874 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Nov. 



come unto me, and forbid them not, for 

 of such is the kingdom of heaven." 



Now, as we open this Home Paper with a 

 letter from a child, here is another to close 

 with, from one who has l)eeii forty-two 

 > ears serving the Lord : 



Dear Brother:—! just want to talk a little this 

 morning-, and tell you a part of my experience. I 

 have been in the service of the Master forty-two 

 years, and oh how it g-laddens my heart to hear 

 those young- people speak .out in his praise! Do 

 you know T had been wishing- for a long- time that 

 you would ask the bee-friends to g-ive their relig-- 

 ious experience for awhile? I was very agreeably 

 surprised when I turned to Our Homes in the issue 

 for Oct. 1."). N. A. E. Ellis. 



Astoria, Mo. 



JAPANESE BUCKWHEAT. 



IS IT GOING TO HE THE BUCKWHEAT FOR BEE- 

 KEEPEKS? 



Tip T present we have received reports 

 ^Mk from only eight different individuals. 

 ]pr Now, we sold about forty bushels of 

 -^^ this buckwheat for a test, and most of 

 it in small packages of from two 

 ounces to a pound ; yet we have only eight 

 reports so far ; and it is a little singular 

 that these eight reports are all extra good. 

 Now look here, friends, I wonder if it is go- 

 ing to be true with this new buckwheat as 

 it was said of bee-keepers in regard to re- 

 porting honey-yields, that nobody reports 

 unless he has'made u big thing. Please let 

 us hear from those who have made a failure 

 of it. I have given you our report, and I 

 frankly stated that the yield of grain was 

 not near what I w as led to expect. Now 

 let us have reports of all kinds— good, bad, 

 and indifferent. Don't be backward in say- 

 ing that it didn't do half as well as our old 

 kinds, if such is the truth. Below are the 

 reports alluded to above : 



.lAPANESE BUCKWHEAT YIELDED TWICE AS MUCH 

 AS THE COMMON KINDS. 



Our yield of Japanese buckwheat was satisfactory, 

 taking the dry season into consideration. From 

 one peck of seed, purchased from you, we have 4 

 bushels, 3 pecks— twofold more than the common 

 black buckwheat yielded, both being treated pre- 

 cisely alike. Mr. Leikart, a neighbor, nt our solici- 

 tation, -sowed a bushel which he bought of Peter 

 Henderson: and although the cows broke in and 

 destroyed some, he has 27 bushels. This yield 

 is also double what the silverhull yielded with same 

 culture. 



OUR REPORT. 



Our honey report for this year seems meager 

 compared with what we expected in the spring. 

 Never were our bees in bettor condition, and never 

 were we better prepared to receive a honey-tiow— 

 which did not come. A bright new wheelbarrow 

 was in readiness from the Home of the Honey- 

 Bees, on which to wheel the honey in screen-doors 

 and windows into the honey-room, etc. Wo winter- 

 ed .'53 colonies, sold .">, and commenced the honey- 

 season with 48. We increased them by natural 

 swarming to 58, and have taken about 1700 lbs. of 

 extracted honey and 200 lbs. of comb. The bees 

 have an abundance of stores for winter, and we 

 think the honey we extracted this fall the finest 



fall honey we have ever taken. It is dark, but has 

 only a slight flavor of buckwheat. In the light of 

 our experience this year, .Japanese buckwheat is 

 not so good for honey as the other kinds. It did not 

 stay in bloom so long— matured more rjuickly. 



Mrs. Bell L. Duncan. 

 Black Lick, Pa., Nov. 8, 1887. 



a yield of 12(4 BUSHELS FROM 1 PECK, UNDER 

 ADVEIISK CONDITIONS. 



I sowed a peck of the new Japanese buckwheat, 

 July .5, on a trifle over half an acre of ground. It 

 came up well, and there were certainly plants 

 enough properly distributed for an acre. It 

 grew and blossomed well, but the excessive wet 

 weather caused a lot of weeds to grow and some- 

 what smother a part of it. Unfavorable weather, 

 and a frost at the close of the season, undoubtedly 

 prevented the growth of so large a crop as might 

 have been expected had it been sown one week ear- 

 lier, as I intended. The weather was not quite dry 

 enough when it was thrashed, and some (perhaps a 

 bushel or two) was left in the straw. As it was, I 

 secured just 600 lbs., or 13;4 bushels of 48 lbs., after 

 running twice through a good fanning--mill. I feel 

 well pleased with it. The bees worked on it some, 

 but stored no surplus. They also had other fields of 

 the old kind to forage on. We do not get buck- 

 wheat honey here every year, and it is nothing 

 against it that it had no honey this year. In 1886 

 we were favored with a large yield from buck- 

 wheat, having several hundred pounds in sections, 

 and of extracted also. It sold slowly at about two- 

 thirds the price of clover and basswood honey. 



Walpole, N. H., Nov. 7, 1887. J. L. Hubbard. 



ONE AND ONE-FOURTH BU8HRLS FROM ONE POUND 

 OF SEED. 



Mr. lii)t)t:—l^ you remember, I told you, when I 

 was at your place, about getting a pound of Jap- 

 anese buckwheat of you last spring. Vou asked 

 me how much I raised from it. I could not tell you 

 then, but I can now. I weighed it, sack and all, and 

 it weighed 65 lbs. The sack will probably weigh I'A 

 lbs., and I think there was more than H4 lbs. shell- 

 ed off, as I noticed it was pretty thick on the 

 gTound, so I got U4 bushels by weight from one 

 pound of seed. I told you we had an acre of buck- 

 wheat besides the above. We got 19 bushels from 

 that. Don't you think both kinds did very well for 

 a dry summer? It was a sight to see the bees work- 

 ing on the buckwheat. I never saw them work on 

 it as they did this year. We cut a little over seven 

 acres of red clover for seed ; about one-third of it 

 stood very thin. We got lOi/j bushels of seed by 

 weight from that. Our bees worked a great deal on 

 that also; and also on the first crop of clover too. 

 Don't you think bees working on such crops will 

 cause them to fill better than they otherwise would? 



Bristolville, Trumbull Co., O. J. S. Barb. 



FOUR OUNCES YIELDED 63 LBS., AND ONE STALK 

 GAVE 1153 KERNELS. 



I tried the Japanese buckwheat this season on a 

 rather small scale. Last spring my son purchased 

 a 4-oz. packet of you. I sowed it June '3.5, on about 

 5 rods of ground, which was very thin. It came up 

 and grew very rank, and soon covered the ground. 

 The fore part of August we had a heavy rain that 

 washed it quite badly. We had a severe frost be- 

 fore it was all matured. I cut it about the first of 

 September. It stood out some three weeks, on ac- 

 count of wet weather, before I could thrash it, and 



