing black with bees. In an hour and 

 a half I had six frames of pretty fair comb hung in 

 the new hive, and the most of the bees were in too, 

 or flying about the entrance. I did not see any thing 

 of the queen, and don't know when or how she got 

 in. Then I left them to their own devices, and did 

 not see them till next morning, when I opened the 

 hive, and, to my great surprise, found they had not 

 a drop of honey. I had hung the frames in half full 

 of honey, but the robbers had kept on at their 

 work after I had finished mine, and had cleaned 

 them out. 



As there is very little honey in our summer flow- 

 ers, I knew I must feed them or they would starve, 

 or, at least, raise but little brood. So I fixed up a 

 pepper-box feeder, and for two or three weeks gave 

 them a nightly feed of sugar syrup. A few days 

 after transferring, while removing some clasps and 

 sticks, 1 found the queen. Didn't we all rejoice, 

 though, over that first sight of a queen-bee? Wife 

 and children gathered about me as I held the frame 

 and watched her run over the comb, and tried in 

 vain to see the "attendant bees," the " retinue," 

 pictured in our books. Such a beauty she was— 

 long-bodied and yellow ! We, at least, did her hom- 

 age, if the bees did not. By smoking the bees off 

 the center of some of the combs we found she had 

 been laying. Then we counted the days until 

 the brood was sealed, and again until the in- 

 mates of the cells cut their way out, fuzzy-headed 

 and hungry. It was a revelation to grown folks 

 and children; and we took daily observations of 

 their progress, and read and talked of them, almost 

 to the exclusion of other topics. 



If our incessant smoking and watching hindered 

 them in their work thej did not show it; and soon 

 there were so many bees and so much brood that I 

 concluded to divide them, and see if they would 

 raise some new queens. I had given them two or 

 three frames of wired foundation which they had 

 drawn out, and nearly filled with brood; so I 

 thought I had enough for two pretty fair nuclei. 1 

 took the queen and all but three frames of brood to 

 hive No. 3, when they went to work, very few leav- 

 ing for the old stand. Then we watched No. 1 closer 

 than ever. In two days they had four cells started ; 

 and we saw with an interest that amounted to ex- 

 citement, the baby-queen lying in its milk-white 

 bed, which we knew was the royal jelly we had 

 read about. One was so big when only three days 

 old that we were afraid it would not make a good 

 queen; so I tore it out. In due time the rest were 

 capped, and we waited, impatiently enough, for 

 the culmination of our hopes. One morning there 

 was an empty cell, and a nice young queen travel- 



