54 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



JaK. 



A GOOD HEPOKT FROM TEXAS. 



HONEY FROM THE BROOMWEED; FROM 70 TO 100, 

 AND 10,000 LBS.'OF HONEV. 



'HEN 'giving- you ^my report in Oct. Gi.ean- 

 INGS, page 679, 1 believed our honey crop 

 to be all gathered; but since that time',1 

 have taken 2000 lbs. more from the same 

 apiary, making a total of 6500 lbs. The 

 above report is only from my" home ! apiary, of 

 which I began thej season of 1885 with 70 swarmd, 

 and have increasedyto 100 by natural swarming. 

 The last 2000 lbs. has been from broomweed alone, 

 and is the first time it has yielded in the four years 

 I have resided In Texas, and it is entirely different 

 from any honey 1 have ever seen before. It has a 

 peculiarity of becoming solid without granulating; 

 in color it is white, v.'ith a yellow tinge, and will be- 

 come solid in 24 hours if it is exposed to the cold. 



On Christmas day, bees were making honey from 

 the mistletoe, which Is now in bloom. 



My honey crop this season was over 10,000 lbs., 

 and has netted me 8 cts. per lb. My plan of selling 

 is to allow only one firm to handle my honey in each 

 town or city, and to sell on its merits alone. One 

 house has sold 2250 lbs. this season for me. 



I have sold out my sheep interests, and next sea- 

 son I shall devote my time to bee-keeping; and if 

 the season is good I shall try to make a good report. 



I have a water-wheel for motive power to run my 

 saws in cutting out hives. It is one of my own con- 

 struction, and works finely. I shall use only the 

 Simplicity hive, as for convenience in handling, 

 cheapness, etc., I think it stands without an equal. 

 AVishing you and Gle.\nings every success'in the 

 new year, I will close. Wm. Whigglesworth. 



Crawford, Texas, Dec. 28, 1885. 



FRIEND CLARK'S TRIALS AND SUC- 

 CESSES. 



FROM i TO 18, AND 200 LBS. OF HONEY. 



T BEGAN to keep bees in the spring of 1878 by the 

 ^f purchase of one old box hive. I was fortunate 

 jt enough shortly after to spy the advertisement 

 ■^ of A. I. Root in some journal or other, and ever 

 since I have been a very interested reader of 

 Gleanings. I went through the ABC, Quinby's 

 New Bee - keeping, and other such as I could get 

 hold of, devouring the entire contents with a relish 

 that would have done credit to a Doolittle or an 

 A. I. Root; but I have never realized any great 

 yields such as I read of, nor have I been able to 

 number my colonies by the hundreds, but I have 

 received a good fair return for all money and time 

 spent, besides the pleasure and recreation, which 

 were worth a great deal to me, for I have been 

 afHicted with heart disease for the last seven years, 

 and it has grown so serious of late years that 1 

 have not been able to do any hard work at all. To 

 make things worse, my wife was taken down with 

 fever at the birth of our little girl one j-car ago, and 

 has never been able to rise from her bed. God only 

 knows whether she ever will or not. It seems aw- 

 ful hard, but we believe all things work together 

 for the best to those who love and serve the Master. 

 But, to return. In the fall of 1884 I had 22 colonies, 

 very heavy in natural stores, but it was honey-dew 

 which hardened in the cells as fast as gathered, and 

 could not be thrown out with the extractor. Hav- 



ing no empty combs to feed up on, I was compelled 

 to let them take their chances, expecting the worst, 

 and I wasn't disappointed; for 19 out of 22 died, and 

 the three that were left were not able to cover one 

 frame each. But I pulled them through, and 

 bought one more. From the four I took 200 lbs. of 

 section honey, and increased to 18, and one went to 

 the woods. I doubled back to 14 in the fall, which 

 have clover honey to winter on, so we feel compar- 

 ativelj' safe for next season. Our honey was all 

 sold at 25 cts. net. J. A. Clark. 



Summersville, Pa., Dec. 23, 1885. 



A POSTAL-CARD LETTER. WITH SEV- 

 ERAL MORALS TO IT. 



SENDING FROM FLORIDA TO OHIO FOR QUEENS; 

 TEMPERATURE OF WELLS IN FLORIDA, ETC. 



fRIEND ROOT:— I thank you for your reply to 

 my inquiry; but by accident (if accidents ev- 

 er do happen) I found that a former member 

 of your business family, INIiss N. Adams, was 

 engaged in bee-keeping about six miles from 

 here, and from her I obtained the needed queens. 

 In view of the experiments that Ernest has recent- 

 ly been conducting, it may be of interest to you to 

 know that the temperature of water as it comes 

 from wells in this part of Florida is about 70°, vary- 

 ing a trifle with the wells. Bees are gathering pol- 

 len nicely. Not much honey. The letter was writ- 

 ten with a Hall type-writer, made by the Hall Type- 

 writer Co., New York. C. H. Longstreet. 

 Mount Dora, Fla., Dec. HO, 1885. 



Now, friends, you see that friend L., wlio 

 writes the above, wrote us about queens; 

 but l)y accident, or providentially, if that is 

 abetter word, he foiuul out that one of our 

 former pupils, Miss Adams, was raising 

 queens for sale, within only six miles of his 

 place. Just think of it ! Very likely it 

 would have been nothing very strange had 

 we purchased queens of Miss Adams, had 

 them shipped all the way from Florida clear 

 up here to Medina, and then sent the same 

 ones right back again to fill his order, when, 

 had we known enough about each other, he 

 could have got the queens witliin six miles 

 of his home. I like to sell queens, audi like 

 to sell any thing when I can benefit the pur- 

 chaser as well as myself; but it does me a 

 great deal more good to hear of some of our 

 former employes taking our trade by doing 

 the business in the way above mentioned ; 

 that is, where they can do it so much better 

 and so much easier. — Why, friend L., if you 

 do not have any water to drink out of your 

 wells that is colder than 70 degrees, 1 am 

 real sorry for you. Perhaps you have not 

 got down deep enough. Uan some one give 

 us the figures from Florida on artesian wells, 

 say several hundred or a thousand feet deep? 

 May be I shall have to give up my pet theory, 

 that the temperature of the earth is about 

 the same, either north or south, Avhen weget 

 down deep enough.— Now in regard to the 

 concluding sentence. The letters have been 

 so very nicely written that I asked the wri- 

 ter what kind of a type-writer he used, and 

 you have the name and address of the maker. 

 I am sorry, however, that he did not tell us 

 the price. 



