690 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Sept. 1, 



"Careful!" said Deacon Strong. "I hope 

 you don't mean to be profane." 



"No," said he, " I don-'t ; but I have got 

 into a great scrape this spring. You know I 



bought a tested queen of , and raised a 



lot of queens from her last year ; and those 

 hives with those queens had filled their combs 

 so full of honey from willows and dandelion 

 blossoms that I had to stop right in corn-plant- 

 ing time and take out some of the heaviest 

 combs of honey, and give empty combs so the 

 queens could lay — something I never had to 

 do before. It beats the bangopher how those 

 bees do haul in the honey. I want to raise a 

 lot of those queens this year. Doolittle says 

 you want a warm room in which to transfer 

 the larvae, and you know my shop is large, 

 and slow to heat, and I thought I would take 

 them into the kitchen ; but a bee-sting would 

 almost kill my wife, and I haven't the money 

 to build a small shop right out among my 

 bees. It would cost more than twenty-five 

 dollars." 



"Well," said I, smiling, " just you come and 

 see what I have been doing. I was in about 

 your fix, but I have now what suits me very 

 well. In fact, I never had a small thing please 

 me more, and it has cost rne less than two dol- 

 lars besides the labor." 



On our way to the bee-yard Fasset asked, 

 " Did you know we have another boy down at 

 our house ? We are in luck. He came where 

 he was wanted, and we are all more than 

 pleased." 



" Is it likely to prove a ' howling success ' ? " 

 I inquired. 



" I don't know about that," Fasset respond- 

 ed ; " but Johnnie says as soon as it is old 

 enough he will teach it to ' holler ' ; and the 

 little girl's surprise and joy know no bounds. 

 ' Why, papa,' says she, ' did you speds \\.r " 



But we were soon at my queen-castle, or 

 queen-rearing establishment, and Fasset laugh- 

 ed. 



" Not a very large structure, is it? " 



" No, it isn't. All I wanted was a place 

 that was warm, and large enough to transfer 

 young larvae to queen-cups and keep a few 

 tools in. It is just 4X6 feet, and yet roomy 

 enough for a good deal of business. A small 

 sheet-iron stove at one end will raise the tem- 

 perature to 90° very quickly with a single fire 

 cool mornings in May or June. A shelf at 

 the other end, some twenty inches wide, and 

 high enough to come above my legs when sit- 

 ting on a stool or in a chair, makes the best 

 kind of bench for transferring larvae. A win- 

 dow about two feet square, just at my right 

 side, and facing the east, gives me light just 

 where most useful. A few small shelves at 

 the sides above the broad shelf give place for 

 my glasses, tools, ' Doolittle's Scientific Queen- 

 rearing,' etc. A thermometer hanging right 

 above the broad shelf in front of me while I 

 am working shows the temperature at a glance. 

 Two old supers nailed to the side above the 

 stove gives a place for storing queen-cages and 

 cell -protectors. It protects me from robber- 

 bees and gives me a warm convenient place to 

 work ; and, as I said, it is a great source of 

 pleasure. From my seat I can reach almost 



over the whole building, and get any thing I 

 want. I found some old pieces of joists in a 

 rubbish-heap, for sills. Two or three old 

 boards from the barn loft make the floor. 

 Then I had a lot of old dry-goods boxes that 

 I knocked apart and used for siding and roof- 

 boards. The most of the expense came in 

 the door and window, and stove and pipe, 

 which, as I said, cost less than two dollars. 

 Here I can sit in a warm comfortable place, 

 even when cold outside, and with a quill-point 

 change the plebeian life of worker-bees into 

 the estate of queens with all the honors and 

 dangers of royalty." 



" About what I need," said Fasset. " An- 

 other thing," said he, " I want to ask about. 

 I am away from home a good deal, and I don't 

 have good luck in cutting out queen-cells and 

 putting them in a nursery when only six or * 

 seven days old." 



" How do you manage under these circum- 

 stances? " 



" Well, I have to be away from home a good 

 deal, you know, and have anticipated just 

 such troubles ; so I made last winter some 

 queen-nurseries of a different pattern from 

 any thing I had ever seen, and was going to 

 give the bee-journals something new ; but I 

 see Pridgen, in a late number of the Review, 

 has practically the same thing which he slips 

 right over a stick of queen-cells. Beginners 

 at queen rearing by the Doolittle style find it 

 a little difficult to select larvae of just the right 

 age, and such a cage keeps any queen that 

 hatches too soon from killing the rest. It can 

 be slipped over the cells on the ninth day, and 

 every thing is safe ; but you have got to have 

 your cells placed on your stick pretty accu- 

 rately so they will fit." 



" Well, now, that is cur'us and pretty in- 

 teresting," said Fasset, as I lifted a frame 

 from a hive with eleven large queen-cells and 

 as many queens already hatched in this nurs- 

 ery. 



NOTES OF TRAVEL IN EUROPE. 



BY J. T. CAI.VERT. 



On leaving home, July 16, I planned to 

 spend an afternoon in Syracuse, N. Y., on my 

 way to Boston to take the boat for Liverpool. 

 I spent a pleasant and profitable time there 

 with our genial friend F. A. Salisbury. I was 

 greatly interested in visiting the works of the 

 Solvay Process Co., an immense institution 

 employing 3500 men. Some four to five thou- 

 sand horse power in water-tube boilers is re- 

 quired to produce steam for operating the 

 great quantity and variety of machinery and 

 pumps in the works. The output of the works 

 is soda in its various forms. 



We sailed from Boston July 18, about 3 p. m., 

 on the steamer New England, of the Dominion 

 Line, bound for Queenstown and Liverpool. 

 We had 1001 passengers aboard, and the crew 

 consists of about 600 more. The length of 

 this vessel (565 feet) laid down nine times 

 makes almost a mile. It is a veritable float- 

 ing palace. 



We had ideal weather for the voyage — so 



