654 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Sept. 1. 



as they nearlj' aiwaj'S used to be. will give 

 moths by the thousand, to be a nuisance in 

 years to come. Care, by all, in this matter will 

 soon bring us to where no sulphur will need be 

 used. Vr. M. DooiJTTLE. 



Borodino, N. Y., Aug. 15. 



[In our locality, moth-worms in comb honey 

 have, of late years, been so rare that we have 

 ceased giving any attention to the matter what- 

 ever— that is, we have not done any brimston- 

 ing for years back; and although we do not 

 produce much comb honey, we buy quite a 

 little. Wherever these worms do make their 

 appearance, however, the matter should by no 

 means be neglected; and the directions given 

 above by friend Doolittle are, in my estimation, 

 as brief and as much to the point as any thing 

 that has ever been written upon the subiect.] 



A. I'. R. 



ITALIANS AS HONEY-GATHERERS IN CAL- 

 IFORNIA. 



AN EXPERIENCE IN GETTING QUEENS FROM 

 THE EAST. 



In an editorial in Gleanings of July 15 you 

 ask that each bee-keeper send in a report of his 

 season's honey crop. As the fraternity gener- 

 ally do not like to make reports unless they 

 can make good ones. I do not think you will 

 hear from the individuals of this district this 

 season, so I will report not only for myself but 

 for all of us. Probably I had better begin by 

 telling of M'hat we have done in the past, so by 

 comparison can be seen what a very poor season 

 this has been. 



From the country contiguous to Newhall, 

 two years ago there was produced some 300 tons 

 of honey, or 30 carloads, mostly extracted. This 

 year, from the same country, tliei'e has not been 

 produced one carload. I can hear of but 37 

 cases, a little more than two tons. Of course, 

 this small quantity has all been taken from 

 two or three apiaries, the most of the bee-men 

 not having extracted an ounce. My own aver- 

 age has been about 9 lbs. to the hive in an 

 apiary of 235 colonies. 



ITALIANS AHEAD. 



The superiority of the Italian bee has been 

 very forcibly demonstrated to me this season. 

 All such of my stocks gave a surplus, while 

 many of my hives with black bees have not 

 gathered enough for their own use. There are 

 very few Italian apiaries in this section, and I 

 believe the difficulty of getting queens to breed 

 from is the principal cause. This statement 

 may seem absurd when we think of the great 

 number of queen-breeders; but I will give my 

 experience in procuring queens from the east, 

 and then I think you will admit there is some 

 truth in it. To begin with, the honey season 

 here is generally over before you eastern queen- 

 breeders have young (jueens for sale, and the 

 bee man is then often away from his ai)iary. 

 engaged in other work. If he should then send 

 for queens, the chances are they will die in the 

 postoffice before he gets them. Our California 

 queen-breeders are all so surrounded with dung- 

 hill bees that the possibilities of getting one 

 worthy of being the mother of an apiary are 

 small indeed. I have never sent .'outh, because 

 the only bee-keeper 1 know there, even by rep- 

 utation, Mr. P. L. Viallon. advertises no more, 

 so I take it he has quit the business. 



In the last two years I have sent east for 20 

 queens, some of them for a neighbor. One. a 

 "tested" one from a breeder in Michigan, 

 proved to be a hybrid ; anothei-, from the " Home 

 of the Honey-bees," I lost in introducing. A 

 man in Massachusetts still has the 75 cents 



sent him two years ago, but I have never seen 

 a queen from him, dead or alive. To Michigan 

 again I sent for 13 queens; and if the miles cov- 

 ered by myself and a neighbor in trotting back 

 and forth from our apiaries to the postoffice (33 

 miles round trip) were all added together it 

 would make a distance almost as great as from 

 California to Michigan. After two months of 

 this kind of fun, a letter of inquiry was sent; 

 and in answer we found out that the man had 

 been down with rheumatism, and his wife run- 

 ning the business, or not running it, whichever 

 you like. It was then too late in the season to 

 get the queens, so the money was returned. 



Four more queens have arrived dead; and 

 although the cages with the dead queens were 

 returned, the senders do not think the respon- 

 sibility rests with them — at least, they sent no 

 more. Two of those arriving dead I sent for to 

 J. A. Green, of Dayton, III., this summer. The 

 weather being cold in Illinois, he put up the 

 bees to suit that climate; and, their wire-cloth 

 tops being covered, they both promptly suffo- 

 cated on reaching this Stale, where the ther- 

 mometer was over a hundred. 



In spite of such vexations I would advise 

 every California bee luan, and their name is 

 legion, whose bees are not good Italians, to send 

 to some responsible breeder (A. I. Root, for in- 

 stance) and get an Italian queen. It is better 

 to get as many as half a dozen; then by feeding 

 the hives containing them as soon as brood- 

 rearing commences the following spring, get 

 early swartns and the choicest of queen-cells. 

 I have tried the Alley, the Doolittle. and most 

 other ways of getting queen-cells; but none 

 suit me so well as those from natural swarm- 

 ing. If there is but one queen to breed from, or 

 one extra tine one from which it is desired to 

 raise a great number of queens, hives with any 

 kind of scrub bees can be encouraged to swarm; 

 then with a toothpick lift the scrub maggots 

 from the queen - cells, replacing them with 

 blooded ones, the progeny of your best queen. 

 The maggots with wliich you replace the 

 scrubs should be the smallest you can get. 



If living a great distance from a postoffice. so 

 that you can not visit it every day or two. ex- 

 plain \he matter to the breeder, and state that, 

 on a certain day, say 15 days from the date of 

 your letter, you will be at the postoffice. The 

 breeder can then figure out how long it will 

 take the queen to make the trip, and ship her 

 so that she will arrive, say, just the day before 

 you are to be there. If any thing prevents his 

 shipping the queen he can have a letter await- 

 ing you, stating what day he can put a queen 

 at your postoffice for you. Whatever you do. 

 do not buy queens because of the beauty of 

 theii- bees. I have never owned a leather- 

 colored swarm of Italians that were not good 

 workers; and I have never owned a straw- 

 colored swarm that were. These "yellow-to- 

 the tip." " tive-banded," etc.. iiiay be good, but 

 those from imported mothers wehnoic are good. 



Last year I gave a neighbor the privilege of 

 selecting ten queens from my apiary in exchange 

 for one of these queens producing " yellow-to- 

 the-tip" bees, which he had procured from a 

 prominent eastern breeder. This spring these 

 yellow, etc., beauties were afflicted with the 

 "nameless disease," or trembles; and seeing 

 that the colony was destined to die unless they 

 were given a Ijetter queen, I killed the old one, 

 and from the resulting que(>n cells reared three 

 nice-looking queens. After they had been lay- 

 ing a few weeks I had occasion to examine 

 their hives, and found two were dead and the 

 third was a feeble thing not worth having. 



As I write, the mercury in the thermometer 

 hanging on the wall of my adobe registers an 

 even 100° F. In a wooden cabin, such as most 



