20 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Jan. 1. 



Another bee-keeper shot! M. H. Mendleson, 

 the great bee-man of Ventura, recently fell be- 

 fore the arrows of that little winged wretch 

 named Cupid. Mrs. Ella Frear. of Denver, is 

 the happy woman. Sorry to lose you from our 

 bachelor i-anks, friend M.: but what can not be 

 helped must be endured. 



What a sad thing it is to hear 

 Of great bee-jiien getting out of gear!— 

 Tangling themselves in apron-strings. 

 Bonnets, hairpins, fumery, and all such 

 things! 

 That is a very good idea advanced by Mr. 

 Alley about experiment stations. One station 

 and one experimenter will hardly fill the bill. 

 The great desire of us Americans is for contro- 

 versy; and with several stations the doctors 

 will be sure to disagree, then what lively times 

 we shall have! Let's have more stations. We 

 want one right off in California. 



California bachelor bee-koepers owe a debt 

 of thanks to Dr. Miller for that washing reci- 

 pe on page 842 of Gleanings. The Rambler 

 has pasted it in his hat, so to speak. Why! 

 what's the use of having any women around 

 when we can bake our own flapjacks and wash 

 our own clothes? Take courage. Messieurs 

 Bachelors. Dr. M. is on our side. 



The Stinger seems to think that the Rambler 

 is writing in a sensational vein. Well, I de- 

 scribed that death of the bee-keeper Bohn just 

 exactly as it happened, and did not throw in 

 any of the wild incidentals that surrounded the 

 inquest. If it was written in a sensational 

 style it was done so unwittingly on my part, 

 while, on the other hand, the Stinger tries hard 

 to write something sensational and can't. 



Button, the murderer of the said bee-keeper 

 Bohn, has just had his trial, and the verdict of 

 the jury was "manslaughter." The culprit 

 gets seven years' imprisonment. Public opin- 

 ion would have hanged him until he was dead. 



Well, there! I was just going to mop my floor; 

 but I won't do it now. It has not been mopped 

 in two months, and then it was only scrubbed 

 with an old broom. But see what Hasty calls a 

 mop — a Christian Dagon — and fourth cousin to 

 the devil (or saloon, which means the same). It 

 makes my hair stand on end to think of what a 

 narrow escape I have had. I will throw that 

 old nasty Dagon away out into the bushes early 

 in the morning. I think that other bee-men in 

 California have caught on to this before, for I 

 never see any Dagons around their shanties. 

 Then just think of it — what a floor Hasty must 

 tolerate! 



Though we have not much wintering troubles 

 here in California, I think much care should be 

 exercised in putting the bees into proper shape 

 for what little winter we do have. We have 

 quite cool nights, if nothing more; and the 

 practice of many bee-keepers in leaving the ex- 

 tracting supers on the hives, even when piled 



three supers in height, is not a plan to be com- 

 mended. A colony of bees will be stronger in 

 the spring, as a general rule, and build up fast- 

 er, if they have been confined to the brood- 

 chamber and tucked up warm with a quilt. 

 There's no harm in leaving the supers on, but 

 see to it that the quilt confines the bees to the 

 brood chamber. 



[Short paragraphs, giving little nuggets of 

 information, are becoming more and more ap- 

 preciated by the reading public. The reason 

 of this is, that the pith is more easily assimilat- 

 ed by the mind, because it does not have to 

 hold in logical array every point suggested in a 

 regular article. You will see by the above that 

 Rambler proposes to carry out this idea for the 

 California bee-keeping interests. — Ed.] 



r-— 'ANSWERS TO 'L^-—^ 



B Y G.M.DOOLITTLE.BOROOINO.N .Y. 



""""""""" Uimilllll..iiy.Mnillliiiii..ii.ii. 



HOW TO KNOW WHEN BEES ARE WINTERING 

 AVELI, IN THE CELLAR. 



Question. — I am a beginner in the matter of 

 wintering bees in the cellar, and I wish you 

 would tell me just how I may know when my 

 bees are wintering well. By knowing the con- 

 ditions of wintering well I can tell whether I 

 am right or wrong as I have them. 



Answer. — It will be very hard to tell all 

 about this matter of the well wintering of bees, 

 in the short space we feel at liberty to use here. 

 Perhaps the best I can do is to tell just how I 

 find my bees in the cellar this 14th day of De- 

 cember, as I have just come from the cellar, 

 having just gone in with a view to answering 

 this question, and having found the bees win- 

 tering toeU, according to my views in the mat- 

 ter. The bee-cellar is perfectly dark — so dark 

 that it is impossible to discern even the faintest 

 outline of a large piece of white paper carried 

 in with me. The four doors have all been shut 

 behind me, which lead into the cellar, one after 

 th(! other as I went in, so that no disturbing 

 ray of light or breath of cold air should arouse 

 the bees in the least. Being in total darkness I 

 stand still and listen, for in this listening we 

 can tell more about how the bees are wintering 

 than by any otlier one thing after we have 

 struck a light. The sound 1 heard when listen- 

 ing is best described by the low murmur of j 

 a gentle breeze in the distant tree-tops, or, as 

 I once wrote, a hum of content, with now and 

 then, say once in 20 to 30 seconds, a faint " zeep, 

 zeep," of a single bee, as we often hear in the 

 summer time, only much more suppressed, 

 while on an average of about once in every two 

 minutes a single bee will fly out from some hive 

 to the cellar-bottom, which is readily told by 

 the sound of its wings. There are 60 colonies | 



