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GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Aug. 1. 



brush with a gentle, quick, and firm hand, 

 and brush the bees into the hive or at the en- 

 trance, not under your feet. After the honey 

 season has closed I have avoided handling 

 bees when they are not able to gather. After 

 the honey-flow is over, leave them alore and 

 they will settle down, and, so far as stinging 

 goes, give but liltle trouble, when the whole 

 neighborhood may be annoyed with cross bees 

 if frequently handled during that time. 

 Leith, Ontario, Can. 



[This article, by the former editor of the 

 Canadian Bee Journal, a man who has also 

 had much to do with bees, contains much val- 

 uable information, especially for the beginner; 

 and even the expert, in comparing the meth- 

 ods of another expert with his own, will very 

 often pick up some new ideas. So in this 

 case. 



Mr. Holtermann speaks of the fact that 

 sleeves open at the wrists invite stings. I 

 have noticed this many and many a time ; and 

 it is usually my practice to wear straw cuffs 

 that fit tightly around the wrists, and slipover 

 on the outside of the coat- sleeves, reaching 

 back six or eight inches. But when I visited 

 Mr. Coggshall I found he had a little better 

 scheme yet, and that was long sleeves sewn to 

 gloves with the fingers and thumbs cut off 

 up close to the palms of the hands. This gives 

 a free use of the fingers ; and whenever the 

 bees make an onslaught they are pretty apt to 

 strike at the back of the hand protected by 

 the glove, or further up on the glove or sleeve. 

 Of all the painful places to receive stings, out- 

 side of the face, that spot is on the inside of 

 the wrist near those veins that stand out so 

 clearly just beneath the skin. 



I quite agree with Mr. Holtermann, that a 

 veil that is so scant in proportions that it hugs 

 against one's nose is almost good for nothing. 

 Outside of the eye, the most painful spot on 

 one's physiognomy for the landing of a sting 

 is on the end of one's nose ; and when the 

 facing cf the veil hugs against that member 

 the bees will very quickly see it and avail 

 themselves of the opportunity 



Speaking of long hair reminds me that a 

 beard is quite a protection. Whenever my 

 veil is off, the bees are pretty apt to strike for 

 my mouth, and either land in my mustache or 

 chill whiskers where I soon make short work 

 of them. 



With regard to a brush, I think if our fiiend 

 Holterm.inn had the Coggshall, as men- 

 tioned and described elsewhere in these col- 

 umns, he would consider it the most handy 

 for the bee-keeper, and the least offensive to 

 the bees, of any thing ever devised. There is 

 nothing furry or fuzzy about it — just an aggre- 

 gation of long clean whisks that knock the 

 bees off their feet and off the combs before 

 they realize what has happened. 



Mr. Holtermann is now pleaching the word 

 of God. We are all, I believe, glad to know 

 that he still finds same time to think of his 

 old friends, the bees. We wish him success 

 in his new profession, his new kind of harvest 

 — the grandest of all— the harvesting of souls. 

 —Ed] 



COLOR VERSUS utility; BEES WITH LONG 



TONGUES ; WHAT HAS BEEN AND MAY 



BE ACCOMPLISHED. 



"Good morning, Whitty. When did you 

 come over the mountain ? " 



"I came over the hill this morning, but 

 found the going pretty hard. I noticed you 

 have been writing in the bee-journal about im- 

 proving bees. I guess it was Gleanings, 

 though, and you have said hardly a word about 

 color. I thought the real yellow bees a great 

 deal better than the darker ones — the yellower 

 the better. Of course, the yellower they are 

 the purer they are." 



" Well, no," I replied. " I haven't said any 

 thing about developing color. The facts are, 

 we already have quite enough color on our bees, 

 and I am not sure but more than is desirable. 

 What would you think of a man who was just 

 starting in the dairy business to insist on buy- 

 ing only cows with black tongues and fawn- 

 colored hair, without regard to other qualities ? 

 What would be the chance of his succeeding, 

 do you think ? I believe I am some like the 

 boarder who found an unusual supply of hairs 

 in his butter, and one day told his landlady 

 that he had no objection to hairs, but would 

 prefer to have them served on a separate dish. 

 Now, I don't object to a bright-colored Ital- 

 ian bee ; but if we must have a great deal of 

 it, let us have it served on a separate dish. 

 Let us have a breed for color. Let the skill- 

 ful breeders keep on until the dark rings are 

 crowded off the posterior end of the abdomen 

 of the worker bees, as the white man crowds 

 the Indian off a log, until they are gold from 

 waist to tip. Such bees would be as useful as 

 canary birds or poodle dogs — perhaps more so. 

 They would be just the thing to show when 

 we have company, or to brag about when oth- 

 er bee-keepers call to see us, or for the chil- 

 dren to play with. 



'■ ' A golden hive on a golden bank, 

 Where golden lees, by alchemical prank, 

 Do gather gold instead of honey, ' 



may be very poetical, but it is any thing but 

 practical. 



"After all, color has a real value if not in 

 excess. By it we can readily tell how our 

 queens have mated, whether with the drones 

 of own choice stock or that of our neighbors' 

 black or hybrid bees. But when a queen has 

 so much yellow blood in h -r veins that she 

 marks all her female progeny yellow without 

 much regard to their male parentage, color 

 ceases to be a virtue. Besides, it prevents 

 queen-breeders from using some most desira- 

 ble honey-gathering strains tokeep their stock 

 up where it should be. Of course, I am look- 

 ing at it from the honey-producer's point of 

 view. If I were a queen-breeder I might think 

 differently; but it would not alter the facts. " 



"There, now," said Whitty, who is a rather 

 quiet man, " I did not suppose I was going to 



