516 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Aug. 



with universal opposition among- the dealers. He 

 labored with them for weeks, to no purpose. In 

 conversHtion one day with tlic proi)rietc)r of the ho- 

 tel lit whicli he st()i)i)C(l, the latter tdld Iloiic that if 

 he eoiild niana;^f to have his honey iiitrddiiecci on 

 the tuWe of Queen Victoria it would solve the prob- 

 lem at once, for if she were pleased with it she 

 would communicate to Hog-e through the Lord Stew- 

 ard. This communication once made public would 

 make American honey the fashion in England. 



" A former Lord Steward was a friend of the hotel- 

 keeper, and was at that time eng-aged largely inthe 

 manufacture and sale of pickles. This man the 

 landlord introduced to Hoge. They dined together. 

 Hoge gave the jiickle man an immense order for his 

 goods, to tie sent to the American grocer. More 

 wi)ie followed; and before the Ex-Lord Steward 

 wont away he promised to use his inlluence to have 

 the American honey introduced on the royal table. 

 He succeeded in inducing the then Lord Steward, 

 Sir. John Cowell, to accept a box of honey for the 

 Queen, and to serve it on her table. The Queen was 

 so dcliKhted with the honey that she directed the 

 Lord Steward to present her thanks to the donor, to 

 onh'rn siipph' of t(^n cases at once, and to keep 

 American honey constantly on the royal table. 



" Ilojre lost notinie in niakinK' thiseoiniiiunicatioii 



American honey chaii>re<l at' o'nce! and FloRe came 

 back to Ne\y York, secretly laii.uhinji- at the liritish- 

 ers, but rejoicinu- o\ei- an order tor half a million 

 pounds of American honey for the English markets, 

 wh:c"i he carried in his jiocket. The demand for it 

 has increased ever since, and the trade that was 

 started in New-York State honey is now largely 

 shared by the ralifornia product. 



"In California there ai'O no long winters, with 

 dearth ol llowers, through which the bees must be 

 fe<l by artilieial means, and in llie mouth of almost 

 every canon there is a lice ranch oi- aj.iai-y. Thebee- 

 keeper of the Pacific Coast is not liesel wil'h as many 

 difficulties as confront his East< rri brothei-, and he 

 grows indolent and rich from the labor of his ever- 

 industrious, brown-\vinge<l ser\ants. These liee- 

 ranches are models of neatness and comfort, and 

 the business is so light, jileasaiit, and in-ofitatile, and 

 requires .so little capital at the start, that it is fast 

 becoming the leading industry in many localities on 

 the coast. Y'ou see men, women, and children, wlio 

 own extensive bee-ranches, among them iieimi- 

 many who are physically unable to attend to busi- 

 ness rc(|uiring active sui>erintendence. Tliere is a 

 constant bu/./.ing of wings in these canons, caused 

 by the endless goings and comings of the bees, and 

 the burden of honey tliey carry collectively is so 

 great that the air is perpetually filled with the fra- 

 grance of the fields." 



"Why do we never see red-clover honey adver- 

 tised-'" asked the reporter. 



"For thesimjile reason that there is never any 

 made by honey-bees. There is no blossom so rich 

 in stoics of sweetness as the red-clover blossom, as 

 every school-boy whose privilege it is t(t jduck them 

 and suck their nectar, well knows. But the honey- 

 bee never collects it, because it can not. Thecorolla- 

 tube of the red clover is so deep and small that the 

 bee can not reach the honey. The bee knows this, and, 

 if you will tliink a moment, you will remember you 

 never saw a hi\-e bee on a red-clover blossom. They 

 do not waste their time in efforts to obtain sweets 

 that are lieyond their reach. But the bumble-bee 

 levies tribute on every red-clover field in his baili- 

 wick. As smart as the hive bee is, it has yet to 

 learn a trick that is as old as the hills to its gigantic 

 and more stupid-seeming cousin. When a bumble- 

 bee alights on a head of red clover he punctures a 

 hole in the base of the corolla, and, thrusting in his 

 tongue, sucks out the nectar. Unfortunately, this 

 big clumsy bee is not much of a honey-maker. You 

 might rob a score of bumble-bee nests and not ob- 

 tain a quarter of a ixnind of honey; and, besides, 

 his nests are few and far between. Consequently 

 we shall have to wait until the hive bee learns to 

 drill into the blossom to get the nectar before we 

 can have red-clover honey for our Avaffles." 



