582 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Aug. 1. 



ever, the bees should be shaken down to the 

 botiom, and then the string should be secured 

 four or five inches above the mass of bees. I 

 usually carrry the sack in one hand and guide 

 the bicycle with the other. 



A year or so ago there appeared an account 

 in our columns of how a very enthusiastic 

 youth, seeing a swarm of bees remote from 

 his home, was particularly anxious to secure 

 the bees and take them. What did he do but 

 remove his pants, tie the legs of them together, 

 shake the bees into them, and rush home ? No 

 mention of the fact is made of how he got 

 home, or whether he was stung or not, or 

 whether he met any one on the way ; but the 

 fact was clearly brought out that the bees were 

 hived, and finally developed into a prosperous 

 colony. 



Taking this incident as a cue, I do not see 

 why we can not use the cheese-cloth sack in 

 the manner I have described. The body of 

 the sack can be slipped e'ear up over the 

 cluster of bees as they are hanging on the 

 limb ; and, if more convenient, the mouth of 

 the sack can be tied around the limb so as to 

 make it bee-tight ; the limb can be cut, and 

 our bees brought home in triumph. 



LIGHT-WEIGHT SECTIONS, AGAIN. 



In one of Rambler's Echoes, in this issue, 

 he gives a clip at the practice of selling light- 

 weight sections. If he were to move back to 

 his old State, and go through the regions of 

 Albany, Otsego, and Schoharie Counties, and 

 then take a run through the cities of Albany 

 and New York, I think he would come to the 

 same conclusion that I have ; namely, that in 

 these localities the idea of a pound weight 

 seems to be losing ground, and in some places 

 it has been lost sight of altogether. The ten- 

 dency has been toward a ten cent box — some- 

 thing that can be passed out to the customer 

 at even change, without stopping to figure up 

 ounces and fractions to get at the cost of the 

 honey. Indeed, }i and j£ pound sections, 

 when well separatored off, will run very evenly 

 in weight, providing the combs are thin. 

 Then these York Staters have a fashion of 

 sorting and putting up honey in cases both as 

 to grade and as to weight. A well-filled box 

 will usually grade No. 1 ; a poorer grade and 

 lighter weight will sell at 8 cents. 



In some localities it may be that the thin 

 comb works deception on the consumer, caus- 

 ing him to believe he is getting a pound, the 

 usual weight, when really he is getting only 

 12 ounces. But the more honey is sold by 

 the piece (and the practice is growing every- 

 where), there will be less and less of decep- 

 tion ; and the consumer will come to forget 

 all about pound weights, and will simply ask 

 how much that honey is per box or section — 

 not how much it is by the pound. 



Incidentally, it may be remarked that it is 

 going to be d "fficult to raise the price in good 

 years if we ssll by the pound ; and honey was 

 priced and sold in 1897 at or below the cost of 

 production. But if honey should be sold by 

 the piece, then the old standard of measure (a 

 pound of honey fur 12 cents, we will say) is 



lost sight of, and a new standard (a box for 

 10 cents) will be set up, which will practically 

 mean honey at 15 cents per pound, as against 

 honey at 12 cents. Is this dishonest? Not if 

 honey sold by the piece is worth 15 cents per 

 pound, and can not be produced at a profit 

 for less. 



WANTED, A $100 OUEEN ; MY IDEA OF WHAT 

 A $100 BREEDER OUGHT TO BE. 



That does not mean that we would pay 

 that amount of money to any one who thinks 

 he has a queen worth $100. There have been 

 only a few such queens reared that I know of. 

 One was our red-clover queen that produced 

 bees that would not only gather honey from 

 red clover, but actually store honey in sections 

 when the other bees in the apiary were appar- 

 ently doing nothing — simply robbing ; and 

 after the honey-flow they would keep their 

 combs supplied with honey when the others 

 were starving. The daughters of this queen 

 made remarkable showings for the different 

 bee-keepers over the country ; and if we had 

 the old queen herself again, §100 would not 

 buy her. Alley had, a year or so ago, what 

 he called his $100 queen. He sent us one of 

 her daughters ; and if we had her duplicate 

 we would not sell her for $50. Her bees were 

 wonderful honey-gatherers, and her daughters 

 were beautiful, uniformly and well marked. 

 Now, perhaps some queen-breeder may think 

 he has a queen that will fill the bill. Perhaps 

 so ; but we reserve the right to try her in our 

 own apiary at least one honey-flow before we 

 shall be willing to pay over the money, for we 

 do not propose to take the judgment of some- 

 body else — one who is interested in the sale of 

 such a queen. And another thing : Before the 

 queen is sent we should require her pedigree, 

 the history of her bees as honey -gatherers, 

 and the markings of her daughters. We want 

 something whote bees will outstrip every 

 thing else in the yard by long odds. 



There are hundreds of individual queens 

 whose bees go a little ahead of the rest of the 

 yard. We have them ; but we want some- 

 thing very much better. We are at present 

 developing a stock that, next season, will be 

 worth five and ten dollars a breeder ; and if 

 we can get our $100 breeder we shall hold her 

 best daughters at $25. Here is the point : If 

 a bee-keeper can, by paying from $1.00 to $1.50 

 for an untested queen that will bring him, in 

 a good season, $5 00 in clean cash, how much 

 has he saved if he buys a 75 cent queen that 

 will bring him in only $2.00? And yet there 

 is just that difference in the bees of particular 

 queens sometimes. 



If that quality can be maintained right along 

 in the bees and daughters of a b eeder, that 

 breeder is worth money. 



A Jersey, for instance, that can produce a 

 pailful of milk at a milking is worth more 

 than twice as much as some common "barn- 

 yard affair" that will produce only half that 

 amount of milk, and yet consume the same 

 amount of fodder, and require the same 

 amount of care. I don't know that we can 

 get our ideal, but if some one can reach the 

 mark there is $100 that is waiting. 



