14 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Jan. 1. 



level with the Arabian stories of his dealings 

 with the genii, and that neither is worthy of 

 quotation in the Christian's study of the Scrip- 

 tures. 

 Columbia, Miss., Nov. 29. 



[When I saw that item in Peloubet's Notes 

 regarding the manner in which Solomon is said 

 to have distinguished between the real and 

 artificial wreath, 1 said to myself, "The story 

 is very pretty but improbable." A number of 

 the other things that the queen of Sheba is 

 said to have placed before king Solomon, while 

 ingenious are equally improbable. I am sur- 

 prised that Dr. Peloubet places so many such 

 things in his " Notes," that are studied and ad- 

 mired by Sunday-school workers everywhere. 

 It is this same Dr. Peloubet who, by way of 

 illustration, spoke of the skill of man in manu- 

 facturing honey-comb, filling it with glucose, 

 and capping it over with appropriate machin- 

 ery. The illustration itself, I remember, was 

 very appropriate, but the thing itself very wide 

 of the truth. 



I never supposed myself that it was possible 

 to fool even a bumble-bee with artificial flow- 

 ers, much less those that are painted. 



I have seen bees follow bee martins and king- 

 birds in their flight through the apiary; and I 

 have seen them circle around the birds after 

 they had alighted; but I always supposed this 

 was owing solely to the fact that they were en- 

 raged by seeing a swiftly moving object among 

 them. You know it is a great deal safer to 

 walk through an apiary quietly than to run 

 through. One of the first things I ever learned 

 In bee-keeping, in my early boyhood days, was 

 that, if I ran through the apiary to escape the 

 bees, I was more apt to be stung than if I walk- 

 ed through quietly.— Ed.] 



EXPERIMENTS IN FEEDING BEES.! 



HOW TO FEED IN THE BOTTOM -BOARDS. 

 ByF.A. Sndl. 



During my 36 years of bee-keeping in this 

 State I have tried many different ways of do- 

 ing it. I first kept my bees In box hives, and 

 those short of stores were put in the cellar dur- 

 ing winter. The hives were inverted, and the 

 bees were fed by placing combs of honey over 

 the tops of the brood-combs, with food enough 

 to carry them through till spring, as advised 

 in Quinby's Mysteries of Bee-keeping. 



Later I transferred all my bees into movable- 

 comb hives. A few being short of stores the 

 first year, I placed them in the cellar, and two 

 or three were fed on sorghum molasses as ad- 

 vised by some writer. These all died before 

 spring, as well they might have done. The 

 rest were fed on granulated-sugar candy to sup- 

 plement their stores. These came out in the 

 spring in very good shape. Good seasons fol- 

 lowed, and I quit trying rapid increase, and 

 my bees were well supplied with food for winter. 

 I was quick to adopt the honey-extractor when 

 it came before bee-keepers, and ran a part of 

 my bees for extracted honey. Then the honey 

 was taken from the brood-cnamber. During 

 the early bloom I kept the combs emptied of 

 honey by its removal once a week. 



After the early bloom a drouth set in, and the 

 fall bloom was almost a failure, and, as a re- 

 sult, my bees were short of stores for winter, 

 and I was forced to fppd, and tried various 

 ways of doing it. I tried shallow dishes filled 

 with honey. Sticks were laid across to keep 

 the bees from drowning; deeper vessels were 

 tried, also cans filled with honey inverted over 

 plates, and slightly raised, and held in place by 

 small sticks which held the can in place, allow- 

 ing the feed to flow over the plates from which 

 it was taken by the bees, and stored in their 

 combs. These feeders were all placed over the 

 brood frames, and the heat from the bees re- 

 tained so far as possible by covering the feed- 

 ers with pieces of carpets. Later on I experi- 

 mented with other methods of feeding— not 

 rom necessity, but to gain knowledge. 



At a meeting of the old Northwestern Bee- 

 keepers' Association held at Decatur, this 

 State, in October, 1869, 1 learned from that vet- 

 eran bee-keeper, James M. Marvin, his method 

 of feeding. To feed he simply raised the fronts 

 o^the hives two or three^Ilinches higher than 

 was the rear, and poured the feed in at the 

 entrance, giving about two or three quarts of 

 feed;at;a time, and doing so just at night, so no 

 robbing would occur; and by morning the feed 

 would be all stored in the brood combs. This 

 was new to me, and was tried by me at the first 

 opportunity. I found it worked well. The 

 honey or syrup was fed warm, and should be 

 made a little thinner than honey. Fed thus, 

 no bees were drowned. The object was to give 

 the bees a good supply of food for winter, and 

 to do so in as short a time as possible; hence 

 the feeding was done each evening until all 

 had enough to carry them through to spring. 

 This way of feeding for winter is very little 

 trouble. No extra fixings had to be made, and 

 later to take up valuable room. From time to 

 time since, this method has been mentioned in 

 our bee-journals. It is old, but none the less 

 valuable; and where bees have been drowned 

 by so feeding, I believe it was from the feed 

 being given cold and too thick. It should by 

 all means be quite warm, and thinner than 

 ripened honey when given. Very likely those 

 veterans, M. M. Baldridge and R. R. Murphy, 

 fed their bees in this way away back in the 

 sixties. I wish we might hear from them often- 

 er through our bee-journals. 



When entrance feeding is practiced, care 

 should be taken that, in case of rain, no water 

 can enter the hive. The hives must be sealed 

 fast to the bottoms, so no food can leak out and 

 be lost, and induce robbing, perhaps. Late 

 years I have had no occasion to feed for win- 

 ter, but have experimented during spring with 

 a view,: to] increase brood-rearing or to learn 

 whether such feeding was advisable. I have 

 tried;;entrance feeders; and for inside, Hill's, 

 Root's," sack,3pepper-box, etc., and one of my 



