1884 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTUEE. 



13 



the following conditions were complied with: Have 

 the sections less than l?i inches in width, IV2 if pos- 

 sible; fill them with Given fdn., and have the sur- 

 plus department well filled with black bees, or Ital- 

 ians having a dash of black blood. Some of the 

 above conditions could be omitted, and fair success 

 attained; but the nearer they wei-e complied with, 

 the more perfect would be the combs. I believe the 

 discussion that followed sustained the position taken. 



SELLING HONEY. 



Mr. Muth had built up a large trade by selling only 

 pure honey, and had induced manufacturers of to- 

 bacco and of cookies to use honey, as he also had 

 the manufacturers of pork and pickles. Both he 

 and Mr. Benham distributed cookies made with 

 honey, which were very fine. 



FEEDING BACK 



Extracted honey to produce comb honey was briefly 

 touched upon. Mr. Jones and myself were the only 

 ones present who reported as having made of it a 

 success. I tiered up the unfinished sections, in the 

 Heddon case, until they were three or four tiers 

 high, fed the bees as fast as they would take the 

 honey, and looked over the sections, and removed 

 the finished ones about once a week. In feeding 

 back 1000 lbs. of honey I had secured the finishing 

 of 1200 lbs. of unfinished sections, increased their 

 weight to 1900 lbs., and had left about 100 lbs. of un- 

 finished sections. A friend of mine had " fed back" 

 in exactly the same manner, but had nut found it 

 profitable. Thought there was yet much to learn 

 upon the subject. Mr. Jones said that many failed 

 to make it profitable because too much room was 

 given in the brood-nest. The brood combs should 

 either be few in number, or else filled with honey. 



"IS BEE-KEEPING HEALTHFUL?" 



Was one of the questions asked. Some had suffered 

 from boils and eruptions of the skin, caused by bee 

 poison. Dr. Mason had sufl'ered from partial paraly- 

 sis of the nerves of motion of his hands, and, in the 

 fall, he felt pretty nearly " used up," as the effect of 

 bee-stings. D. A. Jones had obtained temporary re- 

 lief from rheumatism and neuralgia, as the results 

 of bee-stings. Mr. Langstroth had suffered severely 

 upon handling bees, after not having handled them 

 for several years; but upon continuing to work with 

 them, the trouble subsided. The remedies given for 

 bee-stings are too numerous to mention. 



PREVENTION OF STINGS. 



Mr. Jones said that stings upon the hands and 

 wrists could be greatly avoided by singeing the hairs 

 from them, as the bees catch their feet in the hairs, 

 become irritated, and sting. Smooth clothing, some- 

 thing like duck, was best; light-colored being better 

 than dark. The best kind of a hat to wear is one of 

 straw, with a wide slouching brim. 



TO FIND A BLACK QUEEN. 



Mr. Jones'said: Shake the bees from the combs, 

 letting them fall into the hive, and set the combs 

 one side; then with a sudden jerk shake the bees to 

 one side of the hive; and as they commence to spread 

 out and run, buzzing for the entrance, the queen 

 will come to the top, and start off with those long 

 strides of hers, when she can be easily secured. 



And now that we have Mr. Jones on the floor, why 

 not let him tell 



HOW TO REAR QUEENS? 



By the addition of brood, make a colony extra 

 strong. When the bees begin to seal the queen- 

 cells, preparatory to swarming, remove the queen. 



If they swarm before then, remove the queen and 

 put them back. They will build an astonishingly 

 large number of excellent cells. Just before the 

 cells hatch, remove them, and return the queen. 

 The bees yet retain the swarming fever; but having 

 no queen-cells, and no unsealed brood, they will not 

 swarm, but will wait for the queens to lay, and then 

 rear queens under the "swarming impulse," and 

 from the egg. A second large "batch" of No.l 

 cells is the result. 



There were many minor topics touched upon, but 

 want of space forbids even an enumeration of them. 



ELECTION OF OFFICERS. 



The Officers for the ensuing year are as follows: 

 President, W. z. Hutchinson; Vice-Presidents, R. L. 

 Taylor, James Heddon, and B. Salisbury; Secretary, 

 H. D. Cutting; Treasurer, T. M. Cobb. 



PLACE OF NEXT MEETING. 



The convention adjourned to meet in Lansing, the 

 second Wednesday after the first Tuesday in Dec, 

 1884; and I hope, friend Root, that you may meet 

 with us " next time." W. Z. Hutchinson. 



Roger3ville,Uenesee Co., Mich., Dec. 19, 1883. 



And I hope so too, friend II.; and I should 

 have been with you this time had I not been 

 so foolish as to contract a cold so severe that 

 starting off at such a time would hardly 

 have been a prudent thing. Very glad to 

 hear you had such a pleasant and profitable 

 time. 



WHY BEES CAN NOT FLY 90 ITIIIiES AN 

 HOITR. 



A SUMMING - UP OF SOME OF THE EVIDENCE, AS IT 

 WERE. 



ONTHS ago, when friend Shuck and I ex- 

 pressed a doubt about bees being able to fly 

 90 miles an hour, I was rather surprised at 

 the interest the subject seemed to excite; and when 

 it was claimed that bees might be assisted in keep- 

 ing their position above a train of cars by the move- 

 ment of the cars displacing the atmosphere, and 

 causing a partial vacuum which the returning at- 

 mosphere, by its elastic nature, hastened to fill, our 

 scientific friend Phin very properly remarked, that 

 "arguing in regard to matters concerning which 

 our knowledge is incomplete," is very apt to lead to 

 error. He thought the idea of such a vacuum 

 "must be very amusing to any one who has the 

 most elementary knowledge of the laws which gov- 

 ern the motions of aerial fluids." And then friend 

 Phin left us without another word about the 

 "fluids," so that the most of us, doubtless, did not 

 know where the "smile" came in. But Mr. Shuck 

 subsequently "sat down so hard" on the 90-mile 

 theory and friend Phin's philosophy, that probably 

 they don't care to hear more about it. But I prom- 

 ised to have a talk with the young folks, and allude 

 to the matter now in an introductory kind of way. 



In this discussion on the wing power of bees, Mr. 

 C. E. Chace, a bee-hunter, on page 44-3, August 

 Gleanings, 1883, produces the only real statistics 

 which were brought forward, and his timing bees 

 when in the height of their work gathering honey, 

 gives them a rate of speed of about a mile in five 

 minutes; and I have carefully noted, that whenever 

 bees have been actually timed by persons following 

 them in swarming, or tracing them to their hives by 

 marking and following them, that this is about the 

 speed tbey make. All who claim 90 miles, or very 



