1S8G 



GLMVNtNGS JN JiEE CXUA'IUIE. 



149 



orous she was at the time of hatching. If 

 weakly, she would probably sip at the honey 

 a while and then proceed to anniliilate her 

 rival sisters. As far as my observation goes, 

 (pieens do not tear down the cells themselves, 

 l)nt simply make a small liole through the 

 side of tlie cell, and leave the bees to com- 

 l»lete the job, as they are (juick to see whether 

 a cell has thus been punctured. Erxest. 



now THE YOITNC KOl.KS UFANAflK Tn?UH FATHER'S 

 UKES. 



1 have a sister and brotlior who are bee-keepers. 

 Willie stays at liomc, and Annie attends the j'ard at 

 KndletDii. Tliere a le OT swarms at RiKiieton, and 

 about 7S at home. Annie has kept the yard at Rnd- 

 Icton lor three years, and Willie Ihe one at home 

 for lour. 



I am very much afraid of tlie Viees. Last summer 

 Annie had to slop work, for tlie bees sometimes 

 were that cross. 



now TO HTVE A SWAK.M OF BEES. 



A jiood way to hive Iiees is: Take a salt-sack and 

 sew the mouth of it to an old barrel-hoop, and have 

 a long pole to it. If the bees are up liijih you can 

 easily get them down. We spread a white cotton 

 sheet on a table, and set the hive on it, and upset 

 the bag on it, and the bees will crawl right into the 

 hive. You must move the hive on to the stand you 

 want them to occupy, or else you will have them go 

 right to the place where thej' alighted on the tree 

 after they swarmed. Maktha Moffatt. 



>[a.\well, Ont., Jaii. 15, lK8(i. 



Let me see ; youi- father Avrote an article 

 for the last GLEANiNCis. Has liediscovered 

 the art of '"making himself useless,'' and so 

 pressed the younger ones into service? I 

 judge so, if Willie and .Vnnie manage 17-5 

 swarms. — The swarming device you mention 

 is illustrated and described in" the A B C 

 book, page 2o;-). Ermest. 



CLEANING AVAX FHOM UTENSILS. 



Some time ago I saw a letter from some one, and 

 in it telling how to clean wa.xed dishes; and I 

 thought by j'our answer you did not know of auj^ 

 better way, so I concluded to write and tell you 

 how wecleanours. Heatthe dish on the stove; and 

 while hot, rub well with any kind of soft grease; 

 then wash with hot soft water and soap, and it will 

 come clean easily, and without any trouble. 



AN intelligent DOG. 



I have a sister, Nellie, fourteen years old, and a 

 brother, Lloyd, seven years old. Lloyd has a dog 

 that he thinks a good deal of. When you put your 

 hand on a chair, and "shake hands," he will jump 

 up on the chair and holdout his paw to shake hands. 

 His name is Dash, and he is seven or eight mouths 

 old. There is a big patch of ice a little way from 

 our house, and sometimes we take the sled over 

 there and Dash will draw us on it, back and forth 

 on the ice; and when avc are i-iding down hill he 

 will, of his own accord, take the end of the rope in 

 his mouth and draw the sled to the top of the hill. 



HOW AN ABSCONDING SWAKM WAS AlUtESTED. 



Last summer Lloyd and I saved a swarm of bees 

 for papa. He came from the field where he had 

 been at work, and saw a swarm of bees going off. 

 }fe grabbed a pail of water and went after them. 

 We watched him until he went down in a valley out 

 of sight, and then Lloyil and I took a pail with some 

 water in it and went after him in hopes of catching 

 up with him and stopping the bees. Wo ran U]) hill 

 and down till we had gone aljout half a mile, and 



then we saw papa coming to meet us, after the wa- 

 ter; but there was not much left, for we had run so 

 fast, and over such rough ground, that we had slop- 

 ped it all over, but it saved the bees. Papa went to 

 the house and got an old nail-keg, and put thcni in 

 it and brought them home and hived them. 



Frances E. Worth, age l:.'. 

 Reading Centre, Schuyler Co., N. V. 



The plan you mention, of cleaning wax, 

 if J mistake not, is a combination of the 

 method given by C. ('. Miller, page 704 (to 

 which you refer), and the one given in the A 

 IJ C book, page ii87. I'enzine is also there 

 recommended as being effective in remov- 

 ing wax where tlie utensils are inconvenient 

 to cleanse otherwise. Xo doubt any one of 

 the plans enumeratedanswer as well. — Well, 

 I am sure you deserved tliat swarm of Ijees, 

 after such a '' slopping '' over. Did the bees 

 cluster immediately, or soon after the water 

 was thrown upon tlieiu ? Ekxest. 



( HARLIE S HIVING-BO.X. 



My papa has taken Gleaning.s ever since lean 

 remember. He has got 75 colonies of bees now. In 

 the summer I help him hive the swarms. Papa has 

 hiving-boxes. They are something like a little hive 

 with an alighting-board and an entrance. They are 

 fastened to the end of a pole. When the bees com- 

 mence to alight we set the hiving-bo.x up under the 

 bunch of bees. They go into the box. Then we 

 take them down and hive them when we get time. 

 One thing T learned last summer. If you lake bees 

 from the entrance of one hive and throw them 

 down on the entrance of another hive, you are 

 pretty sure to get stung. I tried it, and got three 

 stings. Charlie H. Mason, age 9. 



Mechanic Falls, Maine, Jan. ~>, 18S(I. 



Thank you, friend Charlie, for your very 

 plain description of the hiving-box. This, 

 constructed with an alighting-board, would 

 doubtless work very nicely ; but I should be 

 afraid that a large swarm of seven or eight 

 frames would be in danger of smotliering in 

 a small hive. For that reason the hiving- 

 box figured in the ABC book is perforated 

 by a good many holes. Come to think of it, 

 in our practice in our own apiary we hive 

 swarms very much as yon do, only we use a 

 full- sized Simplicity hive. As there are no 

 large trees in our apiary, when a swarm is- 

 sues it generally clusters on one of the low 

 evergreens on the outskirts of the apiary. 

 We then take a Simplicity hive with some 

 empty combs and a frame of unsealed larvfe 

 and place it so the entrance is directly under 

 the cluster. The hive is held at the right 

 height by one or more Simplicity bodies 

 placed beneath. The bees are soon inside, 

 and the hive is located upon its proper stand. 

 This is the way we generally hive our swarms. 

 So much for no tall trees in the apiary. 



Ernest. 



BEES THAT WOULD NOT UNITE; HOW THE ENGRAV- 

 INGS FOR GI>E.\NINGS ARE MADE. 



T am living at grandpa's, and going to school. 

 Grandpa had 'M live stocks of bees on .Ian. 1, for 

 they had a big fly; but he thinks it will be the last 

 one for many of Ihem, the way the winter keeps. 

 Part of the bees arc packed in leaves, and fed sugar 

 syrup, and part arc in box hives, left on their sum- 

 mer stands, to take their chances of livingordying. 



