700 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Sept. 



WHV IS SO TjArge a percentaoe of my queens 



NOT PEUTII>IZEb ? 



Can you toll me why I lose so many queens at 

 about the time they oujaiit to become I'ertileV Out 

 of !t'i njiitnrcntly good virg'in (jucens, in full colonies 

 luul nuclei, all from swarming cells, onl.\- 31 be- 

 came fertile; all the rest disapjieared at about the 

 time I expected them to begin to lay. Is this not 

 an unusually large percentage of loss, or is it so 

 with every queen-breedcry I thought for some 

 time the trouble was in the wrong arrangement of 

 my hives; but it seems not to be the only cause. 

 I have my hives in rows, Vi foot apart one way, 

 and ;5!-2 ft. the other way, so arranged that they 

 "break joints." My hives are large chair hives, 

 each of which has a 2-frame nucleus iu the upper 

 story. This gives nie many more nucleus hives 

 than I need, so I use only every fourth or flCth. 

 This, I thought, would prevent the young queens 

 from entering the wrong hive; but the result was, 

 that in some nuclei four queens were fertilized, 

 while in others just as many virgins were lost. 

 With full colonies I have about the same trouble. 

 JuMiis .Touannsen. 



Port Clinton, Ottawa Co., ()., Aug., ISSli. 



Friend J., your hives are loo near each 

 other, and too much alilce. See ^\hat I say 

 in the A B C boolc about the importance of 

 liaving tliem placed toward tlie different 

 points of the compass, even wlien they are 7 

 feet from center to center. Try one nucletts 

 off by itself for a few days somewhere, and 

 see if you do not get better results ; and an- 

 other time and another season you may have 

 good residts just whert^ yon are; but I 

 should say that ^i feet is'niucli too close. 

 The bee-keeper who has well-made, nicely 

 painted hives, is more apt to have trouble in 

 this respect tlian one who lias his Ijees scat- 

 tered about in hives of all sorts and sizes, 

 because, in the former case, eacli hive look;-> 

 exactly like its neighbor. 



RENOVATING FOUIi-BUOODV HIVES. 



Having lost all my bees by foul brood, I melted 

 up and boiled all the honey and wa.x, and such 

 fi.xtures as would go into a wash-boiler. My hives 

 being too large, I took a length of 18-incli smoke- 

 stack, set it on end over a grating of iron scraps, 

 scooping the dirt away on one side, for a draft. I 

 then built a fire in it and set one of my hives, 

 bottom up, on top of the piiip, protecting' the 

 edges of the hive by a strip of sheet iron laid under 

 them on each side. I regulated the draft by open- 

 ing and closing it with bits of sod. In a few min- 

 utes the hot spioke was i-ssuing from every crevice, 

 and the melted propolis dripping down all aroiuid. 

 Some of the hives took fire inside. I threw them 

 right side up on to the ground, and dropped a little 

 water on to the bottom-board, when the hive would 

 instantly till with steam, and smother the llames. 

 The bees do not seem to dislike tlie charred wood 

 to live in, and I have found no trace oC foul brood 

 among them yet. I got (5 three-frame nuclei from 

 the South about May 15, from which I now have fl 

 good strong colonies, some of them storing honej' 

 in bo.xos. 



IIONEY-DEW. 



We are having our first experience here with 

 honey-dew. About two weeks ago it appeai-ed on 

 balm-of-Gilead, elm, and burr-oak trees, which 

 dripped so as to smear the sidewalks in places. 



Now the black oaks arc covered with it. I find the 

 leaves have a great many little green plant-lice on 

 or under them. I thought I would tell you how, 

 with a few cents and three or four hours' work, I 

 made a machine for ]icrforating frames for 

 wires — capacitj' 2G0 strips per hour, but conclude 

 for this time. Geo. H. Patch. 



Stevens Point, Wis., .luly 19, 1880. 



Thank you, friend Patch, for your descrip- 

 tion of tlie way you renovated your foul- 

 brood hives. Jii Our Own Apiary for this 

 i.ssue you will see tiial we employed a sim- 

 ilar plan, only we used steam. 



A NEW USE FOR THE SMOKER. 



The Williams folks desire rae to thank you hearti- 

 ly for the smokers, and so do I. Now I have the job 

 of reading the " DoseolTruth " to them. Although 

 I have always held smoking to be wrong, and chew- 

 ing too, 1 never saw such reasons advanced as 1 find 

 in your pamphlet. I think it should be more gen- 

 erally distributed. The \\'illiamses have found a 

 new use for their sinokci-; and Ivad I been aware of 

 it two months sooner I would have ordered a thou- 

 sand or so. I know ] could have sold that iiuin>-. 

 Let me explain: This is .a great mosquito country, 

 especially now in the rainy season. Although net- 

 ting and cheese-cloth bars are in use, they are 

 warm and disagreeable to sleep under. Now, a few 

 rags in the smoker, a few minutes Lel'ore rctii'ing, 

 set on fire, and the smoke well puffed in all corners, 

 causes the moscjuito to leave foi- that night. Such is 

 also my experience, and I would not now bo without 

 a smoker for its cost for a single night. 



Fort Ogden, Fla., .July 20, 1880. F. Schindei.. 



THE PROGENY OF MISMATED QUEENS. 



1 have a dollar queen, one year old, bought of 

 Wm. Car.v. All I bought of hitn with the exception 

 of this one are ver.^■ nice queens. Her bees are 

 about one tliird black, to all appenrances, even the 

 old ones, temper not excepted. Ono-tliird have two 

 bands, and the other thir«l are very finely marketl 

 Italians. This is something new to me, ami I should 

 like to know if it is vei-y common, and also how it 

 can be so. .')— 11. P. Lanopon, ;;n— .'',0. 



East Constable, N. V., Aug. ;5, 18S0. 



It is not unusual for mismated Italian 

 queens to produce bees variously marked, 

 from real black bees to three-banded Ital- 

 ians. As a geiu'ral thing, however, a pine 

 queen mated with a black drone will pro- 

 duce one and two banded hybrids. 



IJEE-lvEEPING in UTAH. 



I am doing what I can in a modest, feeble way, 

 to advance the interests of the bee-business in this 

 village of over 2000 inhabitants. There are at pres- 

 ent over 200 colonics of bees here in the keeping of 

 7 different persons, besides 07 colonies of my own, 

 which are getting too large a number for one little 

 old man in one location to handle. I have there- 

 fore laid the foundation of another apiary, located 

 very high up in the mountains, designing thus to 

 lessen my labors here at homo. This new location 

 is in the midst of a little world of wild blossoms; 

 one succeeding another the whole summer, from 

 the moment the snow is off the ground in spring 

 until frost cuts down all in the fall. Indeed, I have 

 seen blossoms fully defined and develo])ed, but 

 closely folded, lift their heads throughout the fast- 

 melting snows of spring, and in a minute or two 



