700 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Sept. 



BEES GETTING CAUGHT ON THE MII.KWEED, AND 

 DYING. 



My papa has been keeping beos three years. He 

 has 47 colonies. They wintered nicely. The pollen 

 they are gathering- is a light yellow. The bees 

 gather honey from the milkweed. It is a large 

 pinkish flower, round like a ball. The bees get 

 caught fast in the little blossoms, and die. Mam- 

 ma hives the bees when papa is gone, and T help 

 her. If the bees alight down low, mamma shakes 

 them down on a cloth in front of the hive, and they 

 go in. If they are high up we have a hiving-box to 

 take them down with. Aug. Mali,ow, age 13. 



Fort Jones, Cal., Aug. 4, 1888. 



Thanks, friend Augustus. You will see, 

 by the subject of " Milkweed,'' in the ABC 

 of Bee Culture, that a peculiar kind of pol- 

 len clings to the legs of the bees, resulting 

 in the death of the bee. 



USING SMALL CEDARS FOR PLACES OF CLUSTER- 

 ING. 



The way my pa gets the swarms is this: We go 

 to a bush and get a lot of small cedar-trees, about 

 six feet high. We cut them off at the root and trim 

 the limbs off about three or four feet, and set them 

 in the ground. When the swarm is settled on it pa 

 can pull it up and shake them into the hive, and 

 set the bush down again. When one swarm is out, 

 and another wants to come out, we sprinkle the 

 front of the hive with water. That keeps them 

 in. Pa has 64 swarms. We have had no bees swarm 

 this year. We have very little honey. 



Lorraine, Ont., Can. C. E. Christian. 



Friend Christian, we don't quite under- 

 stand what you mean by setting out small 

 cedar-trees. Do you mean that you actual- 

 ly plant them, so that they grow and thrive, 

 and that, after a swarm has clustered, you 

 pull them up, swarm and all ? It is said, 

 bees have a preference for certain kinds of 

 shrubbery on which to cluster, but we are 

 not so sure of it. We presume the bees will 

 cluster upon the cedars, providing there is 

 no other place for them. You may, per- 

 haps, remember that we have a row of 

 evergreens outskirting our apiary, and, as a 

 general rule, bees cluster on the evergreens 

 rather than among the grapevines among 

 the hives. 



A SWARM THAT MADE " SUCH A FUNNY NOISE." 



Mj' pa has had bees two years this summer. We 

 take Gleanings, and we think it is a good paper. 

 We had a swarm of bees that made a noise that 

 sounded like a fine whistle; sometimes it sounded 

 like a coarse whistle, and sometimes it sounded like 

 a hen. It was such a funny noise that I can not 

 describe it very well. Vou must think for yourself. 

 We got about 155 lbs. of honey from the top of 

 three hives, in sections. We have 55 colonies of 

 bees. I like to help pa take out honey. 



Mears, Mich. Maggie Johnson. 



Very good, friend Maggie : but we must 

 confess tliat it is very hard for us to imag- 

 ine what kind of a noise that swarm made. 

 It must have been a remarkable one indeed 

 that uttered a note that resembled the 

 sound of a sharp whistle, a coarse whistle, 

 and tinally one like a hen. Come to think 

 of it, tlie lioise which a swarm makes when 

 it issues does somewhat resemble the noise 

 of a distant steamboat whistle. By refer- 



ring to the map we see you are located on 

 or near Lake Michigan, and you doubtless 

 know what coarse and sharp whistles sound 

 like. It is pretty hard for us to imagine, 

 however, that the noise would resemble that 

 of a smart hen that, perhaps, is just an- 

 nouncing to the world at large that a new- 

 laid treasure may be found in the bam. We 

 can not dispute you, however, for perhaps 

 you are right. 



"THAT LITTLE GIRL" DOWN IN MASSACHUSETTS. 



It has been some time since you heard from me, 

 and I suppose by this time you are thinking of that 

 little girl in Massachusetts. My pa keeps an experi- 

 mental apiary. This year he has taken three of 

 his hives six miles from home. The bees got no 

 honey from apple-blossoms, on account of the 

 weather being wet and cold; but since then they 

 have done very well. Fi-om the three hives out of 

 town he has taken 102 lbs. of comb honey; last 

 week, and two days this week, they filled 31 one- 

 pound boxes, and had commenced to seal it up. 

 From basswood, in the city here, bees have made 

 quite a feast. We had very good weather while 

 they were in bloom, and they were as happy as a 

 bee could be. We have quite a number of them 

 used for shade-trees on the street. They are not in 

 bloom now. It is vacation, and I have lots of time 

 to watch the bees. My school begins the first Tues- 

 day in September. Flossie J. Eldridge. 



New Bedford, Mass.. July 37, 1888. 



Thank you, friend Flossie. We did not 

 just remember the little girl down in Mas- 

 sachusetts at lirst, but we do now. The 

 family of children in this Juvenile Depart- 

 ment has now become so large that it is get- 

 ting to be pretty hard to remember that one 

 lives in Massachusetts, another in Louisi- 

 ana, one in California, or another in the 

 good old State of Ohio. But it does not 

 make any difference whether we remember 

 you or not. We are glad to hear from all 

 the little folks whose papas keep bees. 



fertile workers. 

 Papa had 39 swarms of bees last fall. One colony 

 died, and in the spring two of them were robbed; 

 and in looking over the bees he found he had one 

 colony with fertile workers. The first remedy he 

 tried was to put in two frames of brood, and in a 

 few days he put in a queen-cell, but they destroy- 

 ed it. Then he tried moving the combs into anoth- 

 er hive, but they all stayed in the hive he put them 

 into, instead of going back to the old hive. Then 

 he tried putting a new swarm in with those remain- 

 ing in the old hive, and they killed all the old bees. 

 Since then he has given those that he put in the 

 other hive a queen in a queen-cage, sealed up with 

 wax, and they have gnawed her out, but still he 

 finds eggs from the fertile workers there. Papa 

 says he has given those fertile workers two queens 

 and four queen-cells, and has left the queen-cages 

 corked up several days before he stopped them up 

 with wax. Papa has had but three new swarms of 

 bees this summer. He had one swarm that, the 

 first time he looked at it after they swarmed, had 

 not gathered a drop of honey, and so he gave them 

 three or four pounds because there was a scarcity 

 of honey ; then he gave them a frame of brood, 

 both unsealed and sealed, with about two pounds 

 of honey in it. They ate that all up; he had a 



