514 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



May 



the last three years, and found It to be better and 

 nicer. I will give it to my bee-friends to use. It is 

 my own itcipe and no patent. Oil of wintergreen. 

 Try and get the genuine article, and I will guaran- 

 tee it answers as well as smoke. I put two drops on 

 my hands, then rub them together, then rub my 

 hands on my face. If bees are cross, rub some on a 

 cloth and put it on top of the combs, and in a short 

 time the bees will boil out at the front of the hive. 



S. SriDLE. 



Easton, Wayne Co., Ohio, Mar. 20, 1884. 



Well, is not your substitute rather more 

 expensive than rotten wood, friend 8.? If I 

 am correct, oil of wintergreen, when pure, 

 costs a big lot of money ; and if you use but 

 a very small portion at a time, having so 

 costly a drug about will be rather expensive, 

 will it not? We shoitld be glad of a report 

 from some of the friends who feel inclined 

 to try the above. 



OUR BUSINESS. 



One of the very evident things just now to any 

 one who takes the trouble to observe, is, that a great 

 deal of money is being made in ordinary bee-keep- 

 ing. Quietly and steadily a majority of those en- 

 gaged in it on a proper basis are accumulating a 

 competency. This is true of bee-keepers as a class; 

 and the fact that men are met with who are appar- 

 ently losing ground in the business counts for noth- 

 ing as an argument against it. No business is 

 known to men in which everybody can succeed, and 

 occasionally one is met whose failure is only the 

 greater because he had the greater opportunity. 

 A, B, C, are doing quite well with their bees; but E 

 complains that he is losing money. This proves 

 nothing, except that the others understand the bus- 

 iness, and E does not. Those who And that bee- 

 keeping does not pay in these days, need to change 

 their stock or remodel their methods; something is 

 wrong, and they can not be too prompt in finding 

 out what it is. But whatever the trouble may be, 

 reader, rest assured that the fault does not lie in the 

 business. Fr. Holtke. 



Carlstadt, N. J., March 30, 1884. 



IlEPOBT FROM GRAND RIVER APIARY FOR 1883. 



I commenced the season with 13 colonies, but not 

 as strong as they should have been to give the best 

 results; and not being in the best of locations, I did 

 not look for much profit. From two Italian queens 

 I raised 18, and from my 13 swarms I increased to 

 30, and bought 3 for $3 per swarm, furnishing the 

 hives myself. In preparing for winter I reduced 

 my bees to 28 colonies, and packed them in clover 

 chaff. I received about 600 lbs. of extracted honey, 

 and 50 lbs. of comb honey in large frames. I find 

 the only way to make bees pay is by economy and 

 industry. Luther B. Kenyon. 



Lyons, Ionia Co., Mich. 



WHY DO BEES SOMETIMES KtLT, THEIR QUEENS IN 

 THE SPRING? 



Will you please give us a chapter in Gleanings 

 as to the cause of bees killing their own queen in 

 the spring? I have lost several that were laying all 

 right a month ago. One queen I "found in a ball, 

 and nearly dead, and a well-developed queen cell in 

 the hive at the time. The others did not start cells 

 till the queen was dead. Geo. E. Hovey. 



Holland, O., April 14, 1884. 



Friend II., there may be several causes 

 for this strange behavior. Perhaps your 



hives are too close together, and some of the 

 bees had got into the wrong hive. May be 

 you have been moving your hives, or robbing 

 has got started in your apiary When our 

 bees got badly demoralized bythe old spring 

 dwindling, they sometimes used to attack 

 their queens, and kill them when it seemed 

 to me they did it just because they had be- 

 come weak and discouraged, and, as poor 

 humanity often does, made a bad matter 

 worse by cutting off the only hope they had 

 of bringing up again. 



POISONOUS HONEY FROM THE MOUNTAIN LAUREL. 



This evening I concluded I would go up on the 

 mountain-side and see if I could find out from what 

 my bees were gathering such enormous quantities 

 of pollen. So, puttin? ABC under my arm, I be- 

 gan scaling the rough and steep mountain. I had 

 not gone far before I came upon a perfect mat of 

 what is called by the people here, " mountain lau- 

 rel," which was just blooming out in a purple pea- 

 ehaped bloom. I saw bees gathering honey from it. 

 I turned to page 103 of ABC, and read Ur. Gram- 

 mer's article on poisonous honey. I am troubled 

 about what to do. If this is the same laurel he 

 speaks of, I will give a description of it. It is a low 

 thick bush, with small leaves, in size about like 

 black locust, but they are very thick, as it is an ev- 

 ergreen. It bears an oblong pod which looks some- 

 thing like a bean, or more like a pea. These peas 

 mature in the fall; and when hulled they are per- 

 fectly red, nearly round, and very hard, it is alto- 

 gether difl'crent from what we called laurel in Ken- 

 tucky. Can some bee-keeping brother tell me what 

 it is, and what I should do, in case it yields poison- 

 ous honey? Were it not for this trouble, I can not 

 see any thing to keep bees from doing well here, as 

 we have a great many honey-producing shrubs and 

 plants, chief among which are the live-oak, white 

 sumac, redbud, Spanish dagger, and the so-called 

 "bee-bush," which bears a profusion of delicate 

 white flowers, very fragrant, and said to bloom 

 afresh after every rain, and I saw them literally 

 covered with bees last summer and fall. 



Burnet, Texas, Mar. 20, 1884. C. W. Hardy. 



I shouldn't be alarmed, friend IT., till I 

 had taken some of this honey from the hives, 

 freshly gathered, and made a test of it on 

 myself. Take a little taste. If it makes 

 you sick, then you may be alarmed ; but if 

 it produces none of the symptoms mention- 

 ed in the A B C book, i shouldn't be troub- 

 led about it. Perhaps they do not get 

 enough of the honey to produce any disa- 

 greeable effect, and may be it is not the 

 same in all localities. 



HAVING SEVERAL APIARIES LOCATED 4 OR 5 MILES 

 APART. 



I have 3C0 colonies of bees now. All wintered out- 

 doors on their summer stands, and I don't think I 

 ever had bees in better condition at Ihis time of the 

 year. I have them in 5 different apiaries, from 4 to 

 7 miles from home. I shall start another yard this 

 spring, as I think they do better when there are not 

 over TjO, spring count, in a place. I hire boys to help 

 do the work. We work for extracted honey, and 

 have nobody to hive bees on Sunday or any other 

 day, except when we are there, once in 8 or 10 d.iy8. 

 We got 22,000 lbs. last year, and am looking for 30.000 

 this year. Edwin France. 



Platte ville. Wis., April 6, 1881. 



