558 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



July 15. 



hived them in, father would come out in the 

 apiary and say, "You omitted to put in the 

 frames of brood." "Oh, yes! I did put in 

 the brood; " but he showed me it was sealed. 

 A few days afterward I put in unsealed larvae 

 in one or two colonies, and the bees left just 

 the same. I then concluded that the age of 

 brood had nothing to do with it. Later ob- 

 servations seemed to lead me very gradually 

 to believe that unsealed brood was a good 

 deal more of a restrainer than sealed, hence 

 my advice as given in Gleanings. — Ed.] 



You ASK, Mr. Editor, whether I tramp for, 

 or beg for, cotton waste for smoker fuel. 

 There's an Irishman who's been working on 

 the railroad for years, and I've always had a 

 pleasant word with him without knowing why. 

 Now I know why, for he's now flagman at the 

 railroad crossing ; and as I drive across he 

 hails me, and tells me where to find a little 

 pile of cotton waste. [It pays to cast our 

 bread on the waters, although we may not 

 know when it will come back. As to the cot- 

 ton waste, I suspect that tons of it could be 

 had at a very small expense, and I have no 

 doubt our Irish friends would be glad to sup- 

 ply any amount of it for a small consideration. 

 It has served its purpose to the railroad com- 

 pany, and of course the latter has no further 

 use for it. — Ed.] 



" I SUSPECT it was Willie Atchley who first 

 thought of the scheme of transferring cocoons 

 into small-bottom cell-cups," says ye editor, 

 p. 469. Certainly, I supposed all understood 

 that, as Pridgen in his pamphlet distinctly 

 gives him the credit. Then to Pridgen we are 

 indebted for taking up the matter at that point, 

 and, instead of making a single cell at a time, 

 and transferring the cocoon with tweezers, 

 making cells " by the peck," and using a trans- 

 fer-stick, which quickly sets the cocoon in 

 place and beds it down smoothly into the cell, 

 so the bees think it grew that way. [A. I. R. 

 tells me that you are making a great success 

 in raising cells a la Pridgen. I am rather in- 

 clined to believe that Mr. Pridgen is the most 

 up-to-date queen-breeder in the United States. 

 He has picked out all the best methods, and 

 improved on them, and virtually made a new 

 system. Yes, he has gone ahead of Doolittle, 

 the Atchleys, and the whole of them. — Ed.] 



In my barn is what I've been trying to get 

 for years, a ton or so of pure sweet- clover hay. 

 My horses will eat green sweet clover very 

 gingerly, but will come at call out of the pas- 

 ture and eat the dried sweet-clover hay greed- 

 ily. They eat off all the finer parts, leaving 

 the coarse stalks. Then I throw these coarse 

 stalks down stairs in the basement, to which 

 the horses have entrance at pleasure from the 

 pasture, and the stalks are mostly eaten up. 

 [A. I. R., who has now returned from your 

 place, has been telling me how your horses, 

 on being given a choice of oats in the manger 

 and sweet clover in the mow, went to the lat- 

 ter and helped themselves. He was not per- 

 fectly sure they knew of the oats, but he said 

 they evidently regarded it as " a great snap " 

 to be invited to browse that fine sweet-clover 

 hay. You do not tell us at what age you cut 



this clover ; but I should presume it was be- 

 fore it got much in bloom. When the plants 

 are young and juicy they will give the best 

 hay. If just as good hay can be made after 

 the plants have gone to seed, or, rather, have 

 ceased yielding nectar, then we should consid- 

 er that quite a point in favor of the bees as 

 well as the horses. — Ed.] 



Say, aren't you folks at Medina just a bit 

 "sot" in the matter of cell-cups? or do the 

 bees act differently there ? I can't begin to 

 get as many cells accepted with big bottoms 

 and jelly as with cocoons Then there's the 

 trouble of getting jelly and stirring it up to 

 the right consistency, when with the cocoons 

 each larva has its own jelly just exactly of the 

 right sort. You say you don't like " to slice 

 across a brood-comb, mutilating larvse of all 

 ages, and young bees." Neither would I. 

 Nor do I that thing. With a queen up to her 

 business, or a litttle management in giving oc- 

 casionally a fresh comb or one with bees hatch- 

 ing out solid, an inch or two square can be cut 

 out to give you 50 to 200 cocoons, and you can 

 put a patch in place of the piece cut out. 

 There's less labor with the cocoons " in this 

 locality." [If there is any one who is "sot " 

 in the matter of cell -cups it is our queen- 

 breeder Mr. Wardell, and not your humble 

 servant. I have been trying to show him the 

 superiority of the Pridgen method ; but when 

 Mr. Wardell produces such fine queen-cells, 

 and in such quantities, by using ordinary 

 drone comb, it is a pretty hard matter to buck 

 against the logic of such facts ; and yet I have 

 an inward feeling all the time that, if he un- 

 derstood the Pridgen method as thoroughly, 

 he would do even better. — Ed] 



A PRETTY WAY that is for you to talk, Mr. 

 Editor, p. 537: "Trot out your glossometer," 

 when you know I haven't any glossometer, 

 just because I never could get you to make 

 one. But I'm not so sure that measuring 

 tongues is as good as measuring the crop 

 stored by different colonies. But I must say 

 that my bees work red clover more than years 

 ago, but not to an alarming extent yet. [Trot 

 out your glossometer — why, what is the mat- 

 ter with that? You were always wanting me 

 to make one, when in fact I did not know how. 

 You made a diagram, but about that time I 

 lost faith in the scheme. But there is a gloss- 

 ometer made by an Englishman that is used 

 at the Michigan Experiment Station at Lan- 

 sing ; and I would say to any who have extra 

 long-tongued bees to send specimens of them 

 to that station, which will, I think, be glad to 

 render a report. But with regard to long- 

 tongued bees, perhaps it may be more feasible 

 to direct our efforts toward short-tubed red 

 clover. See Prof. Green's article in the edito- 

 rial department, this issue. The more I think 

 of it, the more I believe he is on the right 

 track. If we follow both of these — stretching, 

 so to speak, the toqgues of the bees and short- 

 ening the tubes of the clover, we may be able 

 to arrive at the proper solution of the whole 

 trouble, and that right speedily. — Ed ] 



A FOOTNOTE, p. 522, says, "We have here- 

 tofore assumed that larvae just hatched, or 



