1899 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



791 



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'i/AOM OUfi NEIGHBORS FIELDS. 



The gloomy clouds now fill the sky, 



Surcharged with hail and rain; 

 While eating summer's hard-earned stores 



We'll laugh at summer's pain. 



\ii 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 

 Owing to the drouth in Texas, many bees 

 are starving to death. 



\h 



A commission house in Chicago received 

 two barrels of honey from a bee-keeper. Not 

 needing it the)' sold it, on a snap offer, for 25 

 cts. a gallon— 2 cts. per lb. How much did 

 the bee-keeper get? Mr. York justly speaks 

 of bee-men like that as "fools." 

 tti 



Mr. John Carson, of Newton Falls, O., aged 

 65, was stung to death recently. He tried to 

 burn some sulphur near his bees to render 

 them harmless, when they covered his head. 

 He rushed to the house, fell on the floor, and 

 died in a short time. The moral is, use a veil. 

 vt/ 



At a convention in Texas the question was 

 asked if the color of honey has any thing to 

 do with the color of comb. All agreed that it 

 has. One case was cited where the darkest 

 kind of honey had very white comb. This 

 was suppostd to be because the honey was 

 " bug juice," hence the bees did not use it for 

 making comb. 



\h 



The omission of the convention report is 

 due to the illness of Dr. A. B. Mason. He 

 was unwell on his way home, and found, on 

 reaching Toledo, that his daughter Flora had 

 broken her right arm, but the news was con- 

 cealed from him till he reached home. This 

 increased his own work so much that he got 

 behind. Mr. York is entirely excusable, es- 

 pecially as his journal is none the less inter- 

 esting. But it does give a printer a " feeling 

 of goneness " to be obliged to drop a stitch in 

 a series of articles. 



* 



Mr. Thos. Elliott, of Illinois, gives the fol- 

 lowing account of a serious sickness he had, 

 induced by inhaling vapor when rendering a 

 lot of combs from colonies that had starved. 

 He says : 



Some three years ago I boiled down the combs from 

 150 hives in which the bees had starved out during a 

 dry spell in California, and there were a great many 

 dead bees in the combs. I used the extractor-tank 

 outdoors, and it took me two days. From that time 

 on my health failed I can best describe it by saying 

 that in one year I had become -10 years older. Every 

 sense, feeling, or organ, in the human body, that can 

 be affected, came under the influence of the poison. 

 I was in a manner paralyzed, and the doctors told me 

 that I could live but a short time. 



He consulted a physician in Chicago, who 

 understood the case, and under his care the 

 patient recovered. Such work should be done 

 outdoors, where the wind can carry away the 

 foul odors. 



Some one speaks of the Alley trap as a " big 

 nuisance," on the ground, apparently, that 

 some of the pollen on the bee's legs is brushed 

 off in passing through it. I let Mr. Alley 

 make his own defense : 



Suppose a little pollen, say one per cent of all the 

 bees collect (and it is not more than that amount), is 

 brushed off the legs of the bees when they pass 

 through the metal, does any one have an idea that 

 that would in any way affect the prosperity of the 

 colony ? The person who asserts that the trap is a 

 '' nuisance " most likely is one of those bee-keepers 

 who have not been long in the business, or it seems to 

 me he would not now attempt to discuss the merits of 

 the trap, as these same charges, years ago, were 

 brought against it, and no one took any stock in them; 

 and I do not believe they will now. 



m 



Mr. C. Theilmann, of Minnesota, makes the 

 startling and positive statement that the cele- 

 brated Dzierzon theory is fallacious, and that 

 he has shown it to be so. He says his formula 

 is so simple that almost any bee-keeper can 

 satisfy himself that bees can and will produce 

 either sex from eggs laid in worker cells by a 

 normal queen. If Mr. T.'s claims are correct, 

 Mr. Dzierzon will be one of the first to recog- 

 nize them. Some time ago I read in a foreign 

 journal that Mr. D. was revising his own 

 theory, and that he might some time abandon 

 it. 



Mr. C. P. Dadant is an advocate of feeding 

 bees well in order to get stores. His advice 

 to a correspondent to do so is followed by the 

 report below : 



My bees were near starvation, and I did not know 

 what to do. I thought it would cost too much to feed 

 them, so I asked you if you thought it would pay. 

 You replied that you would feed them all they needed, 

 even if you had to botrowthe money to do it. Sol 

 was encouraged, and bought the sugar for feeding, 

 being about a barrel and a half, which supplied them 

 until the harvest began. 



My crop this year was 2200 pounds of fine honey, 

 while my neighbors, who keep as many colonies as I 

 do, got very little from them, and some not a pound. 

 One of them, who has kept bees for 15 years, had 30 

 colonies, spring count, did not feed, and he got only 3 

 swarms from the 30, and very little honey. 



I had 27 colonies last spring which I fed just as you 

 directed, and I took off the 2200 pounds of honey, and 

 had 35 swarms besides, which I think is pretty good 

 for this year. 



I began in 1893 with one colony, being 25 years of 

 age. I have been successful ever since in wintering, 

 not losing 3 colonies in the six years of my experi- 

 ence. TOFIELD I,EHMAN. 



Fayette Co., Iowa. 



Vit 



AMERICAN BEE KEEPER. 

 Mr. J. L. Lattimer recently argued for the 

 old-style sections in place of the new. In my 

 reply to him the editor thinks I did not un- 

 derstand Mr. L., and says : 



Stenog has evidently misconstrued Mr. L,attimer's 

 remarks. Surely he nowhere anticipated the prob- 

 ability of both styles of sections being placed in com- 

 petition on the same table: but sought simply to 

 illustrate the superiority of his choice by such suppo- 

 sition. Nor do we see wherein he recommends plac- 

 ing the honey upon the table without first removing 

 the wood According to Dr. Miller, and popular 

 usage, the word " section " in his fourth paragraph 

 plainly and properly meant the honey and not the 

 wood. 



That certainly makes a difference. But it 

 did seem strange to me that a mere accident 

 should be deemed likely to happen lo one 

 kind of section and not to another. By the 



