1886 



Ci LEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



669 



Tucker needs to do is to I'ollow the above rule, and 

 he will have no further trouble. J. E. Ponu, Jk. 

 Fo.xboro, Mass., July S8, 188ti. 



NATIVE BKES OF iMjt)UIDA NOT LAZY. 



On page 534, July 1, Mr. C. Moorhouse writes: 

 "The native bees are extremely lazy," and you in- 

 dex the article, " Bees of Florida Lazy." Last year 

 was a bad year for honey, yet I had a natural swarm 

 hived about the middle of March that had filled 

 three stories (3J frames) by the first of June. No 

 coml)s or foundation was given them. This year 

 the same colony had the second story solid with 

 sealed honey June lirst, and a crate of '27 sections 

 nearly full. The sections were taken off June :iTth, 

 nicely sealed, as flue in quality of work as any man 

 ever saw. They will avei-ag'c V.^ lbs. each. 



Bees swarmed but little this year. My spring- 

 count was 11 strong, i weak, in Simplicity, and a 

 strong in bo.x hives; increased by natural swarming 

 to~l; extracted during June, 53 gallons, and took 

 off "-US Mb. sections. This honey can not be excelled. 

 It weighs l:i lbs. to the gallon, and is clear, and very 

 light in color. No, Bro. Boot, the little fellows are 

 not lazy. Sometimes there is nothing for them to 

 get, and again the mosquito-hawks are so thick they 

 do not ay; and thcj' fight the ants and the raoth- 

 wonu,.the chickens and the children, and I don't 

 know what all. But 1 do know that tliey gather 

 lots of honey. Yes, they do woik, and so well that 

 I have about concluded our little native is about as 

 good as the Italian, and that they set a fine exam- 

 ple to some jK'ople who come down here and talk 

 about the laziness of the natives — too many of 

 whom are like Bro. M.'s Northern (|ucens. 



Lavasota, Fla., July, lS8(i. Piui.U'Pi. 



WHAT TO DO WITH SUIU'LUS P(JI,1.EN. 



Please state in next Gle.\nings what you do with 

 combs in the spring that are from one-fourth to 

 two-thirds full of pollen. Do you give them to the 

 bees in brood or surplus chamber, or do you melt 

 them up into wax? I put many such in the brood- 

 chambers last spring, and I find it all there yet, so 

 far as I can judge. H. L.vnoE. 



Whigville, O., July 'M, 1S8G. 



Friend L., we never have nurpluti pollen in 

 our locality, for the bees use up all that re- 

 mtiins in the comb.s in rearing brood, ;ind 

 you know brood -rearinj^ is a large part of 

 the business in our apiary. The matter is 

 frequently discussed in our back volumes in 

 regard to the disposal of pollen. I believe 

 the most practical way is to steam the combs 

 by hanging them in a covered wash-boiler 

 until the pollen is so soft it may be thrown 

 out with the extractor. 



SJIOliK WITHOUT smoke; good, at LEAST FOR 

 NUCLEI. 



Take an insect-powder gun (Lyon's I am using), 

 fill half full with crystals of hydrate of chloral; 

 press the bellows. The hydrate of chloral evapo- 

 rates and saturates the air, and stupefies the bees. 

 1 And this more eflicient than the English method of 

 saturating the air with vapor of carbolic acid and 

 oil of tar. This latter also can be used in the i)ow- 

 der-gun by pouring ten drops of each into the liel- 

 lows of the gun, saturating the air in the bellows. 



Tampa, Fla . July, 1880. J. M. Piiice. 



Thanks, friend P., for your suggestion of 

 hydrate of chloral ; but is it not much more 

 expensive than smoke y This is going to be 



the important point. We can not afford 

 any thing that costs very much. 



ked-cloveh queens. 



Why should any one make a flourish about " red- 

 clover queens," and advertise them as something 

 wonderful ? Our Italians, Holy-Lands, and hybrids, 

 work right along on red clover. I stejiped into a 40- 

 acro field one day, and it was full of clover, and 

 covered v/ith bees. There were plenty of black 

 bees there, but I saw none of them on the clover; 

 they were v.orking on a little blue flower. Most of 

 the clover has been cut, and the second croj) is com- 

 ing— also where the wheat was cut the clover now 

 appears. D. F. Savage. 



Casky, Ivy., July U'l, 1880. 



Friend 8., certain queens are called "red 

 clover" because tlieir progeny seem to have 

 a way of gathering unusual (luantities of 

 honey during the red-clover bloom ; that is, 

 unusual compared with other colonies of 

 similar strength. 



OUR CAUr-POND. 



1 should much like to have a report in ne.\t issue 

 of Gleanings in i-egard to your carp-pond. I have 

 seen nothing about it lately. Is it a success? 



J. W. Margrave. 



Hiawatha, Brown Co., Kan., Aug. 3, 1886. 



Friend M., it has not proved to be very 

 much of a success as yet, for the reason 

 that, with the multitude of my duties, I 

 have not given it the attention it should 

 have. For instance, although there are lish 

 in the pond weighing several pounds, we 

 have never tried one of them yet for food. 

 Thirty or forty quite good-sized ones were 

 found last winter on the surface, probably 

 killed by the cold, because the pond was not 

 deep enough. The reason it was not deeper 

 is because miiskrats persist in digging holes 

 through the bank. The soil is also of such 

 a nature between the pond and creek that 

 the water slowly oozes out, and the pojid 

 gets very low unless we have very i'requent 

 rains. 



now TO MAKE FOUNDATION. 



Your article on page .513, "How to Make Founda- 

 tion," is quite acceptable; and although we have al- 

 ways been very careful about keeping our mills 

 free from every particle of wax, the way to do it 

 best has been another thing; and the way to regu- 

 late the temperature of the dipping-tank is anoth- 

 er. We have had very hard work to get sheets at 

 all; the wax in the tank will get too cold around 

 the outer edges or side of the tank before it is any- 

 where near cool enough in the center, and conse- 

 quently the sheets all crack in the center of the 

 boards, while they stick at the t)Uter edges. Now, 

 in this case we have set the tank on the stove and 

 remelted the outer edges of it again, and it some- 

 times helps the dipping; but wc have never been 

 able to get sheets as thiu as they ought to be for 

 sections. Do wc have to '^et the wax the right 

 heat by heating and cooljng it in this way? or 

 ought the tank full of melted wax to cool all 

 through alike by just setting jt olf and letting it 

 set until rcad.\- to dip? There is something about 

 the way we manage it that is not just right; and if 

 you can give us some light on the subject it will 

 help us wonderfully. Can we use these same boil- 

 ers where wc liavc a two-horee cpgipc to furnish 



