1894 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



87 



CALIFORNIA ECHOES. 



BY KAMBLER. 



Mr. G. K. Hubbard is now smiling on bee- 

 keepers in Riverside and vicinity, and introduc- 

 ing his patent hive. 



What has become of Muth's honey candy, or 

 caramels'? We are sure they would tickle the 

 palatrs of the lovers of sweets here in Califor- 

 nia. We don't like to see such things go up 

 like a rocket and come down like a stick. We 

 like to see them stay up. 



The report of the Bee-keepers' Union, recent- 

 ly issued, is interesting reading. It might be 

 termed "the Bee - keepers' Bunting - ram." 

 When a fruit-grower is inclined to molest the 

 honied dreams of his bee-keeping neighbor, 

 turn that Arkansas-decision ram loose, and the 

 troubler soon becomes very quiet. California 

 bee-keepers should give the Union a cordial 

 support. 



There, now, Bro. York, please don't tack 

 Jennie Atchley at the end of every short arti- 

 cle in the Texas department. In the journal 

 for Jan. 11th her name appeared six times on 

 two pages. I had to pronounce the name so 

 many times that, at the end, my jaws got to 

 working as though I were chewing a hot pota- 

 to. Jennie's name is a good thing, but you 

 know the old proverb. 



Wilder Canyon Apiary looks deserted. The 

 proprietor is in the far East among the Green 

 Mountains. "Recently," he writes, "the quail 

 in my canyon shouted to me all last summer, 

 ' Chicago, Chicago.' Now in my dreams, with a 

 temperature at 20 degrees below zero, I hear 

 them shouting, 'Come back here, come back 

 here.' " The Rambler also has a faint idea that 

 they shout, " Leave your gun, leave your gun." 



There will be a chance soon for California 

 bee-keepers to take advantage of the vast acre- 

 age of mesquite that grows on the Colorado 

 Desert. Irrigation schemes are opening up 

 that arid region for settlement. We hope to 

 see the bee-keeper in the lead, as he always is. 

 There will be rich pasturage out of range of 

 the irrigation-ditches, which should be occu- 

 pied. Of mesquite honey, those that are posted 

 •say it is beautiful. 



That advice about getting bees out of rocks 

 (see page 22) mav work if the operator sits 

 •down by the hive for the whole three weeks. I 

 tried that very plan, put the trap on at night, 

 and climbed the rocks again the next night, and 

 found every bee had worried itself to death; 

 but even if I had caught the bees, the climbing 

 of the rocks and the lugging of a dozen and one 

 traps back and forth made the colony an expen- 

 sive piece of property. I prefer to get bees 

 some other honest way. 



Mr. Pryal writes very interestingly in the 

 A.. D. J. about the safe way to ship queens 



across the continent. Will he now tell us how 

 to ship queens safely from one part of this 

 great State to another part of it? Last April 

 Mr. Trickey, of Inyo Co., tried to get queens 

 from South Riverside; buterethey arrived they 

 were chilled past recovery. Mr. T can not rear 

 early queens in his county, and would buy from 

 the warmer coast counties. Anybody who can 

 supply Mr. T. with queens when he wants them 

 will find a good customer. We hope Bro. Pryal 

 will extend his experiments in that direction. 

 It is a great deal better to work up one's own 

 State than it is to try to manage a big conti- 

 nent. 



I clip the following from the Marj/.s-iutie Dem- 

 ocrat: 



A couple of (luys ago, at the farm of G. W. Hutch- 

 iug^s, seven miles north of this city, a bee-tree was 

 found near tlie east bank of Feather River, wliich 

 ■was cut to obtain tlie honey. After tlie tree was 

 down on tlie grouiKi, an investigation was institut- 

 ed, and tlie honey located in a hollow about lialf 

 way between where it was cut and the top. On cut- 

 ting the body of the tree open they secured about 

 eighty pounds of honey, eleven duck eggs, and a 

 dead duck. It appears tliat a wood-duck had form- 

 ed a nest in the tree, having entered to tlie cavity 

 through a hole that originally was large enough to 

 admit her Ijody. After hiying eleven eggs slie had 

 commenced sitting to hatch them, and, wliile so do- 

 ing, the bees filled the hole with comb so she could 

 not get out, and s.ce died on the nest. 



A NEW ENEMY TO THE BEES. 



MR. MATHEY DESCRIBES IT. 



The worst enemy of the bee is, according to 

 a new naturalist, the thick " humpbacked fly," 

 Phora incrassnta—a. black little fly with a 

 well-detin(>d hump. It has lately been ob- 

 served in Germany, and also in Russia and 

 Sweden, as a terrible enemy of bee- brood. 

 This insect sneaks into the hive at the first op- 

 portunity, seeks out a still unsealed cell in 

 which the queen has laid an egg, and from 

 which the larva has lately emerged, and then, 

 by means of a long ovipositor, inserts an egg of 

 its own under the skin of the immature bee. 

 This egg possesses a terrible tenacity of life; 

 for after three hours this larva creeps out and 

 bores itself deep into the fat of the bee-pupa, 

 and the cell meanwhile is capped with wax. 

 After 48 hours the larva of the phora sloughs 

 its skin for the first tiine; but at the end of 

 another day and a half it goes through the 

 same operation again. A pupal existence of 24 

 hours suftices to give it a bodily length of a 

 tenth of an inch. Now the creature sheds 

 its skin the third time, makes its way toward 

 the larva of the bee, devours the rest of it, 

 bites through the wax capping of the cell, and 

 creeps out of the hive at the entrance, to seek 

 the ground outside in order to pupate, and from 

 the pupa to become a perfect fly. If this does 



