622 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Sept. 



sheiterert from prevailing winds ; or you can 

 have suitable pipes to carry the drips from 

 the pump out to some sheltered spot, so that 

 Uses can have water whenever the pump is 

 used . 



PREMIUM ESSAY OF THE PRODUC- 

 TION OF COMB AND EXTRACT- 

 ED HONEY. 



Including the Management and Manipula- 

 tion for One Year. 



HEAD AT THE STATE FAIR AT COLUMBUS. 



fO be successful in producing honey, either 

 comb or extracted, it will be necessary to 

 have hives adapted to one of the standard 

 brood-.frames now in general use, such as 

 the Langstroth, American, Gallup, or Quin- 

 by. They should also be constructed as to be con- 

 veniently adapted to the storing of both comb and 

 extracted honey in best shape for market, and for 

 the successful wintering of bees. 



To successfully winter bees, it ie necessary to have 

 the hives contain prolific queens, plenty of working 

 bees reared during the fall season, and from 30 to 40 

 pounds of good well-c»pped honey in each brood- 

 chamber. It will also be necessary to use some kind 

 of absorbent of moisture, placed on top of the 

 brood-frames. Chaff, wood shavings, forest-leaves, 

 and sawdust are all good absorbents. A bee-passage 

 is generally made between the absorbing material 

 and the top of the brood-frames. Bees should be 

 disturbed as little as possible during the winter; 

 about the only thing necessary is to occasionally 

 remove the dead bees that may accumulate on the 

 b(>ttom-boards of the hives. Early in the spring the 

 hives should all be examined, to ascertain whether 

 they have queens and sufficient stores to supply 

 them until they can gather new honey. If any are 

 queenless they must be supplied with a fei-tile 

 queen as soon as possible, otherwise they will be 

 lost. If short in stores, they must be fed either 

 honey or sugar syrup. The latter is preferred, as it 

 is not so liable to induce robbing. Stimulative feed- 

 ing may be resorted to to good advantage in loca- 

 tions where it is necessary to have strong colonies 

 early in the season. 



As soon as the bees commence gathering honey 

 freely, the surplus-receptacles should be placed on 

 the hives; if working for comb honey, the boxes or 

 sections should have starters of thin comb founda- 

 tion. Too much surplus room should not at fli'St be 

 given, but additions made thereto as required. As 

 fast as the combs are nicely capped over they should 

 be removed, and the space they occupied filled as 

 before. 



For extracted honey it is necessary to have an 

 additional story placed on top of the brood-chamber. 

 To induce the bees to commence work, draw a frame 

 of freshly gathered and uncapped honey from below, 

 which place with one or more empty oombs or 

 frames of comb foundation — according to the 

 strength of the colony above, confining them to 

 their allotted space with a movable division-board; 

 add more frames as needed; when two or more of 

 them are filled and mostly capped over they should 

 be extracted, and then replaced. All surplus honey 

 and receptacles should be removed from the hives 

 at the close of the honey harvest. 



Sajjuel. D. Riegel. 



DISABLED QUEENS. 



DO BEES WORK OVER OLD CO.MB.S INTO NEW? 



fKIEND HOOT:— I have had some trouble with 

 my bees this season, and now after all this 

 bother they are coming out 'so good and 

 strong that everybody is going crazy over 

 them. 

 To one of the hives that killed one of your queens 

 I gave a queen-cell_; and when she had hatched, and 

 was about three days old, I looked them over and 

 found her, and there was a whitish substance at- 

 tached to her extremity. I thought this nothing un- 

 usual at the time, and did not again trouble them 

 for about a week; then on opening the hive 1 found 

 queen-cells started with eggs in them, and here and 

 { there an egg scattered around on a couple of cards, 

 i and some cells had two in. Laying worker, thought 

 1 I; then by careful search I found the queen, and in 

 i just the same fix as before, only the lump seemed 

 I to be larger than when first seen; so I caught her 

 [ by the wings, and with the thumb and finger of the 

 other hand I held her fast while my wife removed 

 the deformity with a pin. It looked like projiolis, but 

 1 it seemed harder— more like some crystallized sub- 

 I stance. It was a little to one side; and while she 

 was undergoing the operation she would dart out 

 I her sting about as much to the other side. Well, 

 1 after that I placed her on my hand, and she looked 

 I and acted all right, so I destroyed all the queen- 

 cells, and gave the hive a cai-d of new brood, and 

 put her back. I looked in a couple of days later, 

 j and they had not started any more queen-cells, but 

 she had gone to laying to beat time, and she proves 

 to be a good one. What was the trouble, and did I 

 do right? 



Do not bees sometimes work over old comb? 1 

 see no mention made of such a fact, but I alwaj-s 

 find that the first new comb built in a hive trans- 

 ferred from old and new combs is speckled, 

 and looks like bits of old comb worked over. The 

 other day I noticed a bee at woi'k on some bits of 

 old comb sticking to pieces of the old bee-tree, and 

 he would gnaw off the wax, and then work it up 

 with his paws, something as a boy would make a 

 snowball, and then rub it back on his hind legs, ex- 

 actly the same as pollen; and when it was loaded it 

 flew away. I could not say what was done with it. 



Our bees are doing great work now on buck- 

 wheat. John Barlow. 

 Sac City, Iowa, Aug. 11, 1884. 

 From your description, friend B., I should 

 say the whitish appendage was without 

 doubt the drone organ, which had not been 

 pulled away by the oees. Perhaps it adhered 

 so strongly" they could not remove it as they 

 usually do. Very likely she would never 

 have been able to lay if you had not per- 

 formed the operation you mention. I pre- 

 sume, of course, the eggs she now lays are 

 worker-eggs. Was it not more than three 

 days after hatching, when you found her 

 with this appendage?— Bees do work over 

 old comb, and I have often seen a trans- 

 ferred colony build a comb as large as my 

 hand, almost black, they having taken old 

 black combs for material to build this new 

 onei As they often use tliis material for 

 lengthening (iut cells, it has seemed to me 

 that fdn. made from dark combs is just as 

 good for brood-combs as the yellow wax, in 

 every respect, except iii looks. 



