84 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Feb. 1. 



will koep the air pure. Now look here: how 

 much ' upward ventilation will make the air 

 pare in a cellar tilled with rotten cabbage? 



Mouse poison, as prepared by P. Lattner 

 (American Bee Journal), is a tempting dish. 

 Make dough for a sweet cake, mix in it pow- 

 dered strychnine, and bake. Must be capital: 

 but, my! if the children should, get hold of a 

 piece! 



Cold, according to Heddon, is the prime 

 cause of bees consuming pollen, and tlie 

 consumption of pollen in winter the sole 

 and direct cause of diarrhea. Wouldn't it be 

 shorter to say that cold is the prime cause of 

 diarrhea? 



The C. B. J. is going to have, after Feb. 1, 

 •'machines whieirwill cast every line of type 

 as it is set, and will do about three times as 

 much work as an ordinary compositor." Say, 

 Mac, will it have an automatic proof-reading 

 attachment? 



The Manager of the Bee-Keepers' Union 

 says, "It will take money to do it, but it is the 

 Supreme Court decisions that we need, for they 

 will do more to guarantee to bee-keepers their 

 rights and privileges, than any thing else!" 

 Wouldn't it cost less to get some good laws 

 made? 



Dibbern's Hive-carrier is much the same 

 as my rope. Instead of being all rope, it is 

 •• two square hard-wood sticks, a little longer 

 than the hives, with pieces of stout cloth tacked 

 between the ends." Carry by the cloth. His 

 will be fitted on the hives more readily. Mine 

 Avill stir up the bees less. 



The Nebraska Bee - keeper is making 

 trouble. American Bee Journal inquires if it 

 has met its death, and Gleanings announces' 

 its birth on the anniversary of the same. It's 

 too good looking to die unregretted. Nearly 

 every one of those which died had a look as if 

 somebody made it himself. 



Germany is ahead of us. Instead of try- 

 ing to secure for bee - keepers their rights 

 through a series of tedious decisions, they have 

 got a square law: '" We, the king, decree: The 

 privilege of bee-keeping to all inhabitants on 

 their own property:" and. '"Apiaries will be 

 protected by civil right and law." How much 

 of that Union's $600 would it take to get us such 

 a law ? 



Tapeworm Remedy.— The Medical Brief 

 says: The most successful pumpkin-seed rem- 

 dy is made as follows: 



Peeled pumpkin seeds, - 3 ounces. 



Honey, 2 ounces. 



Water, • - - - - 8 ounces. 



Make an emulsion. Take half, fasting, in 

 the morning, remainder half an hour later. In 

 three hours' time two ounces castor oil should 

 be administered. Used with great success. 



gENEJ^^Ii C0RREgP0NDENCE. 



QTJEEN-REARING, ETC. 



about those ceee-cups, and why dr. miller 

 failed avith them. 



On page 19 I see that our friend Dr. Miller 

 made nearly an entire failure in using my plan 

 of rearing queens in artificial cups during the 

 past year, and says: "I'd like to know what 

 the trouble was." Beside me, also, lies a letter 

 from another person, residing in Bloomington, 

 111., in which he says that he has "utterly 

 failed in getting a single cell built out from the 



cups,"' and closes his letter by saying. "Could 

 you not give us an article in Gleanings that 

 "would throw some light on the subject?" 



I am very much surprised at these failures, 

 for I have letters from Texas to Canada, and 

 from Maine to California, telling of the success 

 the different individuals have had in rearing 

 line queens by this artiticial-cup plan, used over 

 queen-excluders. If the complaint had been 

 about getting the queens fertilized when tried 

 out of the honey season, I should not have been 

 surprised : for I find that success can generally 

 be obtained only during a heavy honey yield, 

 in getting tiueens thus fertilized, although some 

 colonics will keep laying queens in botlij^tories 



throu gh the whole season.. r.^j 



uNow, not knowing all of the circumstances 

 connected with these failures reported above, I 

 do not know that I can give the reason why. I 

 have never had less than three cells built from 

 a single trial of from twelve to twenty cups, in 

 all of my seven years' trial of the plan ; and ■ 

 during the last tive years I have reared all of 

 my queens by this plan at all times, except very 

 early in the season and late in the fall, at 

 which times there will not be bees enough 

 above to make a success of queen -rearing. 

 While I have never had less than three cells 

 completed, I have, time and time again, had 

 the whole twelve oi- twenty, according to the 

 number of cups put on a stick, completed, and 

 the average number for the tive years could not 

 have been less than two-thirds of all the cups 

 started. I think that Erntst will bear me out 

 in this last, as he saw an average of the work 

 done, he selecting the hives he wished opened. 

 To those who do not meet with success when 

 trying the plans given in Chapter VII. of my 

 book, I would suggest that they try the plan, 

 using a colony made queenless and broodless, 

 as given in Chap. VI., only using the artificial 

 cups instead of the queen-cups, as there spoken 

 of, and put royal jelly in these as I directed in 

 Chap. VII. If they fail then, I shall not know 

 how to account for it unless they are not able to 

 handle the little larva carefully enough so as not 

 to injure it. After being successful with the 

 queenless colony, next try it over the queen-ex- 

 cluder, always remembering that unsealed brood 

 should be above when the prepared cups are 

 given, and that the bees should be liberally fed 

 if no supplies are coming from the fields. It is 

 also well to allow these two frames of brood to 

 stay "upstairs" 24 hours before the prepared 

 cups are given to the colony. 



Now, dear reader (any one who should hap- 

 pen to fail in using the plan ), don't think hard 

 things of Doolittle. for I have no more interest 

 in "scientific queen-rearing" than I have in 

 the A B C or any of the other bee-books, except 

 that it is my " baby." I let the manuscript for 

 the book go for less price than I get for this 

 manuscript which I am at this moment writ- 

 ing, giving the whole thing to the world free, 

 except the compensation for my time in writing 

 the manuscript, and sent out the matter with 

 the only wish that it might bless the bee-keep- 

 ers of the world, many of whom are being 

 blessed, if their words are a criterion to go by. 



Some seem to think that the size of the per- 

 forations in the zinc excluder has something to 

 do with the success or failure of raising queens 

 in an upper story ; but I think this is a mis- 

 take. The larger part of that in use in my 

 apiary is the old Jones make, which is large 

 enough to let many smallish queens through, 

 while the rest in use is that sent out by Dr. 

 Tinker. The Tinker make is the; finest of any 

 thing I have ever seen, and is simply perfect : 

 but, so far as I can see, it gives no better re- 

 sults in queens than do the old uneven perfora- 

 tions of former years. 



