112 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



keeping was not a!l learned in one day, neither 

 can I give the whole theory of bee-keeping in 

 one article. Wait with patience, and we will 

 endeavor to have the Temple completed by and 

 by. You will remember that I do not recom- 

 mend a. small box lor nuclei, but a hive with a 

 small frame, and a division board, for practical 

 purposes. The person who is raising queens 

 for market will want small boxes. 



E. Gallup. 

 Osage, Iowa. 



[For the American Bee Journal.] 



Ill Flavored Honey. 



[For the American Bee Journal.] 



Queens by Mail, and Illustrations. 



Mr. Editor : — My bees did nothing all the 

 season, till late in the fall when the sunflowers 

 were in full bloom Then they commenced 

 storing honey in great quantities. They gath- 

 ered from fifty to eighty pounds, per stand, in 

 two weeks. S >mc oftliem filled all their sur- 

 plus honey boxes , and when I took some of the 

 honey for eating, I found it tasted as the sun- 

 flowers smell. It is scarcely fit for table use. 

 There are hundreds of acres of those flowers 

 growing here. 



Now what I want to get at, is for some bee- 

 keeper to let me know through the Bee Jour- 

 nal, whether bees will work in a prosperous 

 season on flowers yielding distasteful honey ? 



H. Faul. 



Council Bluffs, Iow r A. 



tf*Wc presume that the sunflower here re- 

 ferred to is one of the numerous varieties of 

 wild aster— probably the A. sericeus or the A. 

 sagiuifolius ; though we do not know that 

 cither 'of these blooms so late in the season. 

 We have no knowledge of the honey-producing 

 qualities of these, nor of any except the New 

 England ister ; but suppose that bees will gath- 

 er from the blossoms of the variety complained 

 of every fall, if honey is secreted by them. 



In the construction of their cells, the bees, by 

 a peculiar instinct, have always used the math- 

 ematically correct angles, which give the great- 

 est strength to support pressure, with the great- 

 est economy of materials ; and this insect con- 

 struction, mathematicians and engineers have 

 followed as the proper angle at which dock- 

 gates should be placed, so that the timber em- 

 ployed would yield the most favorable result. 

 The bee's cell is in fact, an elongated dodecahe- j 

 dron ; and consequently the angles of the tribe- : 

 dral roof and base can be no other than those of 

 the true geometrical solid ; the obtuse angle, on 

 the face of which, produced by the union of two i 

 cubes, is the prime angle which affords the 

 greatest resist ence to water-pressure in the 

 dock-gate. 



The subterranean habitations of the humble- 

 bee are of a much ruder architecture than those 

 of the hive bee. The cells are made of a coarse 

 kind of wax, but placed very confusedly, not 

 exhibiting the geometrical precision observable 

 in the latter. 



Mr. J. H. Townley, of Tompkins, Jackson 

 county, Michigan, sent, me an Italian queen by 

 mail, which, although delayed four days in the 

 mail, w r as safely received and successfully in- 

 troduced to a colony of black bees. (By the 

 way, I think Mr. Townley has the pure Ital- 

 ians, as I have seen some very fine bees raised 

 from queens purchased from him, this season ; 

 I also believe him to be a very reliable dealer). 

 The box in which the queen was mailed was a 

 neat little pine one, about two inches cubic 

 measure inside, with a piece of honey secured 

 to one side by means of a small wooden skew- 

 er ; wire cloth over the bottom, and a half-inch 

 hole in the top, also covered with wire cloth. 

 I see by the stamps on the box that he paid let- 

 ter postage, being twenty-one cents. Now, I 

 think bees should go through the mail the same 

 as seeds. Please ascertain and let us know. 



I should like to have Mr. Quinby tell us 

 which kind of a box he likes best for mailing 

 queens, as he says he has tried several. I wish 

 also he would describe his new non-patented 

 hive. As I see he has no notion of impoverish- 

 ing himself by getting his hive patented, per- 

 haps he can spend a little time in describing it 

 for the benefit of the readers of the Journal. 



I agree with Mr. J. Davis, in '■'pitching in for 

 the picttircs and explanations" of all the hives 

 in use. All will agree that the illustrations of the 

 improvements in implements of agriculture seen 

 in all the agricultural papers of the country are 

 an interesting feature in those papers ; and I 

 can see no reason why the illustration of a good 

 hive, or any tool used in scientific bee-culture, 

 should not be interesting in a journal devoted 

 exclusively to apiarian science. I believe that, 

 in describing anything in the Journal, the di- 

 mensions should be given as well as the shape. 

 In the September number, Mr. S. B. Replogle, 

 in describing his hive, and in his circular also, 

 which I have, gives no dimensions. Sup- 

 pose a person should make one too small, and 

 lose a swarm of bees in consequence, would he 

 not condemn the hive with all its points ? 



John T. Rose. 



Petersburg, Mich. 



Aubrey, in his Natural History of Wiltshire, 

 describes Hampshire as having the name of 

 producing the best honey in England, and also 

 the worst. "The forest honey is the finest; 

 but the south of Wiltshire having much the like 

 tufe, must, afford as good, or little inferioure to 

 it. Mr. Butler, of Basingstoke, who wrote a 

 booke of bees, and had a daughter he called his 

 honey-girle ; to whom, when she was born, he 

 gave certain stocks of bees, which produced 

 400L, as her marriage portion." Mr. Harvey, 

 of Newcastle, got 800-t per annum by bees. Au- 

 brey mentions an improved hive by Mr. Hooke, 

 and other ingenious contrivances of his time. 



The Egyptians, when they celebrated the feast 

 of Mercury, ate honey and figs. 



