GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Sept. 15. 



old wire-end kind. Tliey take twice the time, 

 and kill three times more bees." Mr. Whit- 

 niore"s partnership with me has now terminat- 

 ed very satisfactorily by its limit of time expir- 

 ing, and he is managing his own bees now. He 

 recently said to me." I want 50 hives in the flat, 

 made for me on the old pattern of wire-end 

 frames— that is the hive for me. I want no 

 more HolTman frames. They are a hnmbug 

 compared with the old frame." 



I used some 50 of these hives in the home 

 yard. I do not say they are a very bad hive. 

 They, like the entire closed-end- frames, are 

 nice to handle when the liives are empty, or 

 contain but few bees, and are not swelled by 

 dampness. I transferred all of my own this 

 season to suspended frames, and am well satis- 

 fied with the change; and during this time I 

 took the reversible-frame fever, and construct- 

 ed 40 hives with a reversible frame constructed 

 on the principle of my old wire-end frames. I 

 filled them with bees, and they worked with 

 entire satisfaction. The combs looked extreme- 

 ly nice, filling the frames tightly, top, bottom, 

 and sides. But I soon found I could obtain no 

 more surplus with them after a great deal of 

 extra fussing and work; and after 2 years' use 

 I drew the wire nails from one of their sides, 

 and tised them as I did my old-fashioned fixed 

 frames; and I must say, before I quit, that I 

 am now convinced thati do not want tlie combs 

 fastened to the bottom-bars. The reason, I will 

 not ti'y to give here. 



I tried several other styles of fixed frames on 

 a smaller scale during this time, but have re- 

 jected them all. 



Now, friend Root, I will send you. in connec- 

 tion with this report, a sample of an improved 

 rabbet that I invented and now use in connec- 

 tion with common suspended frames. I do not 

 ask for your opinion of it. I ask you to just 

 let your boss workman take it and make one of 

 your Dovetailed hives with that kind of rabbet; 

 and after the frames are in you give it a good 

 examination, and then set the frames, bees and 

 all, from some good colony into it, and then 

 give your opinion. I am pretty sure yon will 

 decide, after you have added my method of 

 keeping just a bee-space on all sides of the 

 hives on a plain bottom-board, and always 

 keeping a proper bee-space between two or 

 more hives tiered up for extracting or other 

 use, that the Dovetailed hive is equal to any 

 thing ever constructed for a full-brood-chamber 

 hive, and, excepting the donble-brood-chamber 

 hive, I will say that I believe it will be the best 

 hive in use for all purposes. 



Now, I suppose the readers of this article 

 would seem to be justified in saying that the 

 man who had gone to all this expensive trouble, 

 only to go back to old ways, is too old to appre- 

 ciate new things, and deserves no considera- 

 tion. But. friends, if you think I am not thor- 

 oughly alive to new ways and new things, just 

 visit my apiary; and if you do not change your 

 mind I will pay your expenses. In bee-keeping 

 it may be trnly said, '"Old things have passed 

 away, and, behold, all things have become 

 new." 



Before closing this article I wish to say to the 

 honest, enthusiastic advocates of closed-end, 

 Hoffman, and other fixed frames, that I regret- 

 ted to write this on their account. But I did it 

 believing what I have said to be true, and that 

 it would do the general bee-keeping world 

 much good. In the future even my little dou- 

 ble hives will be made with the new rabbet and 

 plain suspended frames. B. Taylok. 



P"'orestville. Minn., xVng. 16. 



[I will explain to our readers, that Mr. B. 

 Taylor is the one who has used shallow brood- 



chambers for some 20 years, though I believe on 

 a different plan from that advocated by Mr. 

 Heddon. He is a fine mechanic; and I should 

 judge, fi'om wliat I saw of him at the Keokuk 

 convention, that he is somewhat given to ex- 

 perimenting, and testing all the new " fads." 

 He has indeed been through the " mill " on fixed 

 distances: and it seems after all that he is still 

 in favor of them, although he does not agree 

 with the othei' brethren on the exact form. The 

 fixed frames he now advocates are ordinary 

 loose frames, so arranged as to hang in notches 

 in the rabbets. These notches are spaced 

 equally distant. So far as my recollection goes, 

 all sorts of spacing-devices in the rabbet have 

 been unpopular, and have been discarded soon- 

 er or later. The trouble is. you have got to 

 move two or three frames, or else roll the bees 

 over and over in moving the frame that you 

 wish to draw out. 



Well, friend Taylor, from what I can gather 

 from your article", the half-closed-end frames 

 you speak of were quite different from those 

 used by Mr. Hoffman. These frames, to give 

 the most satisfactory results, should have the 

 widened part of the end-bar V'd— that is, so 

 that a knife edge comes in contact with a blunt 

 edge, and then the top-bar should be widened 

 so as to cover up the rabbet. Or. if this is 

 not done, the frames should be compressed by a 

 wedge, or, better, as 1 now think, with thumb- 

 screws. 



I notice that you speak of closed-end frames 

 in a tight-fitting case sticking because of mois- 

 ture. This is just the point I tried to illus- 

 trate in our last issue, and to which Mr. 

 Hutchinson takes exception. I should like to 

 have reports from those who have been using 

 this class of frames, as to whether they have 

 experienced any trouble such as friend T. and 

 ourselves have had.] 



THE KING-BIRD A BEE -ENEMY INDEED. 



FURTHEK facts; DO KING-BIKDS REGURGI- 

 TATE? 



When I opened Gleanings for Aug. 15, and 

 saw the pictures of the king-bird, in connection 

 with J. W. Porter's article, it struck me as a 

 coincidence that I had it in my mind for a week 

 or two back to write to Gleanings and suggest 

 that it would be to the interest of bee-keepers 

 to open a war of extermination on these active 

 little enemies of the apiary. I know that, in 

 my neighborhood, they appear to be getting 

 more common; and this, very likely, may be 

 generally true. I shot some lately, and took 

 from the gizzard of one the parts of as many as 

 ten distinct bees or drones, and possibly the re- 

 mains of more were there, but unrecognizable in 

 their semi -digested state. There seemed to be 

 nothing along with them save a few kernels of 

 some berry as a digestive agent. 



Now, on the assumption that this bird had 

 two full meals of the kind per day. and that 

 there are only twenty of them in my neighbor- 

 hood consuming at the same rate, it means that 

 they levy a tax on me of 2800 bees or drones per 

 week, 11,2(X) per four weeks of the flying season, 

 or probably the bulk of from one to two swai'ms 

 per year, besides the honey immediately con- 

 sumed in the bees taken. 



They are very active on the wing, though 

 favoring only short excursions, and not flying 

 continuously like the swallow. Their favorite 

 perch, when round the apiary, is on an upper- 

 most or outmost twig of a tree. From thence 

 they fly out and intercept their victims. At 

 other times they may be seen flying along the 



