744 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



1123 



POINTERS FROM THE 

 REAR END OF THE BEE 



Told by The Jay 



every thing new under the sun. 



In the years that I have kept bees I began to 

 feel that there were just a few principles of the 

 craft that I was certain of — that I knew a few- 

 things; but this spring sprung so many surprises 

 on me that "I don't know" too. In a former 

 article you will remember how I treated new 

 s\^arms by hiving them with weak ones. Well, 

 this year I expected to try the same thing; but 

 what do you think? Nearly all of the swaims is- 

 sued before the flow began. I have r^ad how 

 they do that in the South, but this was my first 

 experience. I had only five swarms, and four of 

 them were between apple-blossom and clover. I 

 had 35 colonies in fine order for comb honey; 

 and as all had two stories apiece there was little 

 swarming. 



Then the next thing that surprised me was the 

 tremendous amount of pollen gathered during lo- 

 cust blossom. The bees just crammed every 

 place full of pollen, some brood-frames being one 

 solid mass of green, yellow, red, drab, brown, 

 and white pollen. Sometimes they would fill a 

 cell with pollen, and cap it over. Sometimes 

 they would fill a cell half full, and the queen 

 would lay an egg on top of it. I took atsay one 

 story and put shallow extracting-frames on top 

 v^'ith foundation: and as soon as they had the 

 foundation drawn out enough they would pack 

 pollen into it. I put on comb-honey supers, and 

 they put pollen in the sections; but I was ready 

 for them by this time. I put the extracting- 

 frames on the hive and the sections on top of 

 them; and when the bees came in with big loads 

 that looked like walnuts (but some were smaller) 

 tht-y got tuckered out by the time they cairied it 

 up one flight of stairs, and stopped before getting 

 to the sections. Now I hear some one say, " 1 

 told you so. You use the Danzenbaker hive." 

 All right; howl away; and when you get through 

 I have a small howl coming. I had five eight- 

 frame Langstroth hives, and one of them was the 

 worst of any in the bunch. It has been said that 

 bees will not put pollen in drone comb. Mine 

 do. Some of those large drone-cells had a wad 

 of pollen in them big enough for a tumble-bug 

 to play foot-ball with. 



NoA, the Danzenbaker hive has been roasted 

 quite a little by the big guns because of the pol- 

 len in the sections. With me it is no worse than 

 the Langstroth hive of same capacity; and every 

 time I go after the bees in the Langstroth hivts 

 (I lea\e them alone all I can) it reminds me of 

 transferring a swarm from a cracker-box or a nail- 

 keg; and then to put the frames back, what a job! 

 — burr-combs galore; bees smashed by the whole- 

 sale. I often wonder how any one can use the 

 Hoffman frame when he can get the nice close- 

 fitting Danzenbaker frames and do away with 

 the burr-comb. Then when it comes to taking 

 out the sections from the T super, all stuck up 

 with warm propolis, it strings out and makes you 

 think you are at a lady's-aid taffy-pulling. 



Next came the wax-worm problem. I knew 

 the worms would be in the honey on account of 



the pollen, so I decided to fumigate. I put the 

 supers in a tight little room and put in about two 

 pounds of sulphur. There were some spiders 

 and roaches in the room, and I wanted to get the 

 whole bunch. My! what a smudge I did make! 

 The next day I could hardy stand it in there with 

 the doors and windows open. It killed two rose 

 bushes on the outside, and tnade some beautiful 

 autumn leaves on a grapevine ten feet away from 

 the house. In fact, it seemed to kill every thing 

 around except the wax-worms, roaches, and spi- 

 ders. I could not see that the Lttle >moker they 

 enjoyed was in any way detrimental to their gen- 

 eral health and prosperity. Next time I am going 

 to try the carbon-bisulphide cure They say it 

 is explosive; so if you notice that Southern Indi- 

 ana has a fit of the ague you will guess that anoth- 

 er of my experiments has gone wrong. 



It is said that the large wax-worm does -not get 

 in comb honey — just the little kind. Some of 

 these were about two inches long, and about as 

 big around as a lead-pencil. I guess 1 don't 

 know what the large kind is. There has been a 

 kind of thing crawling around my bee-lot that 

 swallowed two of my pet toads. The boys call 

 it a blue-racer. Is that one of the large kind.? 



Now I want to tell the other side. I had about 

 600 pounds of the finest white-clover honey you 

 ever saw, that I sold to the grocers at 16 cts. per 

 section. One man said: "That looks too good 

 to be made by bees." He took a case. I also 

 had about 500 lbs. of fine extracted honey that I 

 sold in the new Shram self sealing glass jar, and 

 it will hold honey without leaks too. I also in- 

 creased up to 55 colonies, and gave the new ones 

 abundant stores to start with. 



GLEANINGS FROM OUR 

 EXCHANGES 



By W. K. Morrison 



AN ERROR CORRECTED. 



Monsieur Bondonneau writes that I was in 

 error in regard to the restarting of the Algerian 

 bee-paper known as Nahla. As it is, one num- 

 ber is still gotten out each year to give the names 

 of members of the bee-keepers' society ot Alge- 

 ria, also the officers and other necessary items of 

 news. L' Apiculture Nou-uelle is sent to each 

 member in lieu of Nahla. As the number I re- 

 ceived was the same old Nahla, I concluded it 

 had been "playing possum," hence the mistake. 



LABELING HONEY. 



There seems to be a misapprehension with re- 

 gard to the intent of the national pure-food law 

 as regards the proper labeling of honey. It is 

 not necessary to state from what source the hon- 

 ey came. If, however, you state on the label 

 " Pure clover honey " it must not be some other 

 hind of honey. It must be clover or very large- 

 ly from clover. You are not obliged to state 

 what kind of clover the bees worked on to get it 

 — it may be from alsike, white, crimson, sweet, 

 red, mammoth, alfalfa, or any other true clover. 

 You are not obliged to supply all particulars; 