I presume ffieiid Hutchinson could reply 

 to that item aliout women and children who 

 are '' physically unable '' to attend to busi- 

 ness, succeeding as bee-keepers. The part 

 about bumble-bees drilling into the clover- 

 blossoms has a sprinkling of truth about it, I 

 believe, for these bees do puncture the forged 



me-nots, something in this way. The idea 

 that hive bees are never seen on red clover is 

 rather amusing, and we can not quite ex- 

 plain it by saying the writer must have taken 

 Ills points before Italians were introduced, 

 fo): black bees have been found on red clover, 

 more or less, almost every season. I really 

 liope it is true, that Captain Hetherington em- 

 ploys "nine men and two steam saw-mills five 

 weeks " to prepare his honey-boxes, and that 

 he has 2-500 swarms of bees. The idea of 

 paying rent for the privilege of allowing the 

 bees to work on clover and buckwheat is 

 a new one, and I hope it is a fact, for it looks 

 like getting bee culture on to a solid basis. 

 In 1879 we gave a sketch in which mention 

 was made of the way friend Isham's honey 

 was brought to tlie notice of the Queen. 



PROFITABLE NUCLEI. 



ALSO SOMKTIIINO .\I$OUT GETTING COMBS ALL 

 WOliKEH WITHOUT THE USE OF FDN. 



f% N page 443 of Gleanings I told you how I unit- 



T*^ edbees; and in conclusion, said that in the 

 Ij Aug. 1 No. I would tell what I did with the 

 ^^ little colony of bees left in No. 1, so as to get 

 a good profit from them. You will remem- 

 ber that in this (No. 1) hive, we had one frame of 

 brood, bees, and queen, together with an empty 

 comb, all shut to one side of the hive by means of a 

 division-board. As soon as the bees from No. 3 fly 

 to any extent, the old bees taken with the combs 

 from No. 1 while uniting, will return, which will 

 give bees enough in our little colony to make a 

 good strong two-frame nuclei. In three or four 

 days the queen will have the empty comb filled with 

 eggs, at which time I put in an empty frame be- 

 tween the two full ones. As this little colony has 

 no desire to swarm, or for any thing else save to in- 

 crease its number of worker-bees as fast as possi- 

 ble, they go right to work and fill this frame with as 

 nice and straight a worker-comb as was ever seen; 

 and this, too, when colonies having no such desire 

 for workers will be doing comparatively nothing at 

 getting honey or any thing else. Also at such times 

 I have known a new swarm to fill a hive with comb 

 and brood in two weeks, while a colony which had 

 not swarmed, or a swarm hived on empty combs, 

 would not store 3 lbs. of honey during the two weeks. 

 From this I conclude that the idea that 1 pound of 

 wax costs 20 lbs. of honey, is erroneous, when the 

 bees have access to the fields and plenty of pollen. 

 In about a week this comb is completed, when it is 

 taken out and given to some colony that needs just 

 such a frame of comb and brood, while another 

 empty frame is given which is again taken out when 

 filled, and thus we keep on to the end of the season, 

 when several of these little colonies are united to- 

 gether so as to form one good colony for winter. 

 The extra queens are sold, or used in replacing old 

 ones. In this way I have gotten as high as 15 beau- 

 tiful worker-combs built by one of these little colo- 

 nies, and all done by the bees which hatched from 

 the two ooDibs they had to start with, which (15> 

 combs /consider cost me less than to have bought 

 foundation, paid the express oq it, and bothered 

 with fitting it in wired frames. 



By carefully lool^ing over the above, friond Hasty 

 will see how he could have secui'ed much more wax 

 than he did by the experiment he \f\c6. a year ago. 



