41*0 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



.IlNE i. 



picked up our own hive separately — found it 

 (luicker and easier not to fuss witli any carrier 

 or rope. Tliere the benetitof cleats came in; 

 for, to cari-y easily, you must catch at the fur- 

 thest corner with your right hand, and at the 

 nearest corner with your left hand, letting the 

 hive rest against your right side. The cleat al- 

 so sti'engthens the thin piece left by the rabbet 

 at the top of the hive. Emma stayed in the 

 cellar, kept it swept up as the floor was cleared, 

 tried each hive to see if alive, and gave a little 

 boost at lifting hives off the top of piles. Not 

 far from 50 dead, and nearly all of them starv- 

 ed. I'd like to lay it to the winter or something 

 else; but the only thing unusual about the win- 

 t<'r was its mildness. 



Doolittle's fussy. Now, he would have gone 

 over those hives in the eai'ly fall, examined ev- 

 ery one separately so as to know just how much 

 honey they had, "and then — would have saved 

 his bees. Perhaps I'd better be a little more 

 fussy. 



One thing that puzzles me is, that nearly all 

 the loss was in the house cellar, the warmest 

 and heretofore the best cellar. It had the bees 

 from the out-apiaries, and possibly they were 

 not so well provisioned. 



A. I. Root once thought I'd better have fewer 

 colonies, and take better care of them. I'm 

 something of his mind, and I can't say I'm so 

 very sorry for the reduction in numbers. At 

 any rate, I don't want to have such hard work 

 as "we had last summer, two of n? taking care of 

 some 300 colonies, btsides the extra work 

 caused by a lot of useless experiments that I 

 always seem to have on hand. This year I'm 

 determined to have it a little easier, divide the 

 bees into three apiaries, remoi'selessly break up 

 all weaklings, and I shall not feel sorry if the 

 number is reduced to about ;iOO. 



April 3.5. — To-day I finished feeding' the last 

 colony. There were so many near the point of 

 starvation that it wasn't safe to wait till all 

 could be n^gulai'ly fed with Miller feeders, as I 

 had only 45 of these, so we managed to give to 

 each colony at least a little by April 18, putting 

 a section with a little lioney under a good many 

 of them. To a few we gave moistened brown 

 sugar, but the bees didn't seem to care for it. I 

 put a dish of it out for them to rob, but they 

 didn't touch it, although they were trying to 

 get into hives to rob wherever they could. 



I had intended to feed brown sugar, thinking 

 it cheaper, and well enough for spring: but 

 there was such a trifling difference in price that 

 I concluded to use granulated. I don't undei- 

 stand how a dollar can buy more sweet after it 

 is refined than before, and wish some one would 

 explain it. It took about 17(K) lbs. I've been of 

 the opinion that it is better to feed at night, oi- 

 at least in the evening; but this year after the 

 first day's feeding I fed in the morning. If the 

 feed was given in the evening, they seemed to 

 stop work on it when they thought it was re- 

 spectable bedtime; and then as the feed was 

 cold, they did not get to work on it very lively 

 the next day. But if the feed was given in the 

 morning, they had it cleaned out by bedtime. 

 It was given nearly scalding hot. 



Charlie (my son) happened to be at home, and 

 had all the bees of the out-apiaries hauled 

 away by the time we were done reeding. Fifty 

 wei'e taken to the Hastings apiai'y. and neai'Iy 

 a hundred to the Wilson. The Wilson apiary 

 always seems to be the best location, although 

 I don't know why, and then there was another 

 reason. If there were more than fifty in 

 the Hastings apiary we should have to go two 

 days to get through them, and two days to go 

 through the Wilson apiary, making foui- days 

 for both; whereas, by putting the smaller num- 



bei' at Hastings, both apiaries could be gone 

 over in three days. 



May 5.— Nearly all the bees have becm over- 

 hauled, the first time in my experience, I think, 

 when such a thing was possible so early: but it 

 has been almost summer weather, and I think 

 I never knew bees to work so rapidly at brood- 

 rearing. Is it possible that the f(>eding has 

 made most of the difference? It looks some- 

 what that way. 



In going our rounds we came to the colony 

 whose frames had been reinforced with separa- 

 tors to make them equivalent to thick top-bars. 

 I said," Well, that's pretty clean work;there ani 

 no burr-combs between top-bars and cover, as 

 in other hives, except over one of the middle 

 top-bars:" and inspection showed that one of 

 the middle combs had been taken away, and its 

 place filled by a frame with a % top-bar. But, 

 if I remember rightly, it was not entirely clear 

 of burr-combs last summer, when supers were 

 on. Certainly thick top-bars form (me of the 

 elements in securing immunity from burr- 

 combs. C. C. MiLLEK. 



Marengo, III., May .5. 



[Friend M.. I admire your candor in telling 

 us the whole truth in regard to your bad losses; 

 but I am very soi'i'y indeed to heai- it. A great 

 many have been looking to you foi- an example, 

 and 1 really fear that at least some will be in- 

 duced thereby to give way to the temptation to 

 be slack and procrastinating. Energy and 

 thrift are contagious, and so, likewise, is the 

 opposite. If you wanted to reduce your number 

 of colonies, would it not have been fai' more 

 profitable to feed heavily in the fall, and then 

 offered th( s ' fifty colonies of bees for sale? I 

 am taking it for granted, you see, that a little 

 more feeding would have saved them all. Very 

 likely some starved only a week, may be only 

 one day before you got them out and gave them 

 a general feed. Very likely, bees htive consum- 

 ed more this wintei' than usual. It seems to me 

 it is very unwise to take risks. If you plan to 

 have each colony have from five to len pounds 

 extra at the time that fruit blossoms, there 

 would be very few starved. And this bi'ings in 

 another reason why I prefer outdoor wintering, 

 as it is so much easier (and so much more likely 

 to be done), making a thorough examination 

 the first time the bees can ffy freely. Fiiend 

 J. A. Green says, in this issue, as you will no- 

 tice, tliat his bees in the cellar used iiuirc honey 

 and came out H'Cf(/fcr in numbers. It gives nn^ 

 the l>liics when we lose bees by stai'vation. It 

 is a kind of blues, however, that one oiujht to 

 hav(!. and that f/oc.s r/oof? if taken properly.] 



A. I. R. 



THE PRODUCTION OF COMB HONEY. 



DK. tinker's method. 



Reference was made in niy ai'ticle on page. 

 261, to the fact that, with proper spring man- 

 agement (which was given in detail on page 

 374). more brood could be obtained by the first 

 of .June than could be contained in the ten- 

 frame Langstroth hive by the average colony. 

 As showing \\liat nuiy be done in the line of 

 bi'ood-rearifig. I will say. that, last spring I had 

 one colony that had brood in foui' stories of the 

 Nonpariel bee-hive, and I estimated that there 

 were fully 2.5 frames of brood on the first of 

 June, or about what would be contained in two 

 ten-frame Langstroth liives. The result of get- 

 ting so much brood in a colony just before a 

 honey-flow pi'oved what has all along been 

 claimed by prominent bee-keepers. The colo- 

 ny produced something over tKJ pounds of ex- 



