1884 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



topics of interest were discussed, and the dear old 

 father Langstroth made the place seem almost sa- 

 cred; and how kind in friend Jones to f?et those nice 

 photos for us all, and so cheap '. and friend Cook, 

 Hutchinson, and others did much to maKe the meet- 

 ing the success it was. (iEO. E. Hilton. 

 Montgomery, Hillsdale Co., Mich., Dec. 8, 1883. 



SOMETHING NEW IN THE WAY OF 

 COMB HONEY. 



ALSO SOMETHING NEW TO TAKE TO OUK 

 COUNTY FAIR. 



I PRESUME most of our readers have 

 been astonished at the ingenuity which 

 has been displayed in the past year or 

 two in malting bees build honey just where 

 their owner wanted them to build it. Not 

 only are stars and hearts and crosses and 

 circles exhibited in beautiful white comb 

 honey, but something has already been done 

 in the way of letters and tigures. And now 

 comes Geo. W. Lawson, of Centreville, 

 Montgomery Co., O., with an order as fol- 

 lows : 



I want eleven sections made, similar to your fan- 

 cy sections, only representing a letter instead of 

 stars. The eleven letters and figures arc 



OUR FAIR, 

 1884. 



Each section is to have one of those letters or fig- 

 ures cut out as you think best. Of course, they are 

 to be sent with the other goods, and you to make 

 your charge, whatever is right, and let me know. 

 Geo. W. Lawson. 

 Centreville, Ohio, Dec. 13, 1883. 



After reading over the above part of the 

 letter I was just about to tell our friend it 

 could not be done ; but Mr. Gray, who sat 

 by, made the remark, '" Why, yes, we can do 

 it. You let me have that part of the order." 

 It was given him, and in a day or two he 

 called me to come and look at his fancy sec- 

 tions. Sure enough, he had got it; but in 

 order to make a sure thing of it he had made 

 the sections large enough so that only two 

 would go into an J^. frame. To make them. 

 he first made light square frames of about 

 such stuff as we make our wide frames out 

 of. Two of these just slipped into one wide 

 frame. Now to make the letters, corner- 

 pieces and various-shaped little blocks were 

 bradded into these frames so as to leave just 

 the space to make a letter. These blocks 

 and corner - pieces were made of i-stuff . 

 First one side Avas finished, then a sheet of 

 fdn. laid on, and the other half put on. 



As many of our friends will want to know 

 what these big sections filled with fdn. 

 ready for the bees will cost, I will state that 

 we can make them for -irt cts. each letter or 

 figure, and you can have any letter or figure 

 you choose. I would not advise them much 

 smaller than the size we have given, in 

 order to get them so the bees will work in 

 them readily. Those we haye made give a 



space of about 3 inches in width for the 

 heavy part of the letter. 



A LETTER FROIVI CHINA. 



AND SOMETHING ABOUT TOBACCO, AS WELL AS 

 CHINESE BEE-KEEPING. 



flUEND ROOT:- 1 have enjoyed the visits of 

 your journal for several years. True, I can d 

 nothing at bee-raising. We (myself, wife, and 

 daughter) spend our winter months in the interior 

 of this province at a place called Shao-wu, where we 

 have a station, and a small but growing church. The 

 spring and autumn we spend here at Foochow, 

 while two of the hottest months are spent at the sea- 

 side. L'nder such circumstances we could not have 

 bees or any thing else that needs looking after reg- 

 ularly. But I sometimes find it a pleasant recreation 

 to read over the various experiences of bee-raisers. 

 It is all entirely different from the things that must 

 usually occupy my mind. 



I see but rarely any bees in my travels; and from 

 what little I have seen, I suspect that Chinese bee 

 culture is of the rudest kind. There is generally a 

 little honey in the comb to be had in the autumn. 

 The combs are old and new, good and bad, all to- 

 gether. If we get the first pick at it, when the man 

 comes around peddling it, we can select out some 

 pretty fair pieces. I send herewith a sketch of a 

 Chinese bee-hive. It is, so far as I know, a.rude box 

 with a rounded top, suspended by ropes against the 

 side of the house under the eaves, which in this 

 country generally project two and one-half to three 

 or even four feet. The one peculiarity about all 

 that I have seen is, that instead of one long narrow 

 slit at the bottom of the hive, there is a number of 

 round holes about half an inch wide in the front face 

 of hive. The other day I saw an apiary of four 

 stands, where the hives were simply tea-chests. 

 Each one had thirty or forty of these holes distribu- 

 ted pretty evenly over the whole front side of the 

 hive, from top to bottom. 



TOBACCO AND OPIUM. 



But if the Chinese lack honey, they have no lack 

 of tobacco. Everybody smokes. If the Chinese 

 would only take to Christianity as they have taken 

 to tobacco, the nation would quickly evangelize it- 

 self. But opium, not Christianity, follows tobacco. 

 First they became a nation of tea-drinkers, a small 

 thing, seemingly; but it prepared the way for tobac- 

 co, and this in turn has prepared the way for opium. 

 God grant that it may not be the same in America; 

 but if the tobacco does not go, the opium will come. 



The Chinese method of smoking is peculiar. In- 

 stead of tilling a good-sized pipe, and puffing away 

 for several minutes, a pinch of tobacco is put into 

 the bowl of a small pipe, and lighted, and one or two 

 full inhalations taken. Then this is knocked out, 

 and another pinch put in, and so on, very leisurely, 

 until the smoker is satisfied. Of course, this requires 

 some kind of tinder that will burn or smoulder a long 

 time. The thing most commonly used is a tight roll 

 of coarse paper, about the size of a slate-pencil. The 

 paper Is made of bamboo, and the charred end of 

 the roller stick will catch tire from a spark, like 

 punk. A sharp, quick puff of breath will make it 

 blaze. A substitute for this paper, roll, or stick, in 

 the country, is the stalk of the hemp. Aftpr the 

 bark has been stripped off, the stalks are immersed 

 in a ditch pr stream for about three weefcs, and tfteji 



