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GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



Heads of Grain from Different Fields 



I am like the busy little bee 

 That works with all its might 



To gather honey every day 

 And eat it up at night. 



Rev. Wallace. 



Combs Melting Down on Hot Days; the Remedy 



I have lost an average of two full honeycombs per 

 colony, besides some half a dozen colonies outright. 

 Our summers are made of a variation of hot and 

 cool spells. The north wind will blow for several 

 days, running the thermometer up, oftentimes, to 

 112 degrees or more. Then, as a rule, the cool south 

 wind springs up, and continues blowing until it feels 

 quite cool. 



Some of my hives are under large oaks in the best 

 of shade, and some out on a glaring hillside. Of 

 course those in the hot sun suffered most from the 

 heat. My theory is that ventilation over the tops of 

 the frames would prevent this loss, whether a hive 

 were in the sun or shade. I propose taking a comb- 

 honey super and tacking screen over the top and 

 bottom, also over an inch hole bored in one end of 

 the super, then place it between the cover and hive 

 with the hole toward the west, away from all pre- 

 vailing winds. Would this be sufficient protection 

 to hives out in the sun ? 



VENTILATED ESCAPE-BOARDS. 



The new bee-escape board, described on page 577, 

 looks more practical. I have given the Porter bee- 

 escape boards up. In hot weather I feared to use 

 them, and in cool weather they would not free the 

 supers of bees in two or three days. I have seen a 

 La Reese bee-escape board advertised. Are they good? 



In an ordinary year my bees gather honey more 

 or less from February to October. The winters are 

 open and mild, giving the bees opportunity to fly 

 out nearly every day. How many full combs should 

 a colony have to winter on ? 



HOW MANY POUNDS OF EXTRACTED HONEY CAN ONE 

 TAKE WITH A TWO-FRAME COWAN EXTRACTOR? 



Can you tell how many pounds of honey a man 

 can extract in a day with a Cowan two-frame ex- 

 tractor? I can average only 500 pounds a day. I 

 am one beekeeper who greatly appreciates the A. I. 

 Root Co., and consider the knowledge gleaned from 

 the ABC and X Y Z and from Gleanings worth 

 hundreds of dollars to me. 



West Butte, Cal., Aug. 24. R. A. Wilder. 



[The remedy for combs melting down is to place all 

 hives that are out in the hot sun under some kind 

 of shade. This may be done by the use of shade- 

 boards, or, better, by placing the hives in the first 

 place in the shade of a small tree that will protect 

 them during the hottest hours of the day. Additional 

 ventilation will doubtless be good also. The scheme 

 you propose would give no more ventilation than 

 would be secured through a one-inch auger-hole, 

 because the cover will fit down over the wire cloth 

 of the super. Some beekeepers use the plan of giving 

 ventilation through the upper back end of the hive. 

 This may be done by putting on a rim or super 

 having two or more holes at the back end. These 

 may or may not be covered with wire cloth. A strong 

 colony will guard these holes the same as they would 

 an entrance. Another scheme is to tilt the cover 

 back a little — just enough to give ventilation at the 

 front and back. We do not think you need to have 

 any trouble from combs melting down if you put the 

 hives in the shade and then give ventilation at the 

 top and a large entrance at the bottom. 



One man working alone may be able to take as 

 much as 1000 lbs. of extracted honey a day with a 

 two-frame Cowan extractor providing all conditions 

 are favorable; but as a rule the general average will 

 not be much if any higher than you have been able 



to secure. Of course, if one has a good helper he 

 can more than double the output of one man. If the 

 hives are quite a distance apart, frames stuck to- 

 gether with brace-combs, and badly glued to the hive 

 in addition, the progress of the work will be much 

 slower. If, on the other hand, the frames are modern, 

 spaced 1 % from center to center, without brace- 

 combs, hives close together, and near the extracting- 

 house, one can, of course, take more honey in a given 

 time. If he follows the practice of some, and extracts 

 before the combs are entirely capped, or if he goes 

 still further and extracts before they are capped at 

 all, he can take, of course, more gallons of honey ; but 

 it may, and probably will, be honey of a very poor 

 quality. — Ed.] 



Introducing; a Modification of the Caging Plan 



I catch the undesirable queen, mash her head 

 (don't quite kill her), run in the queen that is to 

 take her place with her at once, with no workers. I 

 push enough queen candy in the hole to last about 

 six or eight hours ; place the cage right in over the 

 frames, * and the job is done. I had not a bit of 

 trouble with this method when robbing was rampant. 

 Let us compare the old with this new plan a little. 

 By the old plan of having the bees without a queen 

 for a day or two, queen-cells are invariably started; 

 and when the queen is liberated from the cage she 

 is likely to be balled and sometimes killed in favor 

 of the cells ; and about the only way to ward of¥ this 

 trouble is to cut out the queen-cells, which is almost 

 impracticable. By this new plan we have conditions 

 about as close to nature as we can get them. First, 

 we have the odor of the undesirable queen to start 

 with, and the bees don't seem to realize that any but 

 their queen is in the cage, and therefore they rarely 

 if ever ball the cage; second, when the queen is lib- 

 erated she must have acquired the odor of the dead 

 queen. By this method the bees are without a queen 

 only about half a day, which is a big thing in the 

 way of eggs and population. 



Swainsboro, Ga. S. Cheatham. 



Does a Queen Lay in a Queen-cell ? 



The question was up in last Gleanings about a 

 queen laying in a queen-cell. I have sometimes heard 

 it questioned whether she actually lays in queen-cells 

 or the workers place the eggs there. This recalls an 

 experience I had last summer. In looking through 

 brood-chambers I found a queen caught head first in 

 a queen-cell, or, rather, a queen-cell cup. The evi- 

 dence was strong to me that she had just stuck her 

 head in there to see if every thing was all right 

 before depositing the egg, and by some means had 

 got caught. When I liberated her she was uninjured, 

 and went on about her work. 



Guelph, Can., Feb. 25. Morley Pettit. 



The Use and Abuse of a Smoker 



Kindly advise me how I must smoke the bees. 

 Must I give one, two, three, or a dozen puffs into 

 the hive? Must I blow the smoke into the entrance 

 before I open the cover, blowing the smoke up into 

 the frames, or must I remove the cover and blow 

 the smeke down? (This latter way seems useless to 

 me, because smoke won't go down.) Then after I 

 smoke them, how long should I wait before taking 

 off the cover! Should I handle them at morning, 

 noon, or night, I mean, to find the queen ? Then 

 how shall I know if she is young and fertile or old 

 and sterile? G. D. Campbell. 



Weymouth, Nova Scotia, Can., Sept. 3. 



[It is hard to give any general rule applying to 

 the use of a smoker, for most beekeepers have their 

 own particular ideas on the subject. In general we 



