1894 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



825 



tobacco stoms at the cigar - factories. They 

 cost nothing — in fact, we haul them on the 

 place for fertilizers. The factory-men are glad 

 to have them taken away. Straw and tobacco- 

 st"m* make plenty of smoke, hold fire well, and 

 the tobacco just takes the fight right out of 

 the bees. 



HOW WE STOP THE ROBI5ERS. 



We have never failed to stop the worst case 

 of robbing we ever had, providing the colony 

 being robbed was strong enough to be worth 

 saving. This fall, in taking off my three sto- 

 ries one morning I worked a little too long; 

 and as I smoked the bees down with tobacco I 

 got one colony pretty drunk. Like other 

 drunken beasts they could not defend them- 

 selves. It happened that I went to town after 

 working with the bees, and was gone two 

 hours. When I got home the yard was terribly 

 excited, all trying to find where the honey was. 

 The bees were swarming about one quadruple 

 hive, and were tearing away at three of the 

 colonies in the hive just as fast as they could 

 get in and out. In a case of that kind, some- 

 thing must be done, and done quickly, if we 

 save the colonies that are being robbed. I had 

 a large asparagus-bed. I took my scythe and 

 cut a couple of armsful and banked up the 

 hive-entrance with the tops, and then took ray 

 sprinkler and wet the tops of the asparagus 

 with cold water, and kept it wet for an hour. 

 By that time the robbers had quit trying to get 

 in. I left them banked up for another hour, 

 and then took away the asparagus-tops. Then 

 the robbing was done, and the robbers never 

 offered to trouble them again. I examined the 

 robbed colonies about sundown the next day, 

 and found that fully half of their honey had 

 been taken out of their combs, so I exchanged 

 their honey-combs for full ones and now they 

 are all right. 



I have fought robbers in this way a good 

 many times, and always with succes's. They 

 can not get in throueh wet stuff. The bees 

 belonging there think it is a wet time, and stay 

 at home. In the spring, before we get the as- 

 paragus-tops, I use straw. It is not so good, 

 but will do. 



Platteville, Wis., Oct. 1. 



[While I was at France's recently, I believe 

 he used the straw only, as the tobacco-stems 

 did not seem to be on hand then. I was surpris- 

 ed to see it give such good smoke, and last so 

 well. I should prefer to dispense with the 

 tobacco, as it " scents " every thing up so. 



Your method of stopping robbing I know will 

 work, because we have tried it. Our plan is, to 

 pull up a lot of long gras-*. strew it against the 

 entrance, and sprinkle it, with water. Wet 

 asparagus, grass, or any thing of a bushy na- 

 ture, dripping with water, seems to dampen the 

 ardor of the robbers: for a wet bee is in any 

 thing but a normal condition to fight. The 

 inmates of the hive do not. of cour.«e, venture 

 out. and are ready to tackle their antagonists— 

 the latter at quite a disadvantage.— Ed.] 



RAMBLE 119. 



SANTA BARBAKA TO LOS ALAMOS. 



By Rambler. 



From Santa Barbara we roamed along the 

 sea-coast for over 40 miles, passing now and 

 then the dried and whitened skeleton of a boom 

 town. The town of Naples in particular had 

 an uncanny appearance. All there was of it 

 was a ghastly sign, "Naples," silhouetted in 

 immense open letters against the seaward sky. 

 For several miles the vision haunted us, but 

 not to such a degree, probably, as those were 

 haunted who had buried money there under the 

 name of town lots. 



At El Capitan we found a famous camping- 

 place — a lonely canyon, noble oak-trees, a rip- 

 pling stream. We retired here for a day, bath- 

 ed the dust of travel from our bodies, wrote 

 letters, and fixed up generally for our further 

 progress. Fish were plentiful in the ocean at 

 this point; in fact, much more plentiful there 

 than on our table. We, however, did get a 

 smack of them on our plates. Mr. Wilder 

 brought out all of his fishing-tackle — great 

 hooks and small hooks, and his rifle. With the 

 latter he is exceedingly careless, as you will 

 hereafter learn. This time, while hauling ia 

 his throw-line with a red-finned fish at the end 

 of it, a seal, or sea-lion, so called— the kind that 

 inhabit the Ana Capa Islands, and all the iso- 

 lated rocks of this coast— bobbed its head above 

 the breakers to get a new supply of air; but 

 before he could bob it back again Bro. Wilder 

 had carelessly fired a bullet through its head. 

 That settled Mr. Seal to the bottom of the 

 ocean. The peculiarity of seal-shooting, we 

 learned, on Ana Capa Island, is that, when shot 

 in deep water, they sink to the bottom of the 

 ocean like so much lead. This one performed 

 that same trick, to the chagrin of the shooter, 

 and "me too." I didnt care so much for the 

 seal as to see the manifest happiness of the 

 shooter. All we could do, however, was to 

 watch the crimson spot out there in the tossing 

 breakers, and to hope for better luck upon our 

 next specimen of big game. We seal-hunters 

 find there is something startling, too, in behold- 

 ing a seal's head bob out of the waters. The 

 head and face have something of a human 

 look, and one is liable to think he is in the 

 presence of a genuine mermaid; but we seal- 

 hunters get used to those things after a few 

 shots, and mind it not. 



In our strolls among the big trees we found 

 evidences of bee-trees, and one had been recent- 

 ly cut and robbed, the bees still clinging to their 

 no longer sweet home. The fact that it paid to 

 cut a bee-tree for its sweetness showed that 

 some honey was gathered here; but the flora 

 visible would lead one to think that bees would 

 ordinarily starve. While thinking of the bees 

 and their product, at our next repast we brought 



