16 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Jan. 



in the apiary, put it on one comb in a hive having 

 space only lor one comb; pack it in a box with ten 

 or twelve inches of chaff all around, above and be- 

 low, and it, too, can be saved. I have tried these 

 experiments for ten years past, and I know winter- 

 ing bees can thus be made successful, even when 

 the colony is but a nucleus. I have 50 colonies in 

 my Garniolan apiary. S. W. Morrison, M. D. 



Oxford, Pa., Dec. 7, 188,5. 



Friend M., the fact you mention in regard 

 to the preservative power of honey corrobo- 

 rates what friend Muth says in reference to 

 its use for pork-packing, if you will excuse 

 the illustration. — What yovi say about eggs 

 not hatching has been up once or twice be- 

 fore ; but I believe we have no good explana- 

 tion of the reason Vvdiy eggs sometimes fail 

 to hatch for quite a time, and then all at 

 once begin to develop larvie all right. Friend 

 Doolittle wrote an article on a similar sub- 

 ject some years back.— I agree with you in 

 regard to pi'eparing bees for winter ; but we 

 have not been successful with two -frame nu- 

 clei, e\en when prepared very much in the 

 same way in which you direct. 



AN ABC SCHOLAR'S EXPERIENCE. 



17 DAYS FROM THE EGG TO THE BEE. 



TT WAS but a novice in the spring. I never owned 

 (Mf a colony of bees before, but by the information 

 ^t of Gleanings and A B C I have increased from 

 "*" 1 to 3 by artificial swarming. I commenced 

 very late, on account of the weakness of the 

 old colony, then being careful not to lessen the old 

 stock, in my judgment, below thirty thousand, so as 

 to have surplus honey for home use. I was reading 

 and putting this to practice, and I found no devia- 

 tion but this; you say: " Twenty-one days elapse 

 from the egg to the bee." Well, here is my experi- 

 ence: I put down the date of every thing I under- 

 took. June 24th I placed two empty racks, with- 

 out foundation, in the old hive, and took them out 

 July 13th, and young bees were coming out of their 

 secluded spot, and moving among the busy thi'ong 

 while I held the racks in my hands, and there was 

 evidence that some hatched a day, or perhaps sev- 

 eral days, before near the top-bar of the rack, and 

 had been replaced with eggs, so this makes but 19 

 days, and perhaps 17 days, from the egg to the bee, 

 although you say there are exception?. 



Now, here is the question: I see two colonies are 

 fult below of beautiful capped honey, while the 

 last one is full with comb, but none capped, so I 

 gave them a rack of capped honey from another 

 hive, and, to my surprise, I found that they un- 

 capped every cell and removed most of the honey, 

 and the queen laying in them. Why is this? Can 

 they winter safely in this or not? S. R. Briner. 



North Springfield, Ohio. 



Friend B., I do not know where the mis- 

 take comes in ; but I am just as sure you 

 made a mistake, as if you had told me you 

 planted corn one day and it was up two 

 inches high the next day. As you state it, 

 it seems very hard to tell where the mistake 

 came in ; but these dates are so well estab- 

 lished, by thousands of careful experiments, 

 that I should think it more probable some- 

 body swapped those combs without your 

 knowledge, than that a perfectly formed bee 



was hatched in the time you mention. Of 

 course, it does not seem very likely any one 

 would meddle with the combs in your hives ; 

 but you know it is possible. Try the exper- 

 iment again, and see if I am not right. Ex- 

 ceedingly favorable circumstances may short- 

 en the period perhaps 24 hours. The way to 

 count is to mark the very hour the queen 

 laid the eggs ; and then watch when these 

 same eggs produce perfect bees. — Bees will 

 very frequently luicap the honey when a 

 frame of capped honey is put into the hive. 

 They are more likely to do this when they 

 have no capped honey of their own. I do 

 not know why they do it, tmless it is be- 

 cause they recognize it is not their own 

 work, and they want to look in and see if it 

 is all right. Young bees, which have not 

 much to do, are partictdarly up to such 

 tricks. 



SOME GLEANINGS FROM GLEANINGS. 



WHEAT chaff; CF-IPPING QUEENS' AVINGS ; SOLAR 

 WAX-EXTRACTORS. 



TN Gleanings for Nov. 15, p. 766, Ernest speaks of 

 |l[ the difference in value of oat and wheat chaff. 

 ^l This point, which he just brought up, is exactly 

 ''■*' the one which I have told in j'our and other 

 journals. My experiments proved, many years 

 ago, that there is little or no difference in the vari- 

 ous kinds of chaff' so far as protection from cold is 

 concerned; but the difference is very marked as re- 

 gards retaining the moisture thi-own off by the 

 bees. I find the different kinds of chaff are valua- 

 ble for this quality of not retaining moisture, in the 

 following order: Timothy, wheat, oats, and buck- 

 wheat chaff. 



TWO QUEENS, NOT RELATED, IN ONE HIVE. 



On the same page Mr. Broers, in speaking about 

 two queens in a hive, takes it for granted that they 

 are both the original queens that were hived with 

 the swarm in April. As no observations were made 

 in this case between April and October it is more 

 than probable, in my opinion, that both of these 

 queens were not the same ones seen in April, but 

 that one cf the queens seen last was a young queen 

 raised late in the season, to supersede the other. 

 The fact that the queen being superseded was less 

 than a year old, and a perfect one, is no reason why 

 the bees might not be superseding her, as they oc- 

 casionally act on just such foolish notions as that 

 would be. 



DISTURBING HIVES AFTER A QUEEN HAS JUST 

 BEEN INTRODUCED. 



I see, on p. 770. that even as accurate an observer 

 as our friend Hayhurst usually is, he makes the 

 old statement about the danger to a lately intro- 

 duced queen in opening the hive before she has got 

 to laying. I have never yet known of having lost a 

 queen under these circumstances, although it has 

 been my general practice for years to open hives 

 the first opportunity I have after introducing my 

 queens, and I have certainly opened scores of them 

 before the queens commenced to lay. I presume, 

 however, that the manner of opening the hive has 

 something to do with it. I certainly shouldn't open 

 them, if the frames were stuck so they would have 

 to be pried apart with a chisel, nor if robbers were 

 about. 



CLIPPING WINGS— HOW. 



I also see, on p. 773, that friend Doolittle still ad- 



