743 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Sett. 15. 



since linden, altliough tliey have plenty of cu- 

 cumbers to work on. and several acres of buck- 

 wheat are in easy reach of the Hastings apiary. 

 I think a large part of our honey this year is 

 linden. The white clover never was more 

 abundant, the iields and the roadsides being 

 perfectlv white with it. and we had every pros- 

 pect of a very large crop. Still, tin' honey came 

 in quite slowly until linden bloom, when for a 

 week or ten days the bees did a rushing busi- 

 ness, th(Mi suddenly stopped. I nnilly think we 

 have very little clover honey. When I ask Dr. 

 Miller about it. he says. " I don't know." Here- 

 tofore we have always thought there was so 

 little linden that we have never counted much 

 on it. I think there must be more of it than 

 we know of. All the trees we saw were per- 

 fectly crowded with blossoms. 



We feel v(n-y thankful that we have not been 

 troubled witii honey-dew. 



Are we never to have any more large crops 

 of honey from white clover? It looks a little 

 that way; but, why? 



I wonder how many of the ladies have a 

 Hubbard section - press. It is splendid — just 

 fun to feed in the pieces and see them come out 

 nice, square sections, requiring very little out- 

 lay of strength. Charlie has nearly always 

 made our sections, and I confess I rather dread- 

 ed the thought of having them to make this 

 vear. Dr. Miller sent for a Hubbard press. 

 i had very little faith in its being a very great 

 help, and was simply delighted with it on first 

 trial. I quite enjoy making sections now. If 

 any of the ladies have sections to make, and 

 haven't a press, send for one right away. Don't 

 you make another one by hand. 



How many nice things we do have to make 

 our work easy! I wish some one would invent 

 a machine for scraping sections and getting 

 them all ready for mai'ket— one that would 

 work as nicely and easily as that section-press 

 does. 



Dr. Miller need not laugh any more at the 

 ladies for discussing gloves and aprons. We 

 have converted him to wearing aprons. When 

 he gets to wearing gloves. I'll I'eport. 



Marengo, 111. Emma Wilson. 



[" We " explained to A. I. R., that he in his 

 footnote had misunderstood you, and that you 

 had not discarded the get-lossable record-book. 

 " Let it be as it is. It will do no harm,"' said 

 he, •• for it will draw her out a little more." And 

 it has. Mr. J. F. Mclntyre will have a very in- 

 teresting article in our next, in its defense. 

 Yes. that section-press is a very handy and sat- 

 isfactory machine. The one who could not 

 make it work, or would not be delighted with 

 it, must be very stupid or very hard to please.] 



He/ids of Grain 



FROM DIFFERENT FIELDS. 



SOME queens; experiments at the agki- 



CULTURAL COLLEGE. 



Without doubt the chilling of a queen, as 

 told by Mr. Anderson, page W.). would in most 

 cases destroy th(> spermatozoa; yet last spring, 

 while removing the bees from the cellar here, I 

 came upon a colony that was, as I supposed, 

 dead, and I set it to one side. The next day I 

 found the queen, while cleaning out the dead 

 bees, and, to my surprise, she showed signs of 

 life. I brought her in by the tire, got a cage 

 with some bees, and in an hour she was as live- 

 ly as if she had no memories of how near she 

 had been to a death by freezing. The next dav 



I introduced her +o a queenless colony, and to- 

 day she is at the head of a strong colony of her 

 own bees. 



We have also a queen, very diminutive in 

 size, that produces bees, ma7iy of which are 

 much smaller than the normal. She was evi- 

 dently reared under unfavorable circumstances, 

 as she has laid only si)aringly, and her brood is. 

 much of it. drone brood. Her extremely small 

 size, not only of abdomen but of thoi'ax and 

 head, makes her interesting, especially as she 

 ti"ansmits this peculiarity to her offspring. 



We also have a queen from C. W. Costellow. 

 of Maine, fi'om a mother whose colony i)erished 

 of bacillus depilis. as E. R. Root would have 

 us say. She is structurally imperfect, as both 

 anterior and posterior tarsi on one side are 

 missing. Her bees are healthy, and a qui-eu 

 reared from her does not give the disease to her 

 bees. J. H. Laruauee. 



Agricultural College, Mich., Aug. 30. 



[These experiments are interesting and valu- 

 able, and we hope Mr. Larrabee will tell us 

 about his work oftener. This will greatly in- 

 crease the usefulness of the apicultural station 

 at the Michigan Agricultural College.] 



TO THE BEE-KEEPERS OF FLORIDA. 



I am desirous of securing complete and relia- 

 ble statistics of our industry for the past sea- 

 son. WMll you kindly assist me in this work by 

 forwarding me your name and address, also 

 those of your neighbor bee-keepers, foi' a ques- 

 tion-blank, to be filled out and returned? 

 Blanks are printed on postal cards this year, 

 for yoitr convenience in I'eturning. All re- 

 sponding will receive a copy of the complete 

 report when published. I shall try to have it 

 out by the 1st of November. A report of this 

 kind will be very valuable to the fraternity, 

 therefore I earnestly ask your assistance in 

 making it complete. A. F. Brown. 



Huntington, Fla.. Aug. 35. 



ANOTHER SWARM-CATCHER A LA GOLDEN. 



On page (563. Aug. 15, you ask for reports of 

 those who have used swarm-catchers. I have 

 one of my own invention, used in an apiary of 

 100 colonies, and I like it very much. I would 

 not be without one or more of them. Mine is a 

 little different from jNlrs. (rolden's. I use wire 

 cloth, flat bottom, with tin slide, to fasten lh(?m 

 in. I can stand it on end any place in the 

 apiary. 



I do not car(> if I do not get all of the swarm 

 in. They will alight on the outside of the 

 catcher; but I nearly always get them in. 

 Then I can set it while catching, and leave to 

 attend to others, if there are any to look after. 

 They do not cling to the smooth bottom-board 

 as they do to the wire cloth. 



Cowden, 111., Aug. 33. A. W. Spracklen. 



SAD DEATH OF A KEE-KEEPER. 



On the 3(jth of July my dear brother Willy, 

 aged 3(jj^'S' years, was drowned while bathing in 

 the sea. A last effort by myself, swimming 

 with him, was in vain. He warned me to go 

 ashore to my family. I had only just time to 

 arrive. Two sailors got hold of me, but Willy 

 was lost. He was a bee-keeper since 1883, and 

 was one of us five brothers (all bee-keepers), 

 wide-awake in the business. Together with an 

 elder brother he owned 340 hives, and got some- 

 thing above 30.000 lbs. of extracted honey. He 

 came here from the Philistine plain to rest 

 from his labors, as he put it, and he rests in- 

 deed. He departed this life in peace with ev- 

 erybody, widely beloved and deeply regretted 

 by his friends and family. His career as a bee- 



