508 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Jui/vr 1. 



alluded to, more room should be given ; and 

 if the bees then persist in clustering out, some 

 have gone so far as to tell us to take a smoker 

 and smoke them in, continuing this smoking 

 till they stay in the hive. Any one can see at 

 a glance that this would be of no use, for at 

 such times the bees are doing just as much 

 for the benefit of the apiarist by hanging on 

 the outside of the hive as anywhere. My plan 

 of securing nearly all completed combs of 

 honey in the sections is as follows : 



When the bees show, by building little bits 

 of new comb here and there about the hive, 

 that they are ready for the sections, I put on 

 the smallest amount of surplus room that the 

 hive will allow of, and leave it thus till the 

 bees are well at work, when I give about the 

 same amount more ; and when this room is 

 fully occupied I give the same amount again, 

 if we have not passed the middle of what is 

 our usual honey-flow. By the time the bees 

 fully occupy the last room given, the first on 

 will be ready to come off ; and when this is 

 taken, if more room is needed it is put above 

 the sections the bees are already at work in, 

 so that they may not be forced into these last 

 sections only as they have all those filled be- 

 low. If the yield continues I keep taking off 

 the filled sections next the hive and putting 

 the empty on top of those the bees are already 

 at work in until the season begins to draw to 

 a close, when, as fast as the full sections are 

 taken out, the others are lowered down till 

 the space is contracted to the original capacity 

 that was first put on. In this way the bees 

 are given all the space they really need, while 

 the chance for many unfinished sections in 

 the fall is quite small. 



Such items as these are well worth looking 

 after and studying upon ; for he who under- 

 stands the most about all of these little kinks 

 of practical bee-keeping is the one who will 

 make the greatest success iu our chosen pur- 

 suit, apiculture. 



A BUNCH OF QUESTIONS. 



1. If two queens, one of which would lay 

 1500 and the other 2500 a day, during a good 

 summer honey-flow, be put, after the flow, in 

 eight-frame Langstroth hives full of comb, and 

 containing 25 lbs. of honey each, and enough 

 bees to keep the hives warm, will the 2500-a- 

 day queen lay more eggs during the two fol- 

 lowing months than the other ? 



2. About how much honey should a colony 

 of bees in a hive of the above size have be- 

 tween the summer and fall flows if it is 55 

 days from the close of the one to the opening 

 of the other ? 



3. All my six queens were reared from eggs 

 laid by the same mother, but were impregnat- 

 ed by drones of another mother. If, next 

 year, I should rear queens from the best one of 



these, and the young queens should be fertil- 

 ized by drones reared in my own apiary, and 

 this should be repeated for a number of years, 

 will the queens or the bees reared from them 

 lose any of their valuable qualities? 



4. In wintering my bees on summer stands, 

 should the hive be contracted with a dummy 

 to the space they would occupy when the tem- 

 perature is at 30°, or should they be given 

 more room ? 



5. Will a honey-plant fail to produce any 

 honey for two years in succession, or is a fail- 

 ure usually followed by a good flow the fol- 

 lowing year? 



6. About how many spaces should an aver- 

 age-sized colony in an eight- frame Langstroth 

 hive occupy wholly on a cool day in autumn ? 



7. Will bees that hatch two months before a 

 fall flow be able to gather as much honey as if 

 they hatched three weeks before, there being 

 no honey for them to gather before the fall 

 flow? J. C. Carmichaei,.' 



Eber, Tenn., Mav 27. 



[1. Shortly after the honey-flow, queens, as 

 a rule, curtail their laying very considerably, 

 and I should not expect that, after that time, 

 there would be a great deal of difference in 

 the number of eggs laid by either queen. 



2. From 10 to 15 pounds. 



3. I would not recommend such inbreeding. 

 It would be better to renew your stock oftener. 



4. Contract the hives down to the space that 

 the cluster will occupy at such times. 



5. As a rule, we do not expect to have two 

 poor seasons for any one honey -plant in suc- 

 cession. As a general thing, a good flow from 

 any honey -plant is liable to be followed by a 

 poor one ; but there are so many exceptions 

 to either one of these cases that I do not know 

 that we should set down any rules. 



6. The colony ought to occupy about two- 

 thirds of the space, but it might take only a 

 half. By "spaces" I suppose you mean the 

 intervening spaces between the brood-frames. 



7. Probably not. — Ed.] 



BEES WITH DIRTY AND TAINTED FEET. 



We notice that there are several ideas re- 

 garding the cause of so-called travel-stain on 

 comb honey. Some can't think it possible 

 that bees should be so untidy as to have dirty 

 feet, and then run over the honey. The ques- 

 tion was brought to my mind yesterday when 

 I was called upon to help pull a cow out of a 

 quagmire. When I got to the place I found 

 the cow had lain there so long that the flies 

 had done their work, and the animal was al- 

 most covered with a mass of squirming wrig- 

 gling maggots, and the bees were there also 

 by hundreds, helping themselves. I don't 

 know whether they wiped their feet or not be- 

 fore entering their home; but if they did not, 

 would it not stain as well as taint honey to 

 have those bees walking over it? But is the 

 stain on the honey caused by the bees running 

 over it? Is it not possible that it maybe 

 something similar to mildew ? 



Mannville, Fla. M. W. Shepherd. 



