1886 



GLEANINGS IK BEE CULTURE. 



4S5 



time, quite a number of days, and tlie nights were 

 nice and warm. I told him to please hurry them 

 on, etc. The queens flnallj' came May lOtli, when I 

 had plenty of drones tiying, and could have just as 

 well raised some fine queens myself in the same 

 length of time. If my experience is the exception, 

 and not the rule, I sliall probablj- try again, some 

 time. But if this thing is quite common, and if it 

 is not safe to sliip queens in early April as far north 

 as Central Iowa, I should like to be enlightened, 

 and will be governed itccordinglj-. 



D. E. BursAKER. 

 Maxwell, Story Co., la . May ::2, 188fi. 



We are very glad tlie mill i)leases you, 

 friend B. Now, is not part of it owing to 

 the fact that you were in just the right 

 shape to be pleased ? I agree with you in 

 regard to getting early queens from the 

 South ; that is, there seems to be some truth 

 in what you say. With all their great ad- 

 vantages of climate, they don't seem to get 

 very much ahead of us after all, if we 

 should set right down and try hard. You 

 know I have for several years proposed to 

 give advertisements free to all those in the 

 South who had queens on hand ready to ship 

 during the month of April. Yevy few have 

 responded ; but probably those \vho did re- 

 spond were very quickly'sold out. 



^ ■ ^ 



LETTER FROM BRAZIL. 



FUEL ECU SMOKERS, ETC. 



R. ROOT:— I am much obliged for your reci- 

 pe for vinegar. If you think it of some 

 utility for your readers I will with pleasure 

 give you two hints, perhaps of some use. 

 The first is a fuel for smokers, the best I 

 ever tried, and perhaps at hand with your Southern 

 friends. It is the pith-tree (aloes), in pieces not 

 very small. When dry, it burns exceedingly well, 

 gives plenty of smoke, and no sparks. 



A TWO-STORY HIVE TH.VT WILL ADMIT OF RAISING 

 THE LOWER FRAMES WITH(JUT REMOV- 

 ING THE UPPER STORY. 



The second hint is a hive I have been trying for 

 six months, very successfully. I like Simplicity 

 hives; but I prefer two stories, even for extracting, 

 but find quite an annoyance (the separated second 

 story) in the handling of which bees are often 

 killed. I have profited by the unwillingness of bees 

 to build comb in narrow spaces. I make a suflH- 

 ciently high box with two thicknesses. The under 

 frames are put as in ordinary hives, the upward 

 stand parallel to the first; onlj' their sides are half 

 an' inch or "i from the hive, instead of the usual 

 distance. Two detachable pieces of wood lyinir on 

 nails support the upper frames and division-boards. 

 If you keep always one or two empty frames in the 

 upper story, there is no fear of building combs off 

 the frames. Miguel Ribeiro Lishoa. 



Barbacena, Brazil, S. A., Apr. 26, 1880. 



Thank you, friend L., for your kind letter 

 and suggestions. The arrangement you 

 mention for the Simplicity hive has already 

 been in use with us; but as it has been 

 dropped for some years, I am inclined to 

 think it has not been found to be very sat- 

 isfactory. We shall be very glad indeed to 

 hear something more about the bees and bee 

 culture in your far-away climate. 



POPLAR HONEY PREFERRED. 



ARE THE CARNIOLANS SUPERIOR TO ITALIANS ? 



f^ HOUGH not strictly an A B C scholar, not hav- 

 '^ ing your text-book, but Cook and Langstroth, 

 ^ I have, for forty jears, been an occasional 

 student of bees. Every little while some 

 new fact proves to me that I have not yet 

 " learned it all." In so long a time I have had to do 

 more or less with many strains of bees. My earliest 

 experiences were with pure Germans, which were 

 not hard to handle. A few that I have handled 

 in late years were almost, perhaps perfectly, pure 

 Italians, but the great majority have been Italian 

 hybrids of varying shades of impuritj-. 



Some of these have not at all maintained the repu^ 

 tation of hybrids for crossness, but the majority of 

 my present stock, all mixed, are beyond company 

 son the most vicious bees I ever handled. They 

 seem at least reasonably hai-dy, for all my thirteen 

 colonies wintered in i>lain Gallup hives, on summer 

 stands, and almost exclusively on the aster honey 

 which they gathered last fall. 



My vicious bees average passabl3' as honey-gath = 

 erers. The Grossest colonies are generally the best 

 workers. A few days ago we extracted ten gallons 

 of extra-fine well-ripened poplar (tulip-tree) honey: 

 One of your contributors complains of no market 

 for it, on account of its dark color. Most people 

 here prefer it to any other kind produced in this 

 vicinity, though my own choice is the sourwood which 

 comes later. We keep our bees here exclusivelj' on 

 natural stores whenever they gather enough after 

 the last extracting, and then we never have trouble 

 with diarrhea or dysentery, probal^lj- because our 

 bees are seldom confined 30 days at once, and be- 

 cause our severest cold spells are of short duration. 

 Almost tlie only sources of less are freezing and 

 starvation. 



As a source of honey-supply, white clover hei;e 

 seems almost worthless. It makes the best show 

 in the poplar season, when bees will hardlj- touch 

 anj' thing but the great tulip-blossoms of that rich 

 hone3'-bearer. Just here we have not a great deal 

 of it; but my former near neighbor, J. F. Montgom- 

 erj', lives now about a dozen miles away, where, last 

 May, great fields were white with white clover, and 

 he says that he never gets any appreciable quantity 

 of white-clover honey. We find that Italians and 

 hybrids work far more on red clover, especially the 

 "sapling," or "peavine" variety. 



WHY DID THE QUEEN SUDDENLY STOP LAVING ? 



A few weeks ago I procured some eggs from one 

 of Mr. Montgomerj''s best queens, hoping to make 

 my stock both more amiable and more industrit)us. 

 Though some of my queens were lost in introducing, 

 I now \vcL\e several busy laying. But my particular 

 puzzle is one that is not laying. I released her from 

 a cell partly destroyed by a rival, and introduced 

 her to an artificial colony, formed about twelve 

 hours before, of frames and bees from three or 

 four colonies. She was accepted, and a week later 

 had nearly four frames full of eggs and young 

 brood, and her abdomen was considerably enlarged. 

 Four days later not an egg or an unsealed larva 

 could be found in the hive. Not seeing- the queen, 

 I feared that too much meddling had caused the 

 bees to destroy her an<l her progeny; so I gave 

 them a frame with brood and eggs, and for about a 

 week I left them undisturbed. At my next inspec- 

 tion that brood was nicely sealed; no royal cells 



