126 



GLEANINGS IN J3EE CULTURE 



Where the Power Truck Saves Time 



I keep 600 colonies in six out-apiaries, and run 

 for comb and extracted honey. Last season I bought 

 a one-cylinder ten-horse-power motor truck, 1500 

 lbs. capacity. I find it strong enough, with suiB- 

 cient speed for all purposes. 



My apiary is arranged with a road through the 

 center. I enter the apiary with the truck and sup- 

 plies, stop near one end, attend to the rows near the 

 truck, move up a few rows, arid so on. When done 

 with one apiary we load on every thing that goes, 

 and are off to the next. 



It takes the place of one double team and spring 

 wagon; also one single horse and rig. It saves 

 about one man in time, besides making the work 

 much easier and more pleasant. It is especially val- 

 uable for moving bees and taking off comb honey 

 after the flow has stopped in the fall. Two men can 

 go to an apiary after the flow has stopped, take the 

 lids off, smoke the bees down, take the supers off, 

 and stand them on end behind the hives, then go 

 over them, smoke the bees out, brush them off, load 

 them on, and take them away without having any 

 spoiled by the bees — something impossible to do with 

 a team. 



Standish, Cal. H. H. Haetman. 



Beemen, Wise and Otherwise 



Out in California there is a beekeeper who has 

 kept bees (as well as moths) for over thirty years in 

 the same yard. Some of his hives have the bottoms 

 nailed on tight, while in not a few of them I found 

 the frames nailed fast in the hive. Among the con- 

 glomeration I counted eight different kinds and sizes 

 of brood-frames and five sizes of hive bodies. 



Several barrels of slumgum had been thrown on 

 the ground and in boxes, I suppose to help the moths 

 over a poor honey season. One pile which had been 

 undisturbed for six years contained some sixty or 

 seventy supers full of moth webs. 



In Hot Springs, Ark., a beeman had on one hive 

 three supers, one reading " Bottled in Bond," an- 

 other " Heinze's Pickles," while the one on the top 

 announced a dye for whiskers. The bees seemed to 

 be quite happy notwithstanding. 



Here's another beeman I know — J. Ross Miller, of 

 Montrose, Col. A worker? One morning when I 

 was his hired hand I woke up to find the lamps lit 

 and breakfast on at about five o'clock, my usual time 

 for getting up. My boss had beaten me ten miles. 

 He had hitched the team, driven that distance to an 

 outyard, and had brought back a load of supers so 

 we could all keep busy scraping and grading. 



Mr. Miller is certainly one of the best graders I 

 ever saw, while as an inspector he beats them all. 

 I helped him pile up and burn several hives of his 

 own bees. One had three full supers of nice-looking 

 honey. He simply burned bees, hives, frames, supers, 

 and combs down to white ashes. But that stamped 

 out the foul brood. He has five outyards, and takes 

 his assistants out in an automobile. 



One of the best-known beekeepers in this country 

 once spoke of me as " the wandering beeman." Wan- 

 dering is right. Beeman is wrong. But I claim to 

 know more about bee locations than a wild goose. 



Hot Springs, Ark. L. W. Benson. 



Shipping Bees in a Refrigerator Car 



The experiment of shipping bees in a refrigerator 

 car was made by F. Grabbe, Libertyville, Lake Co., 

 Illinois. One hundred colonies were put into a car 

 that had been iced twelve hours before loading. The 

 car left Libertyville about noon, August 15, and was 

 run direct to Chicago, thence to Burlington, Iowa. 

 There the car was reiced, and continued on its jour- 

 ney to St. Peters, Missouri, where it arrived August 

 19 at 4:00 a. m. The bees were in excellent condi- 



tion, and were loaded on wagons and hauled four 

 miles north, near the Mississippi River. The temper- 

 ature was about 95 in the shade while the bees were 

 in transit. He shipped the bees for the Spanish- 

 needle honey rrop in September, and got about sixty 

 pounds of extracted honey per colony. 



The freight charge on the car from Libertyville to 

 St. Peters was $70. The two icings cost $6.50, and 

 the hauling to the river cost $10, or a total of $86.50. 

 The distance covered was about 500 miles. 



Mr. Grabbe has had wide experience in conduct- 

 ing perambulating apiaries. He was connected with 

 an enterprise in which a steamboat and several 

 barges were used in transporting bees from place to 

 place on the Mississippi, culling of willow and other 

 bloom being the object. The expense, however, in 

 maintaining day and night crews on the steamer 

 ate up the profits. All moves were made at night, 

 and on this account day and night watches had to 

 be maintained. 



Chicago, 111. J. L. Geaff. 



Was the Leaf the Signal for the After- 

 swarm? 



I hived a very large swarm at 11 A. M. They 

 went in nicely, and, to all appearances, were well 

 satisfied. I was observing them at 4 p. m. when a 

 bee alighted on the hive with a wad of leaf in its 

 mouth. All at once the whole swarm was thrown 

 into consternation, and they began to come out, and 

 absconded. I am as positive of the matter as I 

 could be of any thing of so minute proportions. Has 

 any one else ever observed any thing similar? Is it 

 possible that this was a signal for absconding? 



Rising Star, Tex., Aug. 14. J. W. Boase. 



[There are so many cases of swarms leaving the 

 hive after a few hours that it seems to us more like 

 a coincidence that the bee with the piece of leaf 

 should have alighted at the precise moment when 

 the swarm was preparing to abscond; that is, in our 

 opinion, the bee with the leaf merely happened to 

 alight at the same time, and this occurrence prob- 

 ably had nothing to do with the bees leaving. — Ed.] 



Make Your Own Rubber Bands 



On page 952, December 1, E. J. Ladd suggests 

 the use of rubber bands for transferring. I just 

 called up a large rubber store, and find that rubber 

 bands cost $1.75 a pound, while a pound contains 

 about 40 bands of the size necessary. 



Get wise and make your own rubber bands. If 

 you haven't an auto, buy old inner tubes at from 6 

 to 10 cts. per pound, which you can cut up into wide 

 or narrow bands as you choose. Get tubes large or 

 small, according to the size of the bands you need. 

 These will make stronger bands than any thing you 

 can buy new at a rubber store. 



Chili, N. Y. L. F. Wahl. 



Flour Made from Sweet Potato as a Pollen 

 Substitute 



After experimenting with different kinds of import- 

 ed meals and flour, I find the bees do not take to any 

 kind readily. The next products I tried were flours 

 wliich I made irom the green banana, sweet potato, 

 and cassava. 



Each flour was put in separate trays and placed 

 in the apiary, and a small piece of comb containing 

 honey was put in each tray to attract the bees. 



The flour made from the sweet potato gave the best 

 results; and if I could have pulverized it as fine as 

 wheat flour, the bees would have taken it more 

 readily. P. A. HOOPER. 



Four Paths, Jamaica. 



