1884 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTUKE. 



irA 



of 12V2 c. per lb. I have tried nearly every plan that 

 I eould think, and have made, perhaps, a hundred 

 blunders; but considering- that, when I commenced | 

 last spring:, I had never seen a queen nor a drone, 

 and did not know an Italian bee from a yellow- 

 jacket, nor a black bee from a tumble bug:, and 

 when 1 began to read Gleanings, etc., they were 

 all Dutch to me, I feel very well satisfied with my 



success. r. S. DOUBI.EDAV. 



Hamilton, Te,\as, Oct. 1, 1884. 



Well, friend I)., if you did make a hundred 

 blunders it seems to me you made success 

 enough to atone for them" all, if you have 

 made such a result as this. Even if yoti do 

 not winter more than a fourth part of the 21 

 colonies, you have done pretty fairly, even 

 then, unless the labor needed fo]- such an in- 

 crease counts up expensively. The above 

 also illustrates what energy and zeal will do 

 for an A B (' scholar in one single reason. — 

 If you liad heard our clerks declare they did 

 send you the match-safe, when you i-aid it 

 was not there, may be you would' know how 

 they feel when they are accused of omitting 

 articles from their orders. 



]^EPei^¥g Digc0ai^^6iN6r~ 



EES have g:athered no honey since July, in 

 this section, the season of the year that is 

 usually the very best. I never knew bees 

 to meddle with grapes, or rotten apples, 

 before. We shall have to feed or brimstone 

 them to get any thing- out of them. ( '. II. Mii-es. 

 Pawnee City, Neb., Sept. 21, 1884. 



I had 1000 lbs. with the label "Pure Honey," I know 

 I could readily have sold it all. Our report for the 

 fall of 1884 is as follows: 851 lbs. honey; 314 swarms 

 of bees; loss 38; increase l.'i. I hope we shall have 

 a more favorable report next fall. 

 Tooele City, Utah. Oct. 6, 1884. .John Di'nn. 



Bees have done no good in this section this year. 

 This is the first failure since I have been in the bus- 

 iness, six years. B. D. SinwEi.i,. 



Flushing, Belmont Co., ( ). 



I am ready for the back side of Blasted Hopes; 130 

 hives, and not a pound of honey, nor a swarm this 

 season. I{. W. Perkins. 



El Dorado, Kans. 



T am in Blasted Hopes this year, as my 16 swarms 

 of bees have not made 50 lbs. of honey; all of the 

 honey I did get was ■^:! locust honey that was as fine 

 as any I ever had. The season was too wet. 



Mrs. H. li. OsnoRN. 



Stoughton, Wis., Oct. 1, 1884. 



REPORT FROM UTAH. 



I thought a few items fi-om this place might be of 

 interest to the readers of Gleaninos. Our pros- 

 pects have in part been blighted this season, owing 

 to the caterpillars and worms poisoning the honey- 

 producing plants and flowers through the summer 

 season, although the bees have been able to keep 

 the wolf from the door of the hive. Our autumn 

 season has not been so nice as in former years, hav- 

 ing been rain and snow alternately for the past 

 month, so that the bees have been confined to their 

 hives, and no doubt have consumed quite a (luanti- 

 ty of honey that should have been used in the win- 

 ter. We may have to feed, but it will not be any 

 more than we have done, only the other way wc 

 used to feed ourselves from the bees, but we shall 

 have to change about and feed them, if we find 

 them short of supplies. I did have 3 bottles of hon- 

 ey in my window for sale this season, but there was 

 such a demand I was not able to sell any more; had 



^EMINDEl^Y. 



F any of your bees are lacking in stores, 

 'r now is the time to make it good. Don't 

 J by any means think of letting them 

 *- starve while granulated sugar is as cheap 

 as it is now. Our last lot, purchased in 

 New York, cost us only Gi cents — a lower 

 price than I ever heard of before. As tluc- 

 tuations are so uncertain, I should not dare 

 to offer to furnish it for less than 7 cts. We 

 shall feed perhaps live or six barrels to our 

 25U colemies. Our apiarist thinks the bread- 

 pan feeder is about the simplest and easi- 

 est way, although we always feed during 

 warm weather. If you should neglect it 

 until it is late and cool. I think the Simplici- 

 ty feeder would be perhaps safer. We make 

 our syrup by putting a lot of sugar in the 

 extractor-can ; pour in water, and let in a 

 jet of steam until it boils ; add water or su- 

 gar imtil a sample of the syrup cooled in a 

 saucer is about like tolei-ably thick lionej . 

 Our bees are all wintered in "chaft" hives, so 

 we turn back one end of the enamel sheet, 

 exposing all the ends of the frames. The 

 bread -pan feeder is now set close to the 

 opening left, tilled with the syrup, when it is 

 just as warm as it can be without scalding 

 the bees. .V thin piece of cheese-cloth is 

 then laid over the pan and pressetl down 

 slightly into the syrup, in such a way that 

 one edge of the cloth hangs right down on 

 the opening where the bees can come up. If 

 they haven't learned how yet, or if the weath- 

 er is cool, just drop a little of the warm syrup 

 among them. /They will soon boil out and 

 over into the pan ; and if they are a good 

 colony they will often empty the pan in a 

 couple of hours. In this way, by repeated 



, tilling you can give a colony enough to win- 

 ter on "during lit hours of mild weather. If 

 your colonies are not all strong, I would 

 double them up pretty well — say until they ^ 

 cover five or six combs pretty thickly. If m 

 you lack queens you can put double the 

 quantity of bees in a chaff hive if you choose, 

 but you should feed them accordingly. Yon 



' can not very well feed them too much, al- 

 though I would not give more than about 1 '> 

 or 20 lbs. of sugar, even though the colony 



: should be ven/ strong. \\'ith a chaff hive, 

 stores of granulated sugar, and lots of bees, 

 there need be almost lu/failure ; in fact, I do 

 not know of any kind of farm stock that can 



i be wintered so safely as bees, if you just take 

 the pains. If you" are a new hand, better 

 have your colonies too strong than too weak, 



! and you had better give them too much su- 

 gar instead of not enough. Do not worry if 



! you do not find any brood or eggs at this 



j time of year, for they are, in fact, better off 



j without these ; the same Avith pollen. If 

 you can get out all the combs containing 

 pollen, to be put back in the spring, when 



! we have settled warm weather, all the better. 



