852 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Dec. I. 



wood and other minor sources furnish the July 

 crop. It was the writer's pleasure to spend 

 five \ireeks, in 1895, prospecting in this favored 

 locality. 



A mountain location is, in my judgment, 

 the only safe one, owing to its unlimited for- 

 ests too rough to be visited by the ax or plow. 



Here we get fair yields, but of an inferior 

 quality. Ours is a cultivated field — no forests. 

 Cotton and the asters give our best crops. 



Prices are better than north or east. We 

 get 8 and 9 cts. for extracted in a jobbing way. 

 Four cents was C. F. Muth's best offer for our 

 product. The tulip furnishes the only dark 

 honey in our mouniains. A. L. Beach. 



Steel Creek, N. C, Nov. 10. 



DEATH OF A GREAT BEE-KEEPER. 



I was struck, on opening the local paper 

 this morning, to read of the death oi Mr. Bon- 

 nier Georges de Layens, 03 years old. I has- 

 tened, when I went to France, to make the ac- 

 quaintance of the now departed eminent 

 French bee-keeper. He died on the '23d of 

 October, of an apopleptic stroke. The strug- 

 gle lasted about seven hours. He did not re- 

 gain consciousness. His hive is well known 

 all over F'rance, where it has always had to 

 compete with Charles Dadant's. The latter 

 finally has the preference. De Layens came 

 here lo gather some more flowers to complete 

 his "Flora," of which several editions are 

 already out. He was born in Lille on the Cth 

 of January, 183i. His features were not 

 changed at all. His body will be taken to 

 Paris, to the famih tomb, as he was only tem- 

 porarily here. 'Ph. J. Baedeksperger. 



Nice, France, Oct. 24. 



MOVING TO GET MORE PASTURE ; NEIGH- 

 BORS' BEES. 



Bees have done well this season ; but in or- 

 der to get a good honey yield I had to move 

 most of them two miles to fall blossoms. My 

 home yard is overcrowded on account of 

 neighbors' bees. I got 2000 lbs. of comb 

 honey from 35 colonies, in two months, be- 

 sides about 300 lbs. extracted from unfinisheJ 

 sections. It paid me to move them, you see 



Filion, Mich., Nov. IG. I. S. Tii.T. 



This was the best honey season we have had 

 for quite a time. Frcm 20 hives I took 1400 

 lbs. in sections, and now have 50, all from the 

 20, spring count. I have sold all this honey 

 around liome. J. E. Henderson. 



Elm Grove, W. Va., Nov. 4. 



How doth the little busy bee 

 Improve each shining hour 



In gathering honey all the day 

 From every opening flower ! 



But this is the way it has recently been par- 

 aphrased in one of the great dailies. Besides 

 a little mixture of gender, there is a little con- 

 tradiction of facts : 



How doth the little busy bee 



Delight to bark and bite ! 

 He gathers beeswax all the day, 

 But his sting is out of sight. 



T. IV. M., III.— IX is too late to stimulate 

 brood-rearing. Vou had better unite your 

 weak colonics, as you suggest. For particu- 

 lars in regard to uniting, see our A B C of Bee 

 Culture. 



E. C. A\, Ind. — I would not advise you 

 to buy bees at this time of the year, unless 

 you can get them at a bargain, and have had 

 sufficient experience to enable you to winter 

 bees successtully. It is already too late to do 

 much in feeding theni up as they reqtiire. 



M.S.G., Wis. — Tarred paper used in the 

 construction of a building will not in anyway 

 injure or alTect bees. Our house apiar}-, illus- 

 trated and described in our A B C of Bee Cul- 

 ture, is lined on the inside with tarred paper; 

 but we never could see that it was in any way 

 obnoxious to the bees. 



A. B., Ohio. — I see no reason at all why 

 you could not move your bees in a wagon 

 without springs, providing you put hay or 

 straw in the Ijottom, as you suggest. Of 

 course, you would need to drive more care- 

 fully and more slowly; but we have moved 

 bees several times successfully in just such a 

 wagon. 



F. P., N. }'. — Yours of Nov. 5 is at hand, 

 stating you have a furnace in one compart- 

 ment of your cellar, and that the other part is 

 separated off by a board partition. If you can 

 keep the temperature in this part of the cel- 

 lar as low as 40 or 45 degrees, certainly not 

 higher than 50 during the greater part of the 

 winter, I think you can winter bees there all 

 right. The temperature should not go below 

 40 degrees, at least for any great length of 

 time. 



J. H. //., La. — We usualh- figure on about 

 10 pounds of honey per Langstroth frame — 

 frames that are fairly well filled with honey, 

 while 25 pounds of honey, scattered through 

 three or four frames, is enough to carry the 

 bees safely through the winter. If you have 

 four or five combs fairly well filled with honey, 

 leave them in the hive. It will be all the bet- 

 ter for the bees next spring. 



Your idea is all right; namely, to give your 

 surplus combs to other colonies that may need 

 it that are short of stores. This is the prac- 

 tice that is usually pursued by bee-keepers 

 generall}'. 



J. J. r.. Mo. — I understand now what you 

 mean by the controller. This, as I under- 

 stand it, is only the Langdon uon-swarmer 

 over which, a lew years ago, bee-keepers were 

 very enthusiastic, but which now has been 

 abandoned as impracticable, and as not carry- 

 ing out the expectations of its friends We 

 sold them one season, but finally discontinued 

 felling them, as reports showed it did not 

 work as expected. I should judge that the 



