S.52 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



May 



they may fiy to pieces aud upset the wax. By the 

 above process I got out wax from old comb which, 

 as early as ten years ago, A. I. Root pronounced in 

 Gleanings as the best he had ever seen. 

 Borodino, N. Y., Apr., 1887. G. M. Doolittle. 



No doubt, friend D., your arrangement 

 will answer an excellent purpose. I think, 

 howevei'. our friends will be obliged to have 

 the iron legs to the kettle, or the lever would 

 roll the whole thing over, and then there 

 would be a pretty "■ kettle of fish,'" or rather, 

 perhaps, a kettle full of beeswax, on the 

 ground and in the fire, instead of in the ket- 

 tle. I should be afraid, in any case, that it 

 would hardly be safe to put very mnch press- 

 ure on your lever, unless the opposite end 

 were more substantially supported than the 

 attachment of it to the log-chain fastened to 

 the kettle-ears. Reports at our different 

 conventions seem to indicate that the only 

 way of getting absolutely all the wax is to 

 have some sort of press to apply to the wax 

 while it is hot. Your arrangement is proba- 

 bly as practicable as any for the average 

 be'e-keepei'. 



BEES IN FLORIDA. 



AN INTERESTCNO LETTER FROM G. W. WEBSTER. 



JT has been two years or more since I made any S 

 report of our success with bees here in the land 

 of flowers. Two years ago we extracted from 

 30 colonies about 1000 lbs., or .50 lbs. from each 

 colony. A year ago we had only about 2.5 lbs. 

 per colony. The season was a very cold one tor 

 Florida, and the bees dwindled to mere nuclei. A 

 few died. Tt would seem to any one used to North- 

 ern winters, that Florida must be a nice place to 

 winter bees; but there are serious troubles in win- 

 tering, even here. During the cool weather that 

 we have here in winter there is not steady cold 

 weather to keep bees in the hives. An occasional 

 frosty night, and the absence of any honey-flow, 

 checks brood-rearing, while every warm day the 

 bees come out in search of honey or pollen, and 

 many of them become chilled and never get back. 

 Every experienced bee-keeper will understand how 

 that would work. 



A year ago last August I was taking care of 75 

 very large colonies of bees in chaff hives at Bonair, 

 Iowa. After a few weeks of hot weather, with the 

 mercury keeping pretty close to 100° in the shade, 

 there came on several days of cold weather. There 

 was plenty of buckwheat honey in the fields. The 

 bees would go out, and, coming back loaded with 

 honey, thousands of them fell and could be seen 

 crawling over the ground. I have no doubt that I lost 

 more bees every day for awhile than would make a 

 large colony. Here in Florida we sometimes have 

 such weather two or three days in a week for sev- 

 eral weeks at a time. In our locality bees do well if 

 they find enough honey to live on after the first of 

 June. A nucleus on four or five frames will often 

 starve out before the next season for honey com- 

 mences, which will be in January, February, or 

 March, according to the season. Strong colonies 

 that have 35 or 30 lbs. of honey will generally come 

 through in good condition. 



In my opinion, the idea that bees get lazy in 

 warm climates, and will not work, is all nonsense. 

 The.v will work like beavers whenever there is any 



thing for them to get. Leave honey or any kind of 

 sweets around where they can get at it, and they 

 will soon convince any one that they are not lazy. 

 We have to keep the entrances to the hives con- 

 tracted during a scarcity of honey, to keep them 

 from robbing. We generally have to feed weak 

 colonies in November or December. Our method 

 of feeding is not patented. 



For extracting we use long hives with a division- 

 board. When we wish to feed we move the divi- 

 sion-board and combs if necessary, so as to get the 

 honey near to where the bees are clustered. We 

 then take a bottle holding two or three pounds of 

 thin honey, tie a piece of very thin cloth over the 

 mouth, and place it in the hive, mouth down, just 

 so that the honey can all run out, the other end of 

 the bottle leaning against the side of the hive. The 

 bees work away at the honey till it is all gone. Once 

 a bottle was so placed that the honey could not all 

 run out. The bees gnawed a hole through the cloth, 

 got into the honey, and a lot of them were drowned. 

 We knew better next time. There is not enough 

 honey around to excite robbing, and it is very little 

 trouble to feed them with our hives. The high, 

 open, pine woods where most of the settlements in 

 this part of Florida are, do not afford much honey 

 at any time of the year. There are some scattering 

 flowers during every month, but not of a kind to yield 

 much honey. Where there are bearing orange- 

 groves, bees gather some surplus honey during the 

 latter part of winter, but I have seen no heavy 

 yield of it. 



Locations like ours, where there are plenty of lakes 

 and ponds bordered with ilex, glaber (gall-berry), 

 and palmetto, yield a good quality of light honey— 

 the gall-berry about April, and palmetto in May, 

 varying to the season. We think the gall-berry 

 honey is best; but either is better than orange hon- 

 ey, which is darker, and nearly as strong as buck- 

 wheat honey. There are a few locations on the 

 coast where the mangrove yields honey by the ton, 

 but those locations are already pretty well monop- 

 olized, and honey is cheap. We have been whole- 

 saling ours at 7 and 8 cents per pound. 



To sum up, 1 will say to bee-keepers wishing to 

 come to Florida, that high pine land is a total 

 failure. Where there is plenty of palmetto and 

 gall-berry, or rich hummock land near, it will be 

 nip and nip to make a few colonies pay. A good 

 mangrove location will be pretty good if one can 

 stand mosquitoes, sandflies, and malaria. Of course, 

 experienced bee - keepers will keep a few bees 

 wherever they may be located, but I could not rec- 

 ommend any one to go to any place that I 

 have heard of, away from the mangrove, with the 

 idea of making bee-keeping a business. 



It is the climate of Florida that brings people 

 here. The winters generally have but few frosty 

 nights, and sometimes none; and in the summer I 

 have never seen the time that a thermometer, 

 placed in the shade where there was no hot sand or 

 any thing else to reflect the heat, would indicate 

 more than 93°. People with plenty of money can 

 enjoy themselves in this country, but I do not call 

 it a very good place for a poor man. Yet there are 

 many laboring men who are doing well. Fruit-rais- 

 ing is the principal business, especially raising 

 oranges, in this part of the State. It would he in- 

 teresting to write of the winter resorts aud beauti- 

 ful villages scattered over the State, of fine resi- 

 dences, owned, ^of course, by wealthy people; of 



