1887 



GLEANINGS IN iJEE CULTURE. 



87o 



quite a little was destroyed by mice and birds. I 

 thrashed it, and cleaned up 0^ lbs. of nice buck- 

 wheat. I counted ll.>5 kernels from one stalk. 

 Buckwheat this seasen is a very li;ibt crop here, 

 not yielding more than tJ to 10 bi;.>liels per acre. I 

 think I shall try the Jai)aiiese ne.vt season, on a 

 larger scale. O. N. Gtehnsev. 



Great Bend, Pa., Nov. '>, 1887. 



A YIELD 0^' 160 TO 1. 



Last spring I got of you 2 oz. of the Japanese 

 buckwheat, from which 1 raised 'M lbs., which is a 

 yield of 160 to one. It was sown in drills, and much 

 of it was too thick, and it suffered from dry weath- 

 er, or it would have given a still better result. Ne.\t 

 season I intend to sow an acre or more; and if it 

 eciuals in yield what this did I shall be well satisfied. 

 A. A. Fradenbuijo. 



Port Washington, Ohio, Oct. 29, 1887^ 



A YIELD OF ONE BUSHEL AND TWO QUAKTS FROM 

 ONLY HALF A POTNO OK SEED. 



You ask for a report from those getting the Jap- 

 anese buckwheat of you. Well, I bought 1 lb. of the 

 seed; and for fear it might fail I sowed just one- 

 half of it. It grew well, but of course it was very 

 dry here as with you. I harvested it, and thrashed 

 one bushel and two quarts, but not as plumj) as the 

 seed I got of you. I intend trying it again next 

 year. H. J. Bean. 



Black Creek, Ont., Can., Nov. 8, 1887. 



SIX BUSHELS FROM ONE PECK; THE GRAIN L.ARGER 

 THAN SILVERHULL. 



The peck of Japanese buckwheat that I received 

 from you I sowed about the middle of June. I har- 

 vested from the peck of seed six bushels, which I 

 admired very much while in bloom; also when I 

 came to harvest it, as the grain was so much larger 

 than the siiverhull. I sowed the silverhull ten days 

 later, alongside the Japanese, which gave about 

 the same yield; but as the drought hurt all the 

 early sown buckwheat much more than the later, I 

 am quite well pleased with the result. 



L. D. Freeman. 



Venango, Crawford Co., Pa., Nov. 10, 1887. 



I thrashed 34 bushels of Japanese buckwheat 

 from one peck of seed purchased of you. 

 Elroy, Wis. E. E. Babcock. 



among those left were some of my best Italian 

 queens. I bought ten colonies, which cost quite a 

 sum, as bees were scarce. With all my combs left 

 with more or less honey in, I soon built up to sixty 

 colonies from which I reared queens enough to fill 

 my orders. I am glad to say I have had good suc- 

 cess, and, as far as reported to me, I have given 

 good satisfaction, contrary to the prediction of 

 some friends who said that, because 1 was a woman, 

 I would not get any orders. 



Queen-rearing is a pleasant occupation, although 

 requiring the strictest attention. The necessary 

 knowledge is more fully gained by experience; yet 

 we all know how essential the leading bee-publica- 

 tions are to the apiarist, and how much more they 

 are worth than their price. 



The honey yield has been light in this section this 

 season. The apiary I work for honey, about nine 

 miles distant, in a l)asswood region, gave about .50 

 lbs. per colony. I think all my bee-keeping friends 

 at the North will join with me in wishing for a more 

 moderate winter. Mrs. Oliver Cole. 



Sherburne, N. Y. 



THE CHENANGO-VALLEY APIABY. 



.V REPORT FROM A LADY BEE-KEEPER; HOW, IN 



SPITE OF FAILURE, SHE SUCCEEDED WITH 



EIGHTY COLONIES. 



Y report may not be very encouraging to 

 beginners. Last spring I met with severe 

 loss in the number of colonies, far exceed- 

 ing any previous year of the nine I have 

 been in the business, and just as I thought 

 I had mastered the wintering problem. I attribute 

 the loss mainly to three causes— severity of the win- 

 ter, the extra long confinement (very nearly si.v 

 months), and working too closely for queens during 

 the late summer. Last fall I put in winter-keeping, 

 eighty colonies in good chafl: hives, with abundance 

 of stores. Those that I doubted, I fed with thick 

 syrup made of granulated sugar, until 1 used two 

 barrels. Well, I lost as many fed with sugar as 

 with honey. 

 Last April found me a little blue. Fortunately, 



MEDICINAL HONEY. 



A REMARKABLE KIND OF HONEY, BUT TOO " FISHY" 

 FOR BEE-KEEPERS TO BELIEVF,. 



fNE of otir subscribeis sends US the fol- 

 lowing, which is marked as having 

 been taken from the Medical Journal. 

 of New York, from which paper it 

 was copied by the Tribune, of the same 

 city : 



About three years ago a distinguished French 

 naturalist, M. Guilmeth, who was traveling in Tas- 

 mania, came suddenly upon a grove of gigantic eu- 

 calyptus-trees, from 3t!0 to 390 feet high, and with 

 a trunk so large at the base that it took forty of his 

 Kanackas, joining hands, to reach around one of 

 them. High in those lofty trees he discovered what 

 he at first took to be enormous galls, but which he 

 soon ascertained to be thedwelling-places of swarms 

 of small, black, wild bees of a variety before un- 

 known to him. Dr. Thomas Caraman proposes for 

 this bee the provisional name of ^pis niura melUfica. 

 Besides being black and smaller than the ordinary 

 honey-bee, this wild bee has its languet rather 

 more developed than that of the domestic bee. M. 

 Guilmeth attempted unsuccessfully to domesticate 

 it in Tasmania. He caused some of these immense 

 trees to be felled, and secured the honey. The 

 largest individual store of honey weighed as much 

 as 11,000 pounds avordupois. 



The honey is described as a thick, homogeneous, 

 somewhat transparent syrupy liquid of a deep or- 

 ange color; having an odor suggestive at once of 

 its containing eucalyptus principles. As the result 

 of experiments on himself and one of his friends. 

 Dr. Thomas Caraman states that, on taking a 

 tablespoonful of the honey in a little tepid water 

 or milk, after a few moments one perceives a gen- 

 tle agreeable warmth take possession of his whole 

 person. At the end of half an hour, the elimina- 

 tion of the active principles by the air-passages hav- 

 ing begun, the voice becomes cleai-er and the 

 breath perfumed; the lungs feel more elastic, more 

 supple. Having continued the use of the honey 

 for a week, four tablespoonfuls daily, the author, 

 who speaks of himself as respectably Heshy, found 

 that he could go up two pairs of stairs, two steps at 

 a time, without stopping to take breath or feeling 

 at all blown. 



The fore part of the above item seems to 

 have the impress of truth upon it — at least, 

 for any thing we know; but the latter part, 

 in regard to its medical qualities, is, in my 

 opinion, entirely out of the way. It looks 

 exceedingly like a puff forapatent medicine, 

 and we should not be surprised if Mr. 



