isyj 



GLEANINGS IN HEE CULTURE. 



343 



glad to ho sot riglit. Alack tlic day whon \\(> 

 shall got into ruts and stick to wruiifj iiotioiisl 

 Gl.KANiNt^s desires to ho fair to all parties, and 

 to all sides of a (ini'stion; hut it has no spact^ 

 for sarcastic and cutting witticisms. 



SoMK years ago Mr. liangstroth wrote an ar- 

 ticle on nomenclature for hee-keepers. At the 

 tim<\ he suggested the coining of new words, 

 the use of which was almost a necessity, U^' 

 proposed, for instance, the term " uiuiui-ening " 

 lor tht» ciri'umlocution of removing or in any 

 way depriving a colony of tlxMr royal mistress. 

 Wo helieve that he also suggested the term 

 "springing ■■ for the long roundalumt way of 

 saying ■■ bringing the bees tiiioiigh the spring 

 months." It is a well-known fact, that it is not 

 so dithcult to wint<;r bees as ii is to xpring 

 them: and if it is proper to say "wintering," 

 why not say " s])ringing " V We sim|)ly men- 

 tion these two words as an illustration. b(^cause 

 we propose to allow — yes. recommend — cori'es- 

 pondents to \isesuch short and expressive terms, 

 the moaning of which is perfectly evident to 

 every bee-keeper. 



One of the commission honey merchants says 

 that they have much complaint of comb honey 

 candying. This can be remedied to a very 

 great extent by keeping the honey in a warm 

 dry room; but. in spite of all precautions, old 

 comb honey is liable to candy on our hands: 

 and when once candied there is no practical 

 way of reducing the honey to a liquid form 

 again so as to be suitable for the market, or to 

 bring any thing like what the honey is worth. 

 And right here is one groat advantage in ex- 

 tracted honey. It can always be liquefied, and, 

 with care, be equal in flavor to what it was 

 before. But, oh dear I extracted honey can be 

 adulterated; and for this reason bee-keepers 

 should take additional pains to fight to the bit- 

 ter end the disreputable mixing business. Be 

 sure to urge your representative to vote for the 

 Paddock pure-food bill now before Congress; 

 and after you hav<' done that, don't let the 

 adulteration go on if you can help it, in your 

 neighboring city or neighboring town. There 

 is plenty of law In nearly every State to make 

 the scamps squirm; and all we need is evidence. 



Do not put poor dark honey— that is, the un- 

 palatable kind — upon your local markets, nor 

 um>n any markets, in fact, that are designed to 

 supply direct consumption. It is putting this 

 dark honey upon the public that ruins, in a 

 great manv cases, the demand for honey; 

 and, as C. W. Dayton well says in the Review, 

 it fans the fire that keeps up the newspaper 

 '• canards" in regard to adulterated honey. All 

 such unpalatable honeys should either be fed 

 back to the bees in the spring (in most cases it 

 will do no harm, even if fed for winter use), or 

 should be sold to bakers. If nothing but the 

 \veli-navou;d nice honeys are sold for direct 

 consumption, it will tend greatly to increase 

 the amount sold. and. as a consequence, stiffen 

 prices. We would say, for the benefit of the 

 York State bee-keepers, that these remarks do 

 not apply to the dark rich buckwheat honey 

 that is preferred by so many New Yorkers. We 

 have reference only to the honey that tastes bad 

 — " stuff" that bee-keepers would not eat them- 

 selves — no, couldn't even be hired to. To put it 

 a little stronger, it is a downright shame to put 

 such '"stuff "on the market and call it honey. 

 The sooner bee-keepers will give up the prac- 

 tice, the better it will be for the pursuit in gen- 

 eral. 



si;ai,i:i) covkhs vi;i{sis pouors ai!.S(>i{hi:.\t8 



KOI{ WI.NTKKINO. 



Ei-sKwiiKitK we publish several communica- 

 tions in favor of upwafd ventilation and porous 

 covering as against the sealed-cover idea. As 

 nearly as we can discover, both from the letters 

 pui)lished and those uni)ul)lished, the writers 

 have not ti'ied hotb the sealed cover and the 

 absorbing cushions side by side foj- a series of 

 three or four years. All through the ivint^r we 

 could discover no practical ditTerence in our 

 apiary; but this sin-iiKj there is a slight differ- 

 ence in favor of the sealed-cover colonies. 

 Those under sheets of glass seetn to be stronger 

 and more lively than those under the absorbing 

 cushions, and they are the first to II y out. At 

 present, however, W(i an> seeking for more light, 

 and at present are not prepared to advocate 

 (Mther method as being the best. It may take 

 three or four years of careful experimenting on 

 the part of a good many to decide the (juestion. 

 Francis Danzenl)aker. of Washington, I). C, in 

 another column, the inventor of the; Dual hive, 

 and the one who suggested to us tli(^ adopting 

 of the dovetailed corner for the Dovetailed hive, 

 you will notice says he has tried thi^ sealed 

 covers for twenty years, and that he has also 

 tried the porous covering, with disastrous re- 

 sults. Now, who is there, besides the Dadants, 

 who have tried the sealed covers and porous 

 covering side by side, and found the latter as 

 good as the former? 



MORE ABOUT IMBEDDING WIKES INTO FOUNDA- 

 TION BY MEANS OF ELECTRICITY. 



Some two months ago a correspondent of the 

 American Bee Journal stated that he had suc- 

 ceeded in imbedding wires into foundation by 

 means of electricity from a battery. This set 

 us to thinking and experimenting, although we 

 had entertained the same ideas some eight or 

 ten years previously; but on account of the in- 

 tersecting wii-es by the old way of wiring, the 

 plan was not feasible. But since we are begin- 

 ning to use the horizontal plan, no wires inter- 

 secting, so that a current can be run from one 

 end of the wire to the other, the matter has 

 assumed a new aspect. In our last issue we 

 stated the progress of our experiments. Since 

 that time we have been imbedding the wires 

 to a lot of frames by electricity. The form 

 of battery that we now employ is three cells of 

 bichromate of potash, each of a gallon capacity, 

 with the carbons in the large cell, and the zinc 

 in the usual porous cup. Since Mr. (Jolden's 

 article appeared in typci, as given in another 

 column, we began experimenting anew; and the 

 result is, that we find we can imbed the founda- 

 tion on the wires perfectly. After the job is 

 done, the wire lies nicely imbedded in the cen- 

 ter of the w^ax; and, more than all, it is covered 

 with a very chin transparent coating of wax. 

 Sometimes bees are inclined to gnaw around 

 the wires; but we imagine tiiat, if the wires 

 were covered with a film of wax, the bees would 

 be less inclined to do so. How(>ver, experiment 

 will decide this point. At {)i-es(>nt it looks as if 

 imbedding by means of electricity might not be 

 so very expensive after all, and especially so if 

 we consider the nicety of the work. We imbed- 

 ded this morning the wires of about 50 frames 

 into foundation by electricity, and the work is 

 beautiful. ]5y timing ourselves we found that 

 we could put foundation on to wires at the rate 

 of three fram<'s \h'V minute: so that we think 

 the imbedding could easily be done at the rate 

 of ].")0 frames per hour. In our next we will try 

 to give you a picture of the apparatus, and how 

 to make it. 



We ought to say right here that it probably 

 would not pay the small bee-keeper to imbed 



