t>58 



gLeanikgs in bee culture. 



Sept. 



This is an "off" year in this county for honey. "We 

 usually commence extracting- about the first week 

 in May, and extract every eig^ht days until the 10th 

 of June. This year there has been no extracting- in 

 the best localities. During- the second week in May, 

 Italians and blacks filled up the brood-chamber and 

 then stopped short off. Italinns held their own and 

 increased a little, while the blacks have lost all they 

 did have. They have plentj' of bees, as I have not 

 allowed any of them to swarm. My Italians last 

 fall g-athered considerable honey, while my blacks 

 had to be fed. I am done with black bees. It was 

 cold here all during- fruit-bloom last spring-, and we 

 had a killing- frf)st that resulted disastrously to 

 peaches; then it was drj' from the first of March to 

 the middle of May. This, I think, is the cause of 

 failure in tlic honey crop. 



I am the only man in our county who has Italians. 

 If it had been a good honey season I would have in- 

 creased to about eighty colonies. My apiary is sit- 

 uated in the town of Madison, and it is quite a curi- 

 osity to some people here who never saw an apiary. 

 My hives are all painted white, and arranged just 

 the same as shown in the cut on front of your price 

 list and catalogue. A j-oung- lady was out riding-, 

 not long- since, in my neighborhood, and spied my 

 apiary afar otf. She suddenly exclaimed, "Oh! I 

 did not know there was a cemetery iu this part of 

 town." She is a stranger hero. 



There is no trouble in wintering here if the colo- 

 nies are strong and liave plenty of stores. AVe just 

 leave them on their summer stands, and they go 

 safely through the cold. R. H. C.\.mpbei.l. 



Madison, Ga , May 28, 1887. 



I believe it is a common thing, friend C, 

 for strangers to call a well-kept apiary a 

 " cemetery.'' This is oftener the case where 

 Simplicity hives are used without grape- 

 vines. Since our grapevines have grown 

 up, people, in passing through our town on 

 tlie cars, are not nearly so apt to call our 

 place a cemetery. 



A LETTER PROM AUSTRALIA. 



HONEY AS A FRUIT-PRESEKVEU. 



T ENJOY. Gleanings thoroughly, particularly 

 /af now that you have added the articles on g-ar- 

 ^l dening; for, with the exception of work among 

 "*• the bees, nothing makes me happier than pok- 

 ing and rooting- about in the garden. So Glean- 

 ings gives me double pleasure now. I must also 

 thank you for your ABC. It has been a great help 

 to us; but, plain as it is, I don't know that we 

 should manage so well but for the advice and 

 practical hints we get from our good friend Mr. 

 Garrett, who has done more for bee-keeping and 

 bee - keepers than any one else in the colony. 

 Mr. Parker, of Glenbroke, and Mr. Hudson, of 

 Bathurst, and others like ourselves, have secured 

 very great assistance from him; and among other 

 good things he introduced us to Mr. Root and the 

 Home of the Honey-Bees. Inspired by what you 

 said about gi-owing vines, I got eight young vines 

 in the middle of summer— quite the wrong time to 

 do it, and by patience and great care I have man- 

 aged to rear six fine strong plants; the other two 

 look delicate, but I have hopes of even them; at 

 any rate, I won't give them up as long as there is a 

 green twig left. Our bees have not done so well 



this year Ss we hoped they would. It has been a 

 very wet season, but we must not grumble, as it 

 has been preceded by many years of drought; but, 

 unfortunately, the bees, particularly the Italians, 

 would insist upon throwing out their brood after it 

 had been raining a couple of days; and this, with 

 plenty of stores in the hive. I had actually to feed 

 them with honey to coax them to leave their brood 

 alone; and even this did not always have the de- 

 sired effect. 



We have made some foundation with the comb- 

 mill, and we think it is very nice; in fact, we often 

 stop work to admire it, it does look so very pretty, 

 and we find the bees like the fresh home-made wax 

 much better than what we got from New Zealand, 

 for they will work eagerly on the one when they 

 won't touch the other. 



Among the many ways of utilizing honey, written 

 about in Gleanings, I have not noticed that any 

 one advocates its use for preserving fruit. I know 

 oranges, both whole and as marmalade, are simply 

 delicious, preserved in honey, and so are mangoes 

 Now, why should not Mrs. Chaddock or Mrs. Harri- 

 son try it with some of your beautiful fruits, or 

 dear Mrs. Jennie Gulp. I am sure she could if she 

 tried. I mean to do it, and will tell you how I suc- 

 ceed. I am determined not to fail. Who knows 

 but that I may send you some to taste? 



Sophie A. Bradley. 



Campbelltown, Victoria, Aus., Feb. 22, 1887. 



MORE ABOUT BLISTER-BEETLES. 



A blister-beetle that comes as a friend in- 



STE.\D OF AN ENEMY. 



T WAS much interested in Prof. Cook's account of 

 ^ the blister-beetle larvae on bees; and thinking 

 ^i that perhaps some of the readers of Glean- 

 ■^ ings might come to the conclusion that the in- 

 sects of this family are all injurious, 1 send a 

 few notes on the haliits of some species closely re- 

 lated to the one of which Prof. Cook writes. 



During the summer of 1885 a large part of Central 

 Illinois suffered from an outbreak of two or three 

 species of our common grasshoppers, manj' farm- 

 ers having their crops almost wholly destroyed. 

 As many people throughout the infested region 

 feared that the insects would be present the next 

 season following in overwhelming numbers, I was 

 instructed by Prof. S. A. Forbes, State Entomolo- 

 gist, to investigate the condition of the grasshop- 

 per eggs late in fall and early in the spring, in or- 

 der that we might know what probability there was 

 of serious damage. The grasshopper eggs are 

 small, yellowish, cylindrical objects, about a third 

 of an inch long, and are laid in masses, or " pods," 

 containing- fifty to one hundred eggs each. These 

 pods may readily be found in sod land, about an 

 inch below the surface; and by examining a suffi- 

 cient tiumber of them at any one time a very fair 

 idea of the pei-centage of embi-yo grasshoppers then 

 alive can be obtained. In the investigations men- 

 tioned I found a large proportion of the egg-pods to 

 contain a peculiar whitish grub which was leisurely 

 eating the eggs about him, having generally al- 

 ready destroyed from one-half to three-fourths of 

 the eggs in the pod. These were the larvii? of the 

 blister-beetles, which had been very common the 

 summer preceding, and had entailed so large a 

 progeny upon the land that, aided by a common red 



