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GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



JUI.Y 1. 



have all the orders for queens I can attend to, 

 and queen rearing is progressing finely. 

 Wenhani, Mass., June 7. Henry AllEY. 



WHAT MAKES THE BEES SWARM AGAIN ? 



Please tell me what is the matter with my 

 bees. I had a swarm the 6th of June, and aft- 

 er much trouble I succeeded in hiving it. I 

 placed a frame of honey and brood in the hive. 

 They went to work at once building comb, 

 and had stored a little honey, when on the 

 eighth day they swarmed again and left a 

 cluster of bees on the front of the hive. All 

 the time, though, the most of them were work- 

 ing. Please tell me through Gleanings what 

 is wrong with them. J. I. Clark. 



Vann, N. C, June 17. 



[Without seeing the hive and the general 

 surrounding conditions I should not be able to 

 give a reason why the bees swarmed out ; and, 

 to be frank, I do not know that I could, even 

 if I saw the hive out of which the bees swarm- 

 ed. Bees will very often do strange things. 

 To answer your question in a general way, a 

 newly hived swarm is likely to leave the hive, 

 without any apparent reason ; but this liabili- 

 ty is greatly increased if the hive stands out 

 in the hot sun, and if the entrance is too 

 small. A newly hived swarm should always 

 have a wide deep entrance, and it has been 

 our practice to raise the hive up on four blocks; 

 or when that is not practicable, raise the cov- 

 er. After they have quieted down, the cover 

 may be set back on its place. 



A great restrainer for swarming is a frame 

 of unsealed larvae. A comb of capped brood 

 is not uearly as good as one having young lar- 

 vae, which the bees know, as a matter of 

 course, they must take care of ; for it gives 

 them something to do at once. 



Bees seem to regard swarming as an occa- 

 sion for a gala time ; and I have thought 

 sometimes that, after they have been hived 

 nicely, they come to the conclusion that they 

 might have done better if they had gone fur- 

 ther ; and if they so reason, why, of course 

 they will strike out for new quarters again. — 

 Ed.] 



bleaching comb honey ; further par- 

 ticulars regarding white's method. 

 In your explanation of my article on bleach- 

 ing comb honey you say your readers would 

 like to know if I can whiten all kinds of stain- 

 ed combs. I have not had any comb honey 

 so badly discolored as that described by Dr. 

 Miller, in which dirt and slivers of wood were 

 in the cappings. We have some badly stained 

 combs in the last supers taken from the bees. 

 The worst ones, however, were much improved 

 by the bleaching process, and nearly all were 

 rendered equal in appearance to those of the 

 same grade that were not travel-stained. The 

 proportion of soiled sections is, I think, much 

 less here than with you, judging from what 

 you say. The last good hoaey season, 1897, 

 the proportion of discolored sections was not 

 more than ten per cent in my honey crop. 

 As you doubtless know, 1898 and '99 were fail- 

 ures, here, and the present season the crop 



will be very light, so far as surplus is concerned, 

 in this immediate vicinity. In some localities 

 in this country they claim to have a good pros- 

 pect — in fact, have already extracted some 

 honey. I learn that in places not 20 miles 

 from us they had 4 inches more rain than we 

 did here. We had only 8 inches from Jan. 1 

 until April 15. We had only yi inch of rain. 



During this time the grain made but little 

 growth — in fact, we had lost hope of having 

 any grain or hay ; however, late rains of 1 % 

 inches in all have given us sufficient hay, and 

 promises to give our bees sufficient honey to 

 carry them through, and, I hope, give a small 

 surplus. If all my bees were leather-colored 

 Italians we should be busy taking off full su- 

 pers. Now we have only 3 colonies of them. 

 They have extracting-tops on. They have 

 filled top and bottom with brood and honey, 

 while the best of blacks and hybrids have on- 

 ly commenced to work in the supers. Not 

 one of these Italian swarms has been fed dur- 

 ing the past two years, yet I bought honey 

 and sugar and fed some 25 colonies of the 

 blacks. In spite of all this I have lost 40 colo- 

 nies, or half of my apiary. If I were able to 

 get around I should try to raise some queens. 



I believe one reason I have so few stained 

 sections is because I leave the super on the 

 hive until it is finished, putting the empt}' su- 

 per on the top when the first one is about half 

 filled. When I find the top one half filled I 

 am quite sure the bottom one is finished ; then 

 I take it off, putting the top one on the hive, 

 an empty one on it, then the bee-escape and 

 the full super. I find the sections are filled 

 sooner by leaving them next to the brood-nest 

 until finished ; yet, so far as I know, other 

 honey-men here follow the plan described in 

 the A B C of Bee Culture. A. E. White. 



Pala, Cal., May 28. 



[I did not think it possible for you to bleach 

 the faces of those sections where the stain or 

 propolis or dirt went clear thiough the cap- 

 pings ; but it is something to be able to bleach 

 all other discolored combs. — Ed.] 



DO DRONES SERVE ANY USEFUL PURPOSE 

 OUTSIDE OF FERTILIZING QUEENS ? 



Is it proper in comb-honey raising to make 

 war against all the drones, or is it essential to 

 the well-being of the colony to have a certain 

 number of drones in the hive? I have 100 

 colonies for comb honey, and I have trapped, 

 and killed otherwise, all drones whenever I 

 came across them, as I considered them worth- 

 less, and my neighbors raise enough to fertil- 

 ize all the queens in the county. Some bee- 

 keepers here claim that the bees work better 

 if they have some drones in the hive. 



Pomona, Cal. M. R. Kuehne. 



[In producing comb or extracted honey it 

 is not thought that the presence of drones in a 

 colony is essential to their best efforts. Na- 

 ture undoubtedly supplies the hive with male 

 bees in the early spring, so that they will be 

 in readiness when swarming takes place, and 

 when there will be a surplus of young queens 

 to be fertilized. If drones serve any other 

 useful purpose in the economy of the hive, it 



