)887 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



815 



ly. bnt be educated and trained for the re- 

 sponsibilities that are soon to come npon 

 them: and may (iod abundantly bless and 

 stierifjthen yon and your good wife, friend 

 .1.. in the ur'eat work you have undertaken. 



DOOLITTLE'S KEPORT FOR 1887. 



WHAT HK II AS I5KEN DOING, AND HOW HE HAS 

 SUCCEEDED. 



ip S usual. 1 put, one year ago, alioiit half of my 

 ^ bees in the cellar, and left the other half on 

 r' their summer stands, packed with chaff and 

 ^ fine straw all around the sides, with a saw- 

 dust cushion about four inches thick, on top. 

 The winter was unusually severe in this locality, 

 with no chance for a tiight for the bees for five 

 months, or from Nov. 10th to April JOth.this being- 

 the long-est I ever knew bees on the summer stands 

 kept in their hives. Of the 40 wintered outdoors F 

 lost 6; and from the 50 wintered in the cellar the 

 loss was only one, which one starved to death. 

 This colony consumed ~3 lbs. of stores before dying, 

 while many other colonies as near like it as two 

 peas are like each other, as far as 1 could see, did 

 not consume 8 lbs. each during the six months they 

 were in the cellar. Who among our great men in 

 the bee-world will tell me why that one colony 

 should have consumed nearly three times as much 

 as any other, under precisely the same conditions 

 us far as human vision could discern? The esti- 

 mated average consumption of honey per colony 

 wintered in the cellar was 7'/2 lbs., and U lbs. for 

 each colony wintered outdoors. The ditterence re- 

 garding the consumption of honey is not quite so 

 marked generally, between cellar wintering and 

 chaff hives; and my way of accounting for it is, 

 that the long-continued cold caused the bees to use 

 this food or fuel to keep warm with to a greater ex- 

 tent than they do when there is an occasional warm 

 spell. 



After getting the bees from winter (juarters, the 

 spring, generally speaking, was unfavorable, the 

 nights being cold all the while till nearly July. As 

 my correspondence and other matters pressed up- 

 on my time very much, so much so that my physi- 

 cian said I must do less or break down in health, 

 I concluded to sell off my bees so as to keep a much 

 less number than 1 had at first intended. Conse- 

 quently, the first of June found me with only 26 

 (lueens in my yard, 1.5 of which were mothers of 

 fair colonies of bees; 5, mothers of rather weak 

 colonies, and the remaining 6 had little more than 

 bees enough with them to pull through to warm 

 weather. In selling, I sent off my best colonies, 

 and in reality I had but one really good colony in 

 the 26, after sending off those sold. This one I 

 would not spare, as it had my best drone-rearing 

 queen in it, and I wished to preserve it for early 

 drones. Before I fairly got straightened around 

 to know what I had left to begin the season with, 

 orders for queens began to pour in to such an ex- 

 Icnt that I feared I should be swamped. However, 

 I had concluded to work 20 of the 26 for honey, 

 which I did, although there was not one of them, 

 except the colony containing the drone queen, but 

 that contributed largely toward my queen-rearing, 

 by way of furnishing bees and brood for nuclei. 

 Owing to the cold niuhts it seemed almost impos- 



sible to get the bees to breed up during the last 

 half of May and in June, as they usually do. For 

 this reason 1 saw that a large crop of basswood 

 honey could not be obtained, let the rest of the sea- 

 son be ever so good; for, 37 days before the bass- 

 wood was to bloom, the hives were not half full of 

 brood, while, to have the promise of a good .'siold, 

 every available cell should have been occupied by 

 the queen at least that number of da>s before the 

 honey-harvest commenced. This fact, and the 

 drawing of bees and brood from each colony for 

 the queen-business, was greatly against the honey- 

 crop; and considering the whole, I am surprised 

 that I did as well as I did. even although I never 

 worked bees " for all they were worth " to so great 

 an extent as I did the past summer. Fruit-trees 

 gave no more honey than the bees consumed from 

 day to day on their brood, and white clover did lit- 

 tle if any better. 



Basswood opened the 5tli of July, and lasted 12 

 days, during which time the bees got all the honey 

 they obtained except a little from teasel to finish 

 up on. A good acreage of buckwheat was sown, 

 much more than for several years past, and I had 

 strong hopes of a yield from that, but not enoufih 

 was obtained to show in the combs after it had 

 gone out of blossom, so that I have to chronicle, 

 not a cell of buckwheat honey in ten years. 18T7 be- 

 ing the last season any surplus from that source 

 has been obtained. 



Of the 20 colonies, only 14 swarmed, so that, had I 

 not made six more by artificial means, I should have 

 had the smallest increase for years. I now have 40 

 colonies for winter, and 20 small ones, made of 

 doubled-up nuclei, many of which are the smallest 

 colonies, in bees, which I ever undertook to winter, 

 some not having over a pint and a half of bees. The 

 result is, 722 lbs. of comb honey and 317 of extract- 

 ed— 1039 lbs. in all, giving an average yield of nearly 

 52 lbs. to each of the 20 colonies. This honey (the 

 comb) was mostly shipped on commission a few 

 days ago, while the extracted I am selling out here 

 at home. Our home market demands very little 

 honey, and that little is mostly supplied by my 

 neighbor bee-keepers. 



The result in queens is about 500 sold, about one- 

 half of which was of the " dollar " class, the re- 

 mainder being about equally divided between the 

 three other classes advertised. The 40 colonies bad 

 honey enough for winter after equalizing, but the 

 united nuclei had to be fed the larger part of their 

 winter stores. G. M. Doolittle. 



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



Why, old fiiend, you are getting to be 

 quite a breeder of dollar queens, after all. 

 Who would have supposed it? Fifty-two 

 pounds of honey per colony is certainly a 

 very fair result; but I think it Avas a good 

 thing you didn't have veiy many dlonies 

 gathering honey for surplus duiliig the past 

 season. Your exi)erieiice with buckwlieat 

 is a good deal discouragins. I have been 

 informed that very much buckwheat h< ney is 

 raised in the State of New York. Now, is 

 it true that other bee-keepers in your part 

 of the State have had no better success V 

 At the convention in Albany our fiiend 

 Wright, tlie man who sold so much hnney in 

 ten-cent packages, siid he considered buck- 

 wheat the most important ciop. and he has 

 sold many thousand poinids of it. 



