1887 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



765 



said than done. Any boy who has tried to follow 

 the big- and gray-colored bumble-bee to its nest 

 knows how great a tasif it is. B\it that is a mere 

 trifle to following the sober little honey-bee, which 

 can be lost against a gray-colored hillside. 



In order to be followed, the bee must have a dis- 

 tinguishing mark that can be easily seen; and with 

 such a badge the Australian provides it. He gums 

 a small tuft of white cotton to the bee's back, and 

 thus follows it with comparative ease. 



But the question now comes up, How is the cot- 

 ton to be put upon the bee's back? The gum is 

 quickly found— it is on almost any tree; the cotton 

 grows right at hand. The bee, too, is found in al- 

 most any sweet flower, buried head first in the 

 dusty pollen, drinking in the nectar, and showing 

 quite plainly whether its honey-sack is full or emp- 

 ty. It moves a little in its eager haste to secure 

 the delicious liquid, but perhaps a quick dab will 

 fasten the cotton on its back. Do not try it. As 

 the little boy told his mother, the bee is a very 

 "quick kicker." Watch the Australian— and he Is 

 a very stupid fellow too, in most things. He fills 

 his mouth with water, has his snowy tuft of cotton 

 ready gummed, finds his bee, gently drenches it 

 with water spurted from his mouth, picks it up 

 while it is still indignantly shaking itself free from 

 the water which clogs its wings, and with a dex- 

 trous touch he aflixes in an instant the telltale cot- 

 ton. Ver.y much out of patience, no doubt, with 

 the sudden and unexpected rainstorm, the bee rubs 

 off the tiny drops from its wings, tries them, and 

 away it goes, unconsciously leading destruction to 

 its happy home. Lydia Straun. 



FALL INTKODUCTION OF QUEENS. 



INTRODUCING A NEW STRAIN OF BLOOD BY HAV- 

 ING QUEENS FERTILIZED BY DRONES FROM 

 A DISTANT APIARY. 



fOR years it has puzzled me to introduce queens 

 late in the fall when there was no brood of 

 any kind, and no honey coming in so as to 

 make a sure success of it. To be sure, I 

 could do it by the nucleus-box plan, and suc- 

 ceed every time in getting the queen accepted; but 

 after the brood is all hatched out, and the bees 

 have become largely inactive for winter, it is a 

 slow tedious job to get them to pioperly fill them- 

 selves with honey to that degree necessary to 

 make the introduction of a queen a sure thing. Be- 

 sides, the work required is so great that I have 

 never recommended the nucleus-box plan, simply 

 for queen introduction, except in the case of very 

 valuable queens. For such, I still use this plan, 

 and consider it of great value as being a sure thing 

 with a queen I would not lose for any price, espe- 

 cially so during- the months of May, June, July, and 

 August. It rarely occurs that I have many queens 

 to introduce at this season of the year (October), 

 but this year I have been trying a plan of getting 

 new blood infused into my apiary, not generally 

 practiced by our bee-keepers, I believe, which is, 

 the sending of virgin queens to selected apiaries to 

 get them fertilized by drones in no way connected 

 with the stock of bees I now have. 



Last year I tried a few in this way with results 

 which greatly please me. Bees from queens so 

 mated seem to possess more vigor and mvich great- 

 er industry than those from home-mated queens. 

 Well, some of the queens sent off in the latter part 

 of August have been slow in coming back; and as 

 our fall has been very cool and cloudy here, it 

 would often be next to impossible to do any thing 

 with queens at the time of arrival, especially by the 

 nucleus-box plan, on account of the cold. After 

 thinking on the matter a little I decided on the 

 following: Taking down a frame of empty comb 

 from its place. 1 proceeded to cut a piece of wire 

 cloth three-fourths as large as the comb. From 



each of the four corners of this piece of wire cloth 

 I cut out a piece one inch square, when I unravel- 

 ed, or took out the wires oh each of the sides for ?i 

 of an inch, so as to have the points of the wires 

 free from cross-wires that depth, so they could be 

 pressed in through the septum of the comb. 1 

 now turned the four sides of the wire cloth one 

 inch deep, at right angles, so as to form a box, as it 

 were, an inch deep and without bottom. When a 

 queen arrived I laid the cage over a queenless colo- 

 ny if too cold, or near night, till I could open hives, 

 when the cage was taken to a warm room near a 

 window and opened. The queen was now caught 

 and her wings clipped, when she was put in a 

 small round wire-cloth cage and slipped into my 

 pants pocket. I now took my large bottomless 

 cage, opened the hive I wished to put the queen in, 

 caught the reigning queen, caged or killed her ac- 

 cording to my wants, and shook the bees oft this 

 frame down into the hive if too cold for them to 

 get into the hive safely if shaken outside, otherwise 

 they were shaken at the entrance as usual. I now 

 took the caged queen from my pocket and let her 

 run on to the comb where there were cells of un- 

 sealed honey, when she would at once go to eating 

 honey from one of the cells. While thus eating I 

 carefully placed the bottomless wire-cloth box 

 over her, fitting it equidistant from all sides of the 

 frame, when the points of the wires were pressed 

 into the comb till the cross-wires touched the tops 

 of the cells. The frame was now lowered into the 

 hive, and the frame next the cage left a bee-space 

 off from it, so the bees could go all about and over 

 it, a frame being kept out of the hive for the time 

 being, if necessary, to accomplish this. The hive 

 was now closed and left from four days to a week, 

 according to the weather, when it was opened, and 

 the cage lifted off the comb. The time of the queen 

 at this season of the year is of no value in this lo- 

 cality, so I prefer to leave her six or seven days, for 

 then I find the bees all settled down for winter, 

 with no excitement about the queen whatever. 

 In this way I succeed every time, and no longer am 

 anxious over fall introduction of queens. Try it, 

 sister and brother bee-keepers. 



G. M. DOOLITTLE. 



Borodino, N. Y., Oct. 10, 1887. 



^ I fc 



PROF. COOK MAKES A CORRECTION. 



T FIND my hands are more and more filled as the 

 jMp years go by, and so in my fill of duties mistakes 

 ^t occur. Thus, in the last Gleanings I describe 

 ■*■ Hemipteron LepU^glossus (not Septoglossust) phyl- 

 lopus, and stated that its only work was to destroy 

 other insects ; and according to all previous accounts 

 of this enemy, such is the case. But I was misled by 

 reading the wrong letter. I now learn from Mr. 

 W. J. Ellison, Stateburg, South Carolina (it was he 

 and not Mr. Swinson who sent the insects) that this 

 bug attacks the tomatoes and not the bees. This 

 fact makes this bug one of much interest. We 

 have information that seems reliable, that this bug 

 kills the Southern cabbage-bug— .StrocTi ia Imtrioni- 

 ca, and now even more reliable testimony that it 

 destroys tomatoes— a sort of omnivorous bug it is. 

 The figure in Gleanings is excellent as to form and 

 proportions, but would look better if all but the 

 white line across the middle of the body were more 

 densely shaded, as was the drawing sent. This 

 white line is a very marked feature. A. J. CoOK. 

 Agricultural College, Mich., Oct. 10, 1887. 



