1898 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



727 



has done it in connection with the extremely 

 hght honey-flow. When the flowers yield 

 abundantly in nectar, very little pollen is 

 brought in — seldom more than is needed for 

 immediate consumption. Contraction may 

 then be carried to the extreme when section 

 honey is the object. 



Successful introduction of a queen : It may 

 be an old thing, but it will bear repeating. 

 Select a comb with brood just hatching; allow 



the queen to pass from the cage on to this ; 

 and when she is in the right place, where bees 

 are hatching out most, confine her to this 

 spot by means of a little shallow wire-cloth 

 box like Fig. o, the box 

 to be about [)i inches .-^feiiJT'i Cr <3. 



square, and simply 

 made of a square piece 

 of wire cloth as in Fig. 

 2. The raveled ends 

 of the wire, when push- 

 ed into the comb, hold 

 the cage in place. They 

 may kill a few unhatch- 

 ed bees in their cells, 

 but I find this method 

 pretty safe to introduce 

 even a valuable queen. It is not absolutely 

 necessary that honey should be inclosed under 

 the box. I have watched this carefully. The 

 outside bees feed the hatching young as well 

 as the queen till the cage is removed or the 

 confined bees liberated by the bees outside. 



Another novel way for introducing queens 

 has been practiced successfully by our German 

 friends across the water for a number of years. 

 They make a cage of comb foundation by 

 rolling a piece of the proper size around a 

 finger. They then pinch one end shut, and 

 make a few perforations with an awl or the 

 point of a penknife. It is now ready to re- 

 ceive the queen; and after she has run in, the 

 cage is closed by pinching it shut. Thus 

 the caged queen is inserted between two 

 combs. This method has the advantage that 

 one will not have to look after the cage, as the 

 bees will remove it themselves, after the 

 queen is safely installed. Try it. Probaticui 

 est ! 



Queen-cells I seldom fasten otherwise than 

 by pushing the butt-end into some portion of 

 unoccupied soft comb. That seems to be 

 sufficient. 



Are bees partial to any particular color ? 



Well, I thought it was accepted as a fact that 

 they do not take kindly to dark colors. I 

 might mention here what has almost become 

 proverbial, their sometimes getting mad 

 enough to sting a stovepipe. Try this : Stand 

 an opened smoker without fuel, or with the 

 fuel burned down, on the top of a bee-hive in 

 the bee-yard, especially at a time when the 

 bees are inclined to be cross, and then see 

 them dive into the dark abyss. I no longer 

 wear a particularly fuzzy black hat or black 

 pants when doing any kind of work among 

 the bees. I should prefer clear white for a 

 bee-suit, if it were not for its showing dirt 

 more than dark. Some writers have made the 

 claim that bees can not see or correctly locate 

 any thing white, giving that as the reason why 

 many bees fly right into the snow in the early 

 spring, or at any other time when it is warm 

 enough for them to fly and snow is present. 

 I am not quite satisfied as to that. There is 

 no guesswork about it, but we know they can 

 well locate white blossoms. They also seem 

 to regard my wife's white sheets and other 

 clothes on the line as obstructions. I have 

 never seen them bump their heads on them, 

 as they very frequently do on my telephone 

 wire. 



Dr. Miller condemns the practice of adding 

 resin to beeswax to make the mixture more 

 adhesive when used to fasten comb foundation 

 into frames, on the ground that we might 

 thus adulterate our beeswax. Propolis used 

 instead of resin answers pretty well the same 

 purpose ; and since all of our old combs are 

 more or less coated with this substance any- 

 way, the objection to its use in the way indi- 

 cated would not be as great. 



Naples, N. Y. 



[I have personally tried queen-cages made, 

 on the plan of Figs. 2 and 3, and know they 

 usually if not invariably give good results. 

 But such cages have been largely set aside be- 

 cause the majority of mailing-cages are also 

 introducing-cages. 



I have never tried introducing a fertile 

 queen in a sort of artificial queen-cell made 

 up of foundation; but I see no reason why it 

 would not work. I hope to have our apiarist 

 try it at his earliest opportunity. — Ed.] 



THE SEASON IN CALIFORNIA. 



The Low Price of Honey Notwithstanding its 

 Scarcity. 



BY W. A. PRYAI,. 



The year 1898 has become sufficiently a 

 thing of the past, looking at it from a bee- 

 keeper's standpoint, to justify speaking of it 

 in the past tense. It is a year that will long 

 be remembered by our fraternity in this State 

 as one that was fraught with many discourag- 

 ing features, the worst of which was a lack of 

 sufficient rain to cause the honey-producing 

 flora to yield nectar for the provisioning of 

 the hive for "home consumption," to put it 

 in that way ; at least, this was the case in the 

 greater portion of the State where bees are 



