36 



THE AMERICAN APICULTURIST. 



fall, How doj'on like tlie Joiiriuil ? 

 answered "don't like it at all, can't 

 get any get honey out of it." An- 

 other, being told my bees had given 

 1000 pounds from eighteen stands, 

 exclaimed, "j^ou have more bass- 

 wood and they must have sucked 

 the saj:) out of them," these and quite 

 a few other expressions more 

 laughable than the above, were 

 made in my presence. What, oh ! 

 what, can be done to get them to 

 take the journals ! 

 Defiance, 0. 



For the American ApicuUurist. 



CLIPPING WINGS OF 

 QUEENS. 



L. H. LiNDEMUTH. 



In the winter of 1885 I bought 

 and read "ABC in Bee Cultui-e," 

 and one thing which impressed me 

 strongly was the clipping of 

 queens' wings to keep them from 

 absconding. In the spring of 

 1886 I had six swarms, spring 

 count ; I clipped the wings of four 

 of the queens, cutting oflf" the feath- 

 ery part of one wing diagonally 

 across. Three of the clipped 

 queens swarmed in May. Some 

 time after they had swarmed, I ex- 

 amined the colonies and neither of 

 them had a queen with a clipped 

 wing. I spoke to a neighbor bee- 

 keeper about it, and lie told me 

 that bees take a dislike to queens 

 with clipped wings and kill them. 

 The thought struck me he should 

 know, having a number of colonies 

 himself and being an old hand in 

 in the art of ai)iculture. 1 also 

 had some conclusions in the mat- 

 ter ; one thing was the queens died 

 of old age, but this theory was de- 

 stroyed when I examined hive No. 

 4 and found that the queen which 

 was clipped was replaced with a 

 queen that had perfect wings and 



the queen with the clipped wings 

 could be found nowhere in tlje 

 hive. This colony of bees was 

 queenless in the spring of 18S6 and 

 was given eggs from another hive 

 from which the}' reared a queen 

 and after she was fertilized and 

 commenced to lay I clipped her 

 one wing. I know it was not old 

 age in this case. Another conclu- 

 sion is my bees being hybrids and 

 naturally of a cross disposition they 

 might be apt to kill queens when 

 clipped; a third reason was it 

 might be that I made an error in 

 clipping but one wing instead of 

 both, so that the bees would not 

 notice the difference in the wings, 

 if there is such a thing as the bees 

 taking notice of such defects in 

 the appearance of the queen. I saw 

 a statement that Mr. Doolittle 

 made in " Gleanings of Bee Cul- 

 ture" about clipping queens' wings. 

 He says he would rather care for 

 three colonies whose queens are 

 clipped than for one swarm where 

 the queen is not clipped. I would 

 myself, but not when the clipped 

 queen is replaced by a queen that 

 is not clip[)ed. I would like if 

 some beekeeper, ripe in experience, 

 would give some plausible reasons 

 why my bees acted so strangely. 

 Lehmaster, Pa. 



For the American ApicuUurist, 



TWO YEARS' EXPERIENCE 

 IN BEEKEEPING. 



E. W. Councilman. 



I COMMKNCKD two yoars ago by 

 first building a cellar, under my 

 kitchen, IG X 20 feet, with a wall 

 two feet and a half thick laid in 

 cement from bottom to top. I ven- 

 tilated by running a four-inch 

 stove-pipe from near the bottom 

 up through the kitchen floor and 

 attaching it to the stove-pipe. I 



