642 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Sept. 1. 



whether some unscrupulous customer wa« try- 

 ing to take advantage by misrepresentation. 



Your method of clipping queens' wings may 

 have been described before, but if so I do not 

 remember it ; but it strikes me as being one 

 of the simplest yet proposed. But one will 

 have to be careful and not pull too hard on 

 the delicate legs of the queen ; and then if a 

 nervous twitch of the fingers should release 

 the legs, then good-by queen. 



With regard to the age at which queens 

 begin to lay, this may be somewhat a matter 

 of locality. One year I kept a careful record, 

 and I found that queens began to lay, after 

 hatching, all the way from 5 to 20 days. I 

 had only one case where the queen laid within 

 5 days from the time of hatching from the 

 cell ; but a large number of them laid within 

 7 days ; but the average was about 8 days. 

 The five-day laying may be accounted for by 

 the fact that the young queen in such a case 

 had been confined in the cell, as Doolittle 

 tells about, and consequently she matured 

 while in the cell, and in a sense was more 

 than 5 days old at the time of laying. When 

 we were rearing queens with Holy Land stock 

 I had one case where a queen flew immediately 

 after emerging from the cell. The probabili- 

 ties are that this queen had been confined in 

 the cell, and very likely had been fed through 

 the end of the capping ; and when she was 

 finally released, by pushing the head off while 

 I had the hive open she popped out of the 

 cell like a shot out of a gun, and flew a dis- 

 tance of six or eight feet, when I caught 

 her. Since that time I have had other in- 

 stances where the queen flew four or five 

 inches, and then dropped down on the comb 

 or on the ground. Now, if it is a fact that 

 the bees confine the queens in queen-cells 

 after the regulation day of hatching, this 

 would account for the conflict in testimony as 

 to the exact time when young queens are mated. 



In speaking of the raising of cells, the Holy 

 Lands are away ahead of any other bees in 

 the world. But I do not want them for any 

 thing but raising cells. They breed in season 

 and out of season ; indeed, they will breed 

 themselves to the point of starvation, without 

 let or hindrance, and sting worse than Italians. 

 They are less hardy in winter, and are the 

 worst bees in the world for fertile workers. 

 Their one predominating propensity is to 

 breed first, last, and all the time. But that 

 one propensity can be made very useful to a 

 queen-breeder if he can confine the blood to 

 one colony, or at most to the requisite num- 

 ber of cell-building colonies. — Ed.] 



SHORT-WEIGHT SECTIONS. 



Five -gallon Square Cans Condemned; Retailing 

 Honey by the Gallon ; Honey - pitchers. 



BY THE AMERICAN TRAMP. 



Hide not thy light under a bushel. About 

 a year or so ago there was some discussion in 

 Gleanings as to the best package for retail- 

 ing honey. I was in hopes some bee-keeper 

 would rise and tell it, but it seems to me that 



there are none who know it ; for, if I remem- 

 ber, when the discussion reached the tomato- 

 can it stopped short. Now let me find fault first 

 before I tell you all I know. Bee-keepers are 

 very foolish to sell their comb honey by the 

 pound. The proper way is to sell it like the 

 retailers, by the section. While in Florida I 

 sold all mv comb honey by the section, direct 

 to the retailers. When I first started in, here 

 is about the way I was met by the grocers : 



" That's very nice honey ; how much do you 

 ask for it?" 



" I want 12*/2 cents each." 



" Well, but they don't weigh a pound." 



" I did not say they did." 



" But honey-sections are supposed to weigh 

 a pound." 



"Dojc« sell them by the pound?" 



That generally settled it. There was no 

 more said. My sections were 4^X4^, seven 

 to the foot, and weighed about 13 ounces each. 

 They sold right along side by side at the same 

 price with the six-to-the-foot sections. 



Now about the square five-gallon cans for 

 extracted, which I think E. R. R. pronounced 

 the best package so far. Now, I don't believe 

 that he ever handled any personally or he 

 would hot call them good. I remember I 

 started one day with three gallons of honey 

 in one of them for a private customer. I had 

 to drive ten miles over a Florida sand road. 

 When I got to my journey's end it was hard 

 to tell where the most honey was — in the can 

 or in the wagon-box. In filling a five-gallon 

 can it's a good man who will not spill from a 

 pint to a quart doing it. Here is something 

 else to study over. Putting up honey in five- 

 gallon cans lessens the sale of honey. How? 

 Well, I'll tell you. 



I sold all to the retail trade, and made it a 

 point not to sell the cans, taking away the 

 empty cans, replacing them with full ones. 

 Whenever I come into town I pick up my 

 empty cans to carry home. One day I stop- 

 ped in to one of my customers to take back 

 the empties. He laughed, and told me that 

 honey was getting to be a drug on the market. 

 The cans were all full yet ; he had not sold 

 any of it. Two days afterward I was in the 

 same store, and, while waiting to be waited on, 

 I heard a lady ask for honey. The clerk said 

 they had none. After the lady went out the 

 same clerk waited on me. I said to him, 

 " You must have had a big run on honey yes- 

 terday." He looked at me, but evidently did 

 not know me, and asked me why. I said, " I 

 heard you tell that lady that you had no hon- 

 ey, and Mr. E., the proprietor, told me two 

 days ago that he had not sold any of the last 

 lot I brought." 



" Well," he said, " we have it all yet, but I 

 do not want to mess up every thing pouring it 

 out of those cans." 



Did I wait and tell the proprietor about it ? 

 Well, no ; because I always felt as did the 

 clerk about those five - gallon cans. But I 

 went out and thought a big think. The con- 

 clusion was, when I went home I carried back 

 with me six empty ten-gallon whisky-kegs 

 and six honey-gates. I cleaned the kegs in- 

 side, and painted them outside ; put in a hon- 



