6t6 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Sept. 



of the high trees to which I have referred in a pre- 

 vious part of this letter. D. F. Savage. 

 Hopkinsville, Ky., July 5, 1888. 



"WHAT- TO DO WHEN BEES SETTLE 

 ON ONE'S HEAD. 



WITH A SniTABLE ILLUSTRATION ACCOMPANYING. 



fHE clipping in June ].5th Gleanings, about 

 bees settling on a farmer's head, induces me 

 to give you some reminiscence from my ex- 

 perience in such a case. 

 About 38 or 40 years ago, when I was 8 or 10 

 years old (I have been used to bees from childhood), 

 I was holding up a leafy bush for the swarm to clus- 

 ter on, while tin pans, bells, and two sea-shell horns 

 were making the sweet music of bygone days, to 

 induce the bees to cluster. After circling around 

 about the usual time, a prime swarm began to 

 alight on the stem of my bush, en a level with my 

 head; and as the cluster-call sounded, the bees 

 poured in all over my shoulders; then my hat brim 

 dropped down over my face. 1 dropped my bush, 

 took off my hat, and laid it on the bush and moved 

 out pretty quickly, with a pint or so of bees on my 

 arms and shoulders. I do not think I got a sting, 

 but the swarm clustered on my old hat, " all samee 

 Melican man." Moral: Never strike a bee. 



arwine's predicament, 30 

 from the ground. 



FEET UP 



Once upon a time, about 1877 or '78. I had a swarm 

 cluster about 30 feet up on a tree near my apiary; 

 and as 1 could not get at them with a ladder on ac- 

 count of the small limbs, I climbed the tree to get 

 them. I could get nothing to stand on in reach of 

 the cluster but two small limbs about a large as a 

 man's thumb, and held on by a limb about VA inch- 

 es in diameter, and about four feet from the body 

 of the tree. The limbs I stood on being on a small 

 fork that terminated in small branches outside of 

 and around the cluster, I had cut the small limbs 

 from around the bees and was about tying a line to 

 the limb to climb, when the two branches I was 

 standing on broke. The limb I was holding to, by 

 the jerk of my weight coming all on it, bent quickly, 

 striking the cluster, and that precipitated a large 

 part of it on to my bare head, my hat having been 

 knocked off while climbing. Think of the joy of 

 my situation— hanging by one hand some 18 or 30 

 feet high, with perhaps a hundred lances busily 



testing the hardness of my head and the sticking 

 qualities of my grit, but I did not fall. I had had a 

 broken thigh once, and I would prefer a thousand 

 bee-stlngs to one broken leg. I quietly pulled my- 

 self on to the body of the tree, climbed down, comb- 

 ed the stings out of my scalp, while my wife picked 

 a dozen or two out of my forehead, face, and neck, 

 after which I climbed up again, knocked the clus- 

 ter into a basket, let them down by a rope, carried 

 them to the hive, and emptied them out. Thus I 

 learned that we could cariT bees in an open-topped 

 vessel as well as any way, and with no risk of jar- 

 ring the cluster off. E. S. Arwine. 

 Banning, Cal., July 16, 1888. 



Why, friend A., you are a " trooper." It 

 is funny that nobody ever thought of it be- 

 fore. When a swarm of bees alights on 

 your head, let them have the hat to cluster 

 on, in place of clustering on the owner un- 

 derneath. Trying to fight bees that want 

 to cluster on your head would be pretty sad 

 business, and I indorse your moral. Your 

 grit in getting those bees down, even if they 

 did give you so many stings you had to get 

 them out of your hair with a comb, is com- 

 mendable. 1 have tried carrying bees in a 

 basket ; and wiiile they will sometimes 

 cling to the side-;, and around on the out- 

 side, at other times I have known them to 

 leave the basket in disgust, and go back to 

 where they had been clustering. A deep 

 tin pail does pretty well if you keep bump- 

 ing it every little while, so as to make them 

 slip down to the bottom in a heap. 



■WILD SUNFLOWERS AS A HONEY- 

 PLANT. 



HONEY-PLANTS NOT YIELDING THE SAME IN ALL 

 LOCALITIES. 



R. JOHN A. KING, Mankato, Minn., sends me 

 the flower-head of one of the wild sun- 

 flowers, which he says grow from three to 

 five feet high, and bloom from early Au- 

 gust till frost. He says the bees gather 

 freely from it. The honey is amber in color, and 

 much superior to that from late fall flowers. He 

 wishes me to give the name through Gleaninqs, 

 and comment upon it. 



It is very difficult to correctly name plants of the 

 great composite family from a single flower-head, 

 so I can not be entirely sure of this one. I think, 

 however, it is our large sunflower, probably Heli- 

 anthus giganteus. 1 have noticed here that bees 

 visit both our most common wild sunflowers, H. gU 

 gantfAUi and H. divaricatiis, yet I have not thought 

 thctn as valuable for honey as some of the smaller 

 composite plants, like the tickseed species of core- 

 opsis— or beggar-ticks- species of bidens, nor at 

 all corajiaraiile with these gems of our autumn 

 bloom, the goldeiirods, asters, and thorough worts, 

 for I find that the latter swarm with bees, while the 

 sunflowers are rarely visited. But we have much 

 to learn in reference to this matter of nectar. 

 Flowers that secrete sparely here may fairly gush 

 with nectar drops in the dryer atmosphere of 

 Minnesota. Hence, while the sunflowers may be 

 indifferent honey-plants in Michigan, they may be 

 among the best in Minnesota. Thus it is that all 

 accurate observations and all correct derermina- 

 tions of honey-plants are important. 



