\y 



188G 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



-)67 



COMB OR EXTRACTED HONEY. 



A SUGGESTION KROM AN KXPKIilKNCED MAN 1 :J 

 DECIDING AVIllCIl TO WOKK FOI!. 



less. 



jliRASE send inc a sample lot ol' about 100 lbs. 

 of the new white-clover c.xti-actot], as soon as 

 you have a proofl article. Almost any kind of 

 honey will brinR- a reasonable price in comb; 

 but a j)oorg-rade of extracted is almost worth- 

 Suppose I siifTfrest to you that you Icll the 

 many readers of Gi.e.vnings, that when the bees 

 are jratherins- a g-ood heavy white honey of good 

 flavor, that they run the apiary for e.xtracted; and 

 that when bees are working on inferior (lasture 

 that it is much more valuable in comb. I hope l(^ 

 do much more in honey another season. 1 have a 

 trade that I can keep by always giving them a gt)od 

 article. I should much prefer being out of honey 

 for a month or two than to put up a poor article. 

 Allegheny, Pa., May 26, 1886. M. H. Tweed. 



Friend T., your sujifife.stion is soinetliinjjf 1 

 had not tliought of before in just that way. 



us good service when our own mails were closed I 

 against queens. G. M. Doolittee. 



Borodino, N. Y. 



Friend D., this sanae subject was agitated 

 several years ago. and I believe it was de- 

 cided that stock of all kinds, exclusively for 

 breeding pur[)oses, was exempt from duty. 

 If I am correct, we pay no duty now on 

 queens only, sent by express to Canad;i. 

 For some reason or lither, it seems that the 

 Postmaster-General has considered it expe- 

 dient to enact more stringent ridings in re- 

 gard to the transmission of (pieen-bees by 

 mail, not only to foreign countries, but even 

 in the United States. A letter has just been 

 I'orwnnled to us, sent by the Postmaster- 

 G'jueral lo a pDstthaster, notifying him that 

 queens (ndi/ were permitted to pass througli 

 the mails— ^no hces at all. We forwarded the 

 letter at once to Prof. Cook, and tol<l him if 

 he thought best to take a trip to Washing- 

 ton to see about it. we would take the liber- 

 ty of saying that money would be advanced 

 to him for his time and expenses, providing 

 he would undertake the task. It would be 

 a serious matter to have queens excluded 

 from the mails, now that such an enormous 

 traffic has grown out of it; and banishing 

 worker-bees seems, at present writing, to be 

 the next thing to banishing queens. If 

 queens can be sent to Canada in a sealed en- 

 velope, we can perhaps manage it that way 

 almost as well as we have heretofore. I am 

 not at all surprised that tlie queen and her 

 attendants had all the air they needed, even 

 though sealed up in two envelopes. I have 

 for a long time been aware that we have 

 been taking more pains for ventilation tluin 

 there was any need of, unless, indeed, a 

 larger number of attendant bees are includ- 

 ed than is at all necessary. It may be that 

 right here is where the troid)le has come in. 

 Unskillful queen-rearers have been putting 

 more attendant bees in the cages than is 

 necessary or advisable, and perhaps some of 

 tlie postolfice officials liave'J been stung. 

 Whatever is the trouble, it needs the atten- 

 liou of every bee-keeper in our country, and 

 it is needed at once. 



Very likely an article would sell if put on 

 the market in the comb, when it would be 

 difficult to dispose of it in the liquid state. 

 Will those who have had experience on this 

 particular point let us know about it ? 



MODERN TRANSFERRING. 



A MODIFIC.VTION OF THE^HEDDON PEAN. 



R. HEnDON'S plan of transferring is, T sup- 

 pose, largely practiced by prominent bee- 

 men all over the country, and is most cer- 

 tainly a very great improvement over the 

 old way of cutting out the combs; but it is 

 just ^H'o jobs to every hive. He proceeds to drum 

 out the queen and bees (that is, all he can of them, 

 usually about half), and puts them on frames of 

 fdn., in a new hive; sets away the old hive for 30 

 days for the young bees to hatch, 'then goes over 

 the same work again. Now, I undertook a much 

 shorter method, and I think I fairly succeeded. 



1 had five colonics this spi-ing that were in bo.x 

 hives that I wanted in new hives, so I commenced 

 on thoui the first of April. My idea w.as, that if 1 

 could get it done before the queens commenced lay- 

 ing it could all be done at one job. I will now give 

 my experiment and results: 



1 commenced the first one in the evening; it was 

 warm enough for bees to fly. I first prepared a 

 new hive by putting in frames of fdn., and two 

 combs partly tilled with honej". 1 set the old hive a 

 few feet to one side, put the new one in its place, 

 and set up boards about it to make it look as near 

 like the old hive as possible; for if you don't, they 

 will not like to go in. I then proceeded to smoke 

 and drum, as does Heddon, for about 80 minutes, 

 when I found a good-sized cluster in my box. 

 These 1 shook into the new hive. I next took the 

 old hive away .50 yards from the old stand; took a 

 hammer and chisel and knocked it to pieces, cut- 

 ting out all the old comb clean; swept off the bees 

 on the grass, where thei' soon "^scooted" back 

 home and into the new hive. 



Next morning, about 10 o'clock, I proceeded to 

 try another one. I got it into the new hive all right. 

 At noon 1 went to dinner and rested awhile. I 

 again went out about two o'clock to see the bees, 

 and found ray hive, just transferred before din- 

 ner, "gobbled" by the roblcrs, completely "gone 

 up." I then saw my mistake. 



Next day I went at it again with three more to 

 transfer. If I lost all of them this time, I proceed- 

 ed the same as before, exce])t that I did not put any 

 thing but emi'ty comb in the new hives, and fed 

 them after sundown; closed them up to one bee- 

 spacc^ next morning, and watched close for robbers. 



Well, now for results: In transferring five hives I 

 lost one by not feeding at the right time. I have 

 just carefully examined the other four, and found 

 plenty of brood in all four of them, and they are 

 building up rapidly on white clover, which is now 

 (May 20) booming. In transferring these five hives 

 I commenced with the first sign of pollen-gathering. 

 I found ill one hive 2) lbs. of honey and a small 

 speck of brood, not half worth saving. By com- 

 mencing this work at the first sign of ])of(f/i we may, 

 by feeding the transferred colony a week or two, 

 knock the old box hive to pieces and make a clean 

 sweep at one job, for we seldom find any brood at 

 that time, unless it js a very large hive, and well 



