1884 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CtTLTUKE. 



FEEDERS AND FEEDING. I 



SOMETHINCJ OLD ABOUT AN OLD SUBJECT. < 



'jE see a great deal said for and against the 

 various feeders now in use among the bee- ! 

 keepers of this country. It Is said, " Ne- | 

 cepsity is the mother of invention;" and as it was i 

 necessary for us to feed about 25 or 30 colonies of i 

 bees, we must have feeders; and as we could not 

 make the bread-pan feedc-s work satiofactorlly, we ] 

 made, from half-inch basswood, some small boxes, j 

 t"x7 inches, and of different heights, from two inches 

 to six, having floats to drop in the box on the honey. 

 We have not had a bee drown with them; and as i 

 they take the honey from the shallow ones much [ 

 the faster, we would recommend them to be made j 

 two inches deep. The matching may be made honey- ' 

 tight by coating with paraffine. We made the floats 

 by taking a piece of 7b -inch board, cutting it about 

 14 inch shorter than the inside of the feeder, then 

 cutting three or four cross cuts in it ;4 inch deep, j 

 like Fig. 1, and slitting it then in ?i-inch strips. 

 Space them M-inch apart, sliding V^-inch strips in j 

 the saw-cuts made, which should fit snugly, to make \ 

 them keep their places, and then we have a float ; 

 looking like Fig. 2. ! 



FiJT. 1. Fig. 2. 



r use the bread-pan feeders in place of the 

 Simplicity feedeis is because they hold so 

 much more, and because they cost so little. 



M M M 

 HOW XU MAKE FLOATS FOR FEEDEKS, 



These feeders are equally good for water, but of 

 course should be made larger for that purpose, and 

 painted inside. 



The honey crop for Saratoga County is exceeding- 

 ly light this year, being about two-thirds that of 

 last, as far as heard from. White clover gave us 

 some honey and plenty of swarms, but the cold dry 

 weather of August cut off our buckwheat harvest, 

 almost entirely, so that swarms that issued in June 

 were fed this autumn to prepare them for winter. 



Saratoga Spa, N. Y. J. J. Hollenbeck. 



Friend H., although the plan you give for 

 making a feeder is not new, still, as you pre- 

 sent it, it seems to me it is worthy of consid- 

 eration again. The objections to a box with 

 a wooden lloat have been, that tiie floats get 

 lost and broken ; the box leaks after a while, 

 in spite of paraffine, and it also gets soaked 

 up with honey, and smells nasty. But per- 

 haps all these defects miglit be remedied 

 where one is careful, and sets them away 

 when not wanted, as you do doubtless. i)i\e 

 other objection to a deep box is, that while 

 bees are feeding they generate an enormous 

 quantity of heat, especially when they begin 

 to secrete wax. If they are down in a box, this 

 heat, or want of air, sometimes stupefies and 

 kills a great many. By making the box one 

 or two inches deep you will obviate this 

 trouble. Such a feeder works very nicely 

 when they are clean, and every thing i'^ just 

 right, and I do not know after all but it is 

 about as good and sure a way as any. The 

 Simplicity feeder amounts to pretty much 

 the same thing, while it never leaks, and 

 does not require any float. The reason why 



A POCKET TOOL.-CHEST. 



MULTUM IN PARVO. 



WtWOW often it is that one wants an awl, 

 Ira! a gimlet, a small screwdriver, or a 

 ' reamer to ream out metals ! and un- 

 less these tools are kept and carefully put 

 away, they are liable to be scattered and 

 lost. To avoid having many tools scattered 

 about, the Miller's 

 Falls Co. have devis- 

 ed alittle pocket tool- 

 chest, shown here. 

 To look at the num- 

 ber of tools shown in 

 the cut, one would 

 think that one han- 

 dle would not con- 

 tain them all. Yet it 

 does contain them 

 nicely; and besides 

 that, it has in the end 

 a very beautiful little 

 chuck that will hold 

 any one of the little 

 tools exactly true and 

 perfectly solid, and 

 yet they can be ex- 

 changed in an in- 

 stant. This tool-han- 

 dle will also hold any • 

 other tool, or even a 

 needle, or any shaped 

 awl you may wish to 

 use. As the handle 

 is iron, it is strong 

 and substantial. 



We have made ar- 

 rangements so that 

 we can furnish them 

 for an even 85 cents ; 

 bv mail, o c. extra. 



UBEFDL TOOLS TO BE USED IN A SINGLE HANDLE. 



