1899 



GLEANINGS N BEE CULTURE. 



573 



different species of honey-bees are of very 

 nearly the same length for that reason ? One 

 of the chief things that have been claimed for 

 dorsata is that it would have a longer tongue, 

 and this inference seems to be drawn from the 

 fact that the bees are larger, and therefore 

 the tongues would bear a direct proportion in 

 length. If Sladen's measurements are cor- 

 rect, there would seem to be but little in this. 

 I will gladly furnish a dozen specimens of the 

 dorsata to any professor of a college or other 

 competent person having the necessary mi- 

 crometer scales to make the measurements. — 

 Ed.] 



SCIENTIFIC BEE-STINGING. 



How it Feels to be Stung 150 times; an Inter- 

 esting Account of a Painful Experience ; Frames 

 Shallow vs. Langstroth Frames; Hoffman 

 Frames; Big Hive, Big Frame, Big Extractors 

 vs. Small Hives, Small Frames, Small Extract- 

 ors. 



BY W. A. H. GILSTRAP. 



In May 1st Gleanings, p. 361, is the sen- 

 tence, " Could the bees have been turned on 

 the tormentor of the faithful old horse it 

 would have been a pleasing feature of the pro- 

 gram." To me the sight of bees stinging 

 even such a man would not be pleasing per- 

 sonally ; but there is so much in his sugges- 

 tion, from a scientific standpoint, that it cer- 

 tainly should not be treated lightly. 



To start with, we care less about the scien- 

 tific aspect of horses than of people ; that is, 

 horses are not such interesting subjects as hu- 

 man beings. Then man has a finer nervous 

 system, and the stinging of bees would proba- 

 bly act quite differently with him. But man's 

 chief advantage is that he can tell you how it 

 feels as it goes along. A good doctor should 

 make note of this at once, for the subject is 

 liable to forget. If a colony with any vim is 

 used twenty minutes, a man bent on suicide 

 should be requested to act as bee-tormentor, 

 for it would certainly prove fatal to man or 

 horse. 



Contrary to my wish, I have had some ex- 

 perience along that line. When loading bees 

 on a wagon, with the team hitched to it, a 

 hive " sprang a leak " — not a strong colony, 

 but how they did come out ! Having no good 

 Corneil smoker, of course I had to unhitch ; 

 for to leave the horses to be stung was out of 

 the question. To free jumping, kicking horses 

 is no easy or quick task. All the time the 

 bees were using my head for a pin-cushion. 

 At the first my hat fell off, or was knocked 

 off, and the bees seemed to think the hair of 

 my head was the only place about me worth 

 settling on. Soon all individual stings were 

 lost track of. The poison deepened and thick- 

 ened, it seemed, giving my head a numb sen- 

 sation, the actual pain diminishing considera- 

 bly, though the scent was sickening. 



The horses lost no time in getting to a 

 spring about 200 yards from the wagon, where 

 I stopped them. My next move was to wet 

 my head with cool water. Was that a mis- 

 take? After tying the team to trees I sat 



down on a rock to rest, for I was quite faint. 

 External swelling was less than one sting 

 sometimes produces. Inside my head the 

 swelling was distressing, causing my sight to 

 fail entirely at times, it seeming that my eyes 

 would be pushed out of their sockets. Itch- 

 ing all over my person was intense. There 

 seemed to be a stream of suffocation extend- 

 ing from my throat to my heart, which threat- 

 ended to stop the latter organ from working. 

 These terms may not be correct, but they are 

 the best in my vocabulary. I went to the 

 house, a few rods away, lay down, and soon 

 went to dozing. In two hours I could go to 

 work, but did not feel well for several days. 



My brother, a lad at the time, was a witness, 

 and he never questioned my estimate of 150 

 stings in about half a minute, so far as I know. 

 If my experience is worth any thing, death 

 from bee-stings is not extremely painful. Per- 

 haps some one has experimented further, and 

 can show my mistake. Can a horse tell ? 



If you wish to know the effect of stinging 

 on the bees, try buckskin gloves for them to 

 sting. 



Should a "gentleman" of "high moral 

 standing " have a horse severely stung for lit- 

 tle or nothing more than idle curiosity in this 

 country, he would probably find proceedings 

 commenced against a heartless criminal. To 

 say less would not express my full view, but I 

 do not blame the editor for thinking well of 

 the man. 



A correspondent wrote me recently, asking: 

 "1. How would you like a twelve-frame hive, 

 same frame as Langstroth, except two inches 

 shallower? 2. Why? 3. Why not ? 4. What 

 hive is better ? 5. Why?" 



As the questioner reads Gleanings, it may 

 be well to answer him through its columns : 



1. If you mean an apiary of such hives it 

 would certainly suit me very well. To have 

 several kinds of hives, especially frames, in 

 one place, makes many extra steps, and is a 

 canker on an apiarist's time, and therefore on 

 his income. The hive mentioned is certainly 

 good for either comb or extracted honey. For 

 comb honey it would be a good hive by con- 

 tracting and expanding intelligently. It has 

 been truthfully said that expansion is the bet- 

 ter part of the contracting management. But 

 as I shall not likely use many sections soon, 

 we will regard it as an extracting-hive. 



Because it is an odd-sized hive I shall as- 

 sume it is not very well made. Very few are. 

 Regular goods are frequently poorly made. A 

 supply-dealer who makes many hives wanted 

 to buy a hive made by a competitor on this 

 coast, saying he had several Eastern hives, 

 and the hive in question was the best he ever 

 saw. The super was well nailed, and some 

 bee-keepers present noticed that, when it was 

 placed on a table, one corner would remain 

 half a bee-space above the table while the oth- 

 er corners touched. 



If the frames are Hoffman style, which have 

 been so popular since 1891, I could soon rem- 

 edy that defect with a sharp knife or plane by 

 removing the end-bar projections. One sea- 

 son, with 70 Hoffman hives (eight- frame L- ), 

 in which I many times felt like kicking the 



