86 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURK. 



Feb. 



chairs ? Still, this may be ot little consequence, as 

 1 can/orce all the honey up stairs at will, anyway. 

 With the Muth box it would be too much bother to 

 use separators. I can g-et very good combs without 

 separators; still, I think it will pay me to use them 

 hereafter. Again, I have by no means given up the 

 idea that moving bees in car lots from South to 

 North, in the spring, and back again in the tall, is a 

 paying project; nor shall I abandon the idea until 

 the matter has been properly tried. No one has 

 ever yet tried the plan properly. I have now 1.50 

 hives at Yazoo City, Miss., which I intend to have 

 filled with bees next spring. In May I shall move 

 them up here somewhere for the white-honey crop. 

 The latter part of July I shall take them to Wiscon- 

 sin, where there is plenty to do on buckwheat and 

 goldenrod during August and September. By this 

 means I should secure 3 good honey crops in one 

 season. What T shall do with the bees at the close 

 of the season in October I do not know yet. 



My hives at Yazoo City have two stories, with 10 

 frames in each— only 7 inches deep inside of frames. 

 When ready for box honey I use but one set of 

 frames, and use the top sets for new swarms or ex- 

 tracting. The hives were got up expressly for ship- 

 ping bees from South to North and back again each 

 year, so you see T have had plenty of faith in the 

 project, and still have. The cost of getting a car- 

 load of bees from Yazoo City or New Orleans to 

 Chicago is about SlOO; and as 200 stocks in 7-inch 

 hives can be safely brought up in one car, the cost, 

 you see, is only 50 cts. per colony, or S51.00 both 

 ways, there being no danger of any loss down South 

 during winter; and the bees being able to double 

 their number of colonies, or to gather a good crop 

 of honey before May. I can see no good reason why 

 they should not, while South, pay the entire expense 

 of shipping both ways. 



George Grimm has left our ranks. He writes me 

 that the bee-business does not pay well enough to 

 suit him, and is practicing law, having a good busi- 

 ness. T am told that he was elected to the Legisla- 

 tui-e this month. M. M. Bai.dkidge. 



St. Charles, Ills., Nov. liS. 1S86. 



DR. MIDLER'S REPIjY T(J MH. BALDRIDGE. 



Your plan of making J. supers has advantages 

 and disadvantages. It is no more work than my way, 

 possibly less; it has the convenience of having the 

 tins always in the right place in the supers, without 

 the trouble of placing them ever3' time and having 

 them slip out of place, sometimes when putting sec- 

 tions In the super. The loose tins on the other hand, 

 as I use them, admit of taking out the whole super 

 full of sections CO Hio.'^sr, and I can hardly imagine 

 any way by which the sections can so easily be taken 

 out with the fixed tins. Moreover, in putting the 

 sections in the supers with loose tins, the tins ad- 

 just themselves to their places; and when the whole 

 super is filled, the tins can not fail to be in exactly 

 the right place. ]f the tins are fixed, it will require 

 very exact workmanship to make the spaces be- 

 tween the tins exactly the same in every case. 



You say, " Others tell me that the separator needs 

 to be only %% inches wide, when of tin, for the 4J4,- 

 inch section." I hardly believe it can make any dif- 

 ference as to width, whether the separator be of 

 wood or of tin. In actual practice, I have found ex- 

 actly the same difficulty with each, when too nar- 

 row. Whoever found 2i?4 inches sufficient, can hard- 

 ly have a very extended experience, or else must 

 have had such careful management that separators 

 might have been dispensed with altogether. Now, 

 we know that some succeed quite well without sep- 

 arators ; and in case where two sections are built 

 perfectly true without a separator between them, 

 I think the intervention of a separator M'ould make 

 no difference, whether 2 or 4 inches wide. What I 

 want a separator for is to force the bees, under any 

 and all circumstances, to build the combs in sections 

 so true that there will not be the least difficulty in 

 packing. With the separator coming within Vi inch 

 of the top or bottom of the section, this is accom- 



plished; but an eighth of an inch more than this 

 gives different results. You see, that ]» inch differ- 

 ence makes just one-third more open space than if 

 '/2 inch is allowed, for the wood of the section occu- 

 pies ^8 inch, leaving ^g-inch open space. When this 

 ?8-inch open space is allowed, you can count on an 

 unpleasant number of sections being built so as to 

 project under the separator wherever a section has 

 progressed much in advance of its neighbor, or in 

 any case when work is going on very slowly. If the 

 little projection were all, it would be a matter of 

 less consequence; but this projection is pretty sure 

 to be attached to the separator, and, when detach- 

 ed, the section " bleeds," and this has occurred with 

 me. equally with wood or tin. So, for the 4^4X4^4 

 sections I want S'j-inch separators, so placed as to 

 make the space alike at top and bottom. Wood sep- 

 arators of this width I get of poplar wood from the 

 Berlin Fruit-Box Co. 



I think, if you look again, you will not find that I 

 prefer two widths lor sections. On page 43 I say, 

 " I have used a mixed arrangement with some de- 

 gree of satisfaction," but I have more satisfaction 

 in using only one kind. 



I do not use the slatted honey-board to keep the 

 queen out of sections, as I had no trouble in that 

 direction before I used the slatted honey-board. 

 Its great value is in preventing the bees from build- 

 ing bridges of comb between the brood-frames and 

 the sections. 



I believe alsike to be a valuable plant; but I have 

 qwit fooling with it, because I have found too great 

 difficulty in getting a good stand. Probably better 

 knowledge on my part would secure better results. 

 Jt is open to the objection, that, with ordinary treat- 

 ment, it blooms at the same time as white clover. 

 Still, I am glad to see that some of the farmers about 

 me are beginning to " fool " with it, and I shall be 

 glad if they are more successful with it than I have 

 been. 



Without having tried them, the Betsinger sepa- 

 rators strike me as a good thing, if not too expen- 

 sive. I do not know what it costs to get them up. 

 If the material is not so expensive as to prohibit their 

 use, by manufacturing in large quantities he could 

 make them so as to sell for less than any one else 

 could get them up in small quantities, and still 

 make a nice sum. 



Your South-and-North project will be looked upon 

 with much interest; and if you make a success of it 

 I think you may claim to be the pioneer among the 

 successful ones, for I take it that others will follow 

 if you succeed. C. C. Miller. 



Marengo, 111. 



In regard to the widtli of separators, I 

 think I am prepared to say, from actual ex- 

 periment, that 21 inches "will not answer 

 for the Simplicity section. As 14 inches is 

 the common width of tin plates, we are in 

 the habit of dividing this 14 inches into 4 

 parts, giving a separator 81 inches in width. 

 Now, it is possible that something a little 

 narrower would be safe, and it may be well 

 to go over this matter again, especially if we 

 are going to use the exceedingly expensive 

 material, wire cloth. Friend Betsinger said, 

 at the Albany Convention, that 8 cents per 

 square foot was as low as it could be fur- 

 nished ; and, if I am correct, he charges the 

 same, whether a large or small quantity is 

 used. The same kind of wire cloth has been 

 in our price list for some time, for use in 



