1888 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



685 



hives, empty combs, etc. 1 now have had no trouble 

 whatever with the moth, for the last four years. 

 What makes the differenced You ask if I got Ital- 

 ians. No, sir, notliins' of the kind. I just took 

 Gleanings five years, and learned how— that's all. 

 I now keep my bees in well-painted frame hives, 

 using- all the latest appliances. I have a mill, and 

 make my own foundation; and if I discover a 

 queenless colony I j-et a queen, or unite it with 

 some other, and takeout and put away all combs 

 not in use and covered with bees. If I ever happen 

 to see a solitary moth, his doom is immediately 

 sealed. The fact is, if you want to raise moth as 

 well as bees, just g-et your bees all in old bo.x 

 hives, not painted; have them all in the weeds; go 

 to them only twice in a year, and I will guarantee 

 that you will have plenty of moth, even if your 

 bees are all Italians. W. H. Ritter. 



Springfield, Mo. 



Friend R., you have made a big point, 

 and I believe eveiy word of it. Notwith- 

 standing, however, and in spite of the large 

 compliment you pay us, I want to say that 

 Italians have some influence in the matter. 

 The most of us have, at some time or other, 

 tested the matter of putting an Italian 

 queen into a colony of blacks infested with 

 moth worms ; and t believe that most of us 

 have seen the Italians, when they were but 

 a few days old, take the worms by the nape 

 of the neck and drag them out on the 

 alighting-board. 



BAREHEADED BEES. NOT FOUL BROOD. 



I send a piece of comb by this mail, with what I 

 fear is foul brood; and, being inexperienced, I 

 hope that you will be so kind as to tell me as soon 

 as convenient what it is. There are two pieces- 

 one from the old hive and one from the new. I 

 have just discovered it, and it seems to be all 

 through three hives— one old one and the two 

 young swarms out of the same old swarm. 



Warren, Mich., .July 39, 1888. T. A. Barr. 



Friend B., the brood you send is not foul 

 brood. It is only a specimen of perfectly 

 healthy brood. During very warm weather 

 we quite often find cells of young bees un- 

 capped, or, rather, they have the appear- 

 ance of never having been capped. You 

 will see under '' Bees," in the ABC book, 

 that this thing is mentioned. 



SHOULD THE SHIPPER BE MADE LI.4BLE FOR THE 



SUPERSEDURE OF QUEENS HE SELLS, SIX OR 



EIGHT WEEKS AFTER DATE OF SALE? 



Does the confinement of a good laying- queen for 

 six or eight days in shipping affect her fertility? 

 If so, whose loss ought it to be if the queen is su- 

 perseded in from four to eight or twelve weeks 

 after a safe introduction, and laying? Is it the 

 breeder or the man who sends for the queen, who 

 should be the loser? S. H. Colwick. 



Norse, Tex., July 9, 1888. 



No, the confinement of a queen during a 

 shipment of six or eight days rarely if ever 

 affects lier fertility. We have prol)ably 

 shipped as many queens as any breeder in 

 the United States. As a general rule, our 

 customer writes sooner or later how his 

 queen pleases. We can speak quite posi- 

 tively when we say that shipment either by 

 mail or express does not deteriorate the lay- 

 ing qualities of a queen. If she is super- 



seded she is superseded for some other rea- 

 son. Even granted that such deterioration 

 might take place, the shipper hardly ought 

 to be made liable for the loss after six or 

 eight weeks. All kinds of stock are liable 

 to deteriorate after sale. As long as it can 

 be maintained tliat the animal sold was in 

 good condition at the time of sale, the seller 

 is in no way liable for what becomes of the 

 animal afterward. We must apply the 

 same kind of reasoning to queen-bees. 



OPEN-SIDE SECTIONS. 



Last year I sent to G. B. Lewis and got 1000 of 

 these. I put them in crates without separators, 

 and, owing to the drouth and bad honey season, 

 only a part of them were used. But I had several 

 crates nicely filled with fall honey. They were all 

 well and evenly filled— not one of them bulged out, 

 as I have had them in the other style of sections. 

 I think they are the best, and 1 am going to try 

 them more fully. I believe that, with them, we 

 can dispense with separators altogether; but we 

 can't tell till we have a good season for honey. A 

 full fiow of honey would test the thing more fully. 

 1 have had two bad years for honey. I am getting 

 tired, and have nearly concluded to sell my ranch, 

 or rent it out to some younger man to try his luck. 

 The business has never paid me. J. W. C. Gray. 



Atwood, III., July 33, 1888. 



A SWARM THAT WOULDN'T STAY HIVED. 



A very striking thing occurred in the country 

 several days ago, as follows: A neighbor found a 

 bee-tree and cut it down. He hived the bees. There 

 was a fine large swarm, and they came out. Next 

 day he put them back, but they seemed bound to 

 stay on one limb of a bush, and nowhere else. He 

 hived them several times, but they would come out 

 and go to the same limb again. He became dis- 

 couraged, and let them go. They stayed on that 

 limb 14 days, without even trying to hunt a new 

 home. At the end of U days, another neighbor 

 went to the woods and got them ott' the limb and 

 carried them one mile and put them in a hive with 

 a weak swarm of his apiary. The bees had reduced" 

 in numbers considerably. There were probably 

 half a gallon of bees when our friend took them in. 



Luttrell, Ala., July 13, 1888. B. G. Luttrell. 



Friend L., fourteen days is a good while 

 for a swarm to hang on a limb. Of course, 

 they must have gathered some honey dur- 

 ing this time, but probably not enough to 

 enable them to build combs. Had they 

 been given a comb containing a little un- 

 sealed brood, I am quite certain they would 

 have stayed in the hive the first time. 



HONEY THAT (iRANULATES, OR CANDIES, IN THE 

 COMB. 



I send you a sample section of honey of some 

 kind of granulated sort, that is puzzling bee-keep- 

 ers here. Some think it honey-dew, some grape 

 sugar. (Ithers think it comes from the pine in the 

 mountains, and now it is left to you to tell us some- 

 thing about it. Will Thatcher. 



.Martinsburg, W. Va., Aug. 8. 1888. 



Friend T., the same tiling, or something 

 quite similar, has been submitted to us a 

 good many times. By consulting our back 

 volumes you will notice that several plants 

 have been suggested as the cause of this 



