GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



Grace Allen 



THE DIXIE BEE 1 Nashvi.ie,Te„„. 



'IIIH CRKKI) OF rnV WORKKR JiKK. 



I believe in true work and the spirit of 

 service — 

 Not in a visionless grinding at tasks ; 

 But the mood that springs forth all athrill 

 with the morning 

 To find in its work all the rapture it 

 asks. 



T lioliovp ill caili g'iving himself for the many — 



Not in a sad or a spiritless way, 

 Rat fully and freely, a gift worth the giving. 



As flowers give fi'agrance and dawning gives 

 day. 



I believe in contentment, devotion, and courage; 



Eagerness, loyalty, gladness, and song; 

 And in something all-wise and all- wonderful roniid 

 us — 



'Tis God I believe in! To Him I belong! 



We could scarcely keep up with our 

 peaches and plums this year, and for some 

 time the ground under the trees had consid- 

 erable over-ripe fruit lying around, or that 

 which broke when it fell, and the bees 

 certainly did help take care of it. 



An Alabama correspondent writes en- 

 thusiastically of his success with the shal- 

 low supers, including his use of them to 

 form a divisible brood-nest, according to 

 Mr. SchoU's method, recommending it as 

 well adapted to women beekeepers. 



sion of bloom becomes a guiding factor in • 

 the management of an apiary, especially in 

 seasons when the crop is not generous and 

 the beeman may be tempted to extract pret- 

 ty close; for then he surely should know 

 wliether there is enough bloom between 

 clover and aster, for instance, for his bees 

 to be self-supporting, or whether, having 

 taken most of their supplies at a time when 

 there are few ncetar-bearing blossoms, he 

 must feed. 



* « * 



Won't Mr. J. H. Todd, or some other 

 advocate of the Simmins metliod of intro- 

 duction, explain the advantage of the dark- 

 ness? This is exactly the method I have 

 seen Mr. J. M. Buchanan, of Franklin, 

 Tenn., use, except that, after his queen had 

 been quite alone without food for about 

 half an hour, she was quietly run down 

 between the frames in hroad daylight, the 

 whole operation being performed at the 

 hour that happened to suit Mr. Buchanan's 

 convenience. Tt seems as though having to 

 do the work at night might be quite a draw- 

 back in an outyard, which was where we 

 saw Mr. Buchanan operating. He was well 

 on his way to Franklin by noon. We our- 

 selves have never tried it, having used cages 

 successfully and the smoke method disas- 

 trously. But we don't blame the method. 

 It was probably clumsy Avork. 



We set out a few young grapevines this 

 spring, and are not at all pleased with the 

 waj' they have (or have not) grown. Still 

 less are we pleased with the construction of 

 our so-called arbor. So the arbor is to 

 come down, and most of the vines are to 

 come up. Then we shall start all over with 

 the ]ilan of having each vine on a single 

 trellis by the south side of a hive. In tliis 

 way we shall liave shade for our bees that 

 will not only supply us with grapes, but, 

 according to the editor, page 611, Aug. 1, 

 will also i:)rovide a protection from the too 

 persistent attentions of Ihe militant mem- 

 bers of our apiary. 



Wasn't it attractive — that honey-plant 

 nnniber? The j)iclures were beautiful, and 

 the information was of the tempting kind 

 that "tastes like more." When a study is 

 both as delightful and profitable as the 

 study of honey-plants for a beekeeper, why 

 sliould we be slow about going into it more 

 exhaustively? A knowledge of the succes- 



It doesn't appeal to me to let the queen 

 have the run of the hive, and from neither 

 my limited experience nor my more extend- 

 ed reading can I figure out any objection 

 to keeping her more or less confined, accord- 

 ing to the method in general practice. To 

 find brood scattered around in the frames 

 removed for extraction, as Mr. Poppleton 

 admits he often does (page 147, Feb. 15), 

 doesn't appeal either. We were very en- 

 thusiastic over an apiary we visited in 191.3, 

 with colonies tiered several hives high, but 

 were surj^rised to see no evidence of queen- 

 excluders. Replying to our questions, the 

 owner assured us the queen would not go 

 above the second stoi'y to lay, but later his 

 wife said the.y had had a dreadful time 

 extracting, with brood scattered all through 

 the extract ing-fi'ames. It seems unneces- 

 sary, when the queen can be so easily con- 

 fined. T wonder just what objection Mr. 

 Poppleton has to the use of the queen-ex- 

 cluder for honey production, when he says 

 he would use it for queen-rearing (page 

 577, July 15). 



