16 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Jan. 1. 



tested bisulphide of carbon are in a position to 

 prove or disprove Mr. Davenport's statements; 

 but we have learned by experience that he is 

 one of those careful, thoughtful, painstaking 

 bee-keepers whose opinions should be regarded 

 as having considerable weight. 



Prior to the use of bisulphide of carbon, sul- 

 phur or brimstone had been used, and no bad 

 results, I believe, have ever followed, except in 

 cases where too great a smudge was made- 

 much more than was necessary. It is then 

 that a yellow deposit will be found on the sec- 

 tions and the surface of the honey. This is no 

 real detriment to the flavor of the honey, but 

 it does affect quite materially its appearance 

 for the market, and that is a real damage. — Ed.] 



THAT RAPID BEE-ESCAPE. 



By C. H. Dihbern. 



I think a little explanation is necessary in re- 

 gard to the escape described in Gleanings of 

 Nov. 15. Up to the time I wrote the article I 

 had experimented with various designs, on the 

 lines indicated, with some very gratifying re- 

 sults; but as the past few seasons have been 

 practical failures I had little chance to put it 

 to actual test. When I read about the multi- 

 ple-exit escape my thoughts reverted to my 

 experiments with this pattern, and I again 

 made some trials, the results of which seemed 

 to warrant the article I sent you. Since then, 

 however, I have taken off a good many full 

 cases of comb honey, and the design as publish- 

 ed has proven a disappointment. 



The Porters are entirely right in claiming 

 that bees must first have a strong desire to 

 leave the supers before they will do so. It 

 seems that, in the board described, there was 

 too much connection with the hive; and while, 

 sometimes, it works very well, at other times it 

 has failed entirely. Then, too, I found that, 

 with only two exits, it worked all right, and I 

 am not sure but one exit would be better yet. 

 Then, too, I found that four or five lines of ob- 

 structions across the board are better, and it can 

 be greatly simplified. I now use a piece of per- 

 forated tin ^4 in. wide, and as long as the board 

 is wide. Get your tinner to turn up % square, 

 and with a common jacK-knife cut the tin so. 

 you can bend little openings for the bees to 

 pass through outward. Nail four or five of 

 these strips across the board, with the openings 

 fronting to the exits. Nothing more is neces- 

 sary. 



For extracting purposes I believe this plan of 

 getting rid of the bees rapidly offers great pos- 

 sibilities. If a tin slide is arranged to cut the 

 bees off from the hive entirely for fifteen or 

 twenty minutes it will greatly hasten the bees 

 in leaving. This slide can be put over the low- 

 er holes, and there will be no danger of smoth- 

 ering the bees, as they can get plenty of air 

 through the perforated strip at lower end of 

 board. It is not intended to nail upper and 

 lower boards together, but can be used for hive 



or case-covers by covering the holes till wanted 

 as bee-escaoes. 



The Porter escape is a very ingenious little 

 invention, and I think the main reason of its 

 success is the fact that it leaves but a very 

 small connection between hive and super. I 

 have produced several escapes that work just 

 as certainly and quickly as the spring escape; 

 but it has been my ambition to produce an es- 

 cape that will work more rapidly, and with less 

 danger to the bees, and I believe I am in a fair 

 way to accomplish it. If some one else (as the 

 Porters did my original plan) takes up my 

 ideas, and by more ingenuity succeeds, well and 

 good. Bee-keepers will be the gainers as they 

 now are in the Porter escape. Another year I 

 shall experiment further, and make competi- 

 tive tests, and perhaps in due time have some- 

 thing further to say in Gleanings. 



Milan, III. 



■—'ANSWERS TO C-^ 



jSE^OMBLEdlflESTIi 



Br G.A\.DooLiTTLE.BonooiNO.N.Y. 



YELLOW-.JACKETS, MICE, ETC. 



A correspondent from the South propounds a 

 few questions relative to the apiary, which I 

 will answer under the headings below. 



YELLOW -.JACKETS . 



He says he has recently discovered yellow- 

 jackets in some of his hives, evidently stealing 

 honey. He thinks the bees have killed some of 

 the jackets, but is not sure the jackets do not 

 kill some of the bees, and asks if there is any 

 remedy. 



If the correspondent has really seen yellow- 

 jackets on the combs, among the bees, eating 

 honey, when the bees were in a normal condi- 

 tion, he has seen something I never saw. Yel- 

 low-jackets are very fond of honey; and when 

 it is exposed, by opening hives, etc., they will 

 dive on to the combs and eat it ravenously; but 

 so far as I have been able to discover, when the 

 hives are not molested by the bee-keeper, the 

 bees do not allow them to go on the combs of 

 honey. They annoy the bees to a certain ex- 

 tent; but bees, here at the North, seem to be 

 equal to repelling all attacks from them, so that 

 the apiarist pays little or no attention to them. 

 If they really do enter the hives, as the lan- 

 guage of the correspondent would denote, or 

 kill many bees, so that a remedy should be 

 sought, I would suggest destroying their nests 

 or killing them with poisoned honey. If the 

 latter is used it should be kept in a dish cover- 

 ed with wire cloth, the mesh of which will ad- 

 mit the jackets but exclude the bees, else the 

 bees would get poisoned as well as the jackets. 



MICE. 



He next asks: " Do mice ever trouble bees? If 

 so, what is the best way to get rid of them ? " 



