1900 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



909 



of course, be corrected by adding more wax 

 to the ends of the cells. Now let's see if this 

 is true. There, I've stopped to measure, and 

 find that the thickness of the comb is from 

 one inch to one and one-sixteenth thick. 

 Thickness of nezu brood-comb is about seven- 

 eighths ; and, if so, this 25-year-old comb has 

 been thickened from two to three sixteenths 

 because of the packing of 9 and 10 layers of 

 cocoons in the bottoms of the cells. The oth- 

 er fact seems to be that the diameter of the 

 cells has not been reduced all these years. If 

 this is true with other old combs, then worker 

 bees in a 25-year-old comb will be just as large 

 as in one six months old. This I am inclined 

 to believe correct, because nature would sure- 

 ly make some provision for the excess of 

 wall-linings. — Ed. ] 



^ICKlJWGS 



'^AXOM OU/iNEIGHBO/tS FIELDS. 



War's fierce gruwliugs still are heard ; 

 Disarmarueiu's an idle word ; 

 Eastern lands run red with blood 

 In a never ceasing flood. 



Wwrld-shaking events in beedom are few 

 and far between. The matter of getting bees 

 with tongues long enough to work on red 

 clover is rapidly coming to the front and re- 

 ceiving the attention it deserves. The fact 

 that the bees and the clover already meet in a 

 few instances is enough to make all feel san- 

 guine that the desired end is at the door. 

 Judging from analogy in other cases, it is not 

 too much to say that the benefit of such a 

 strain of bees would not be so great to the 

 bee-keeper as to the farmer, as the more per- 

 fect fertilization of the red clover might ren- 

 der it so much more productive that the ad- 

 ditional increase in clover would more than 

 equal the gain in honey. No stone should be 

 left unturned in achieving this result, which 

 certainly has no reason against it, but so much 

 in its favor. 



THE AGRICULTURAL GAZETTE. 



This journal, published in New South 

 Wales, comes to this office regularly, and it is 

 a welcome visitor. It is edited by W. H. 

 Clarke, under the direction of the Secretary 

 for Mines and Agriculture. It is devoted to 

 every branch of industry relating to the earth, 

 one of the most important being that of api- 

 culture, under the direction of Mr. Albert 

 Gale. Some of the more interesting topics 

 are : Raising ostriches in Egypt ; the Jersey 

 cow ; lemon culture in Italy ; wheat and po- 

 tato culture, and a hundred others. Ameri- 

 cans themselves would be surprised to see 

 what is going on in our own country. For in- 

 stance, in speaking of seedless oranges we 

 learn that " the industry has grown till no 

 one thinks of planting seedling oranges, and 



tens of thousands of seedling trees have been 

 budded into navel orange-trees which have 

 yielded net profits of from |250 to $300 an 

 acre. 



" Riverside, Cal., has grown, in twenty years, 

 from a hamlet of less than 30 American in- 

 habitants to a town of 14,000. The average 

 annual shipments of oranges from Riverside 

 are 1,600,000 boxes." This all came from two 

 unpromising trees brought from South Amer- 

 ica less than 30 years ago. The people of 

 Riverside are urging that the two trees which 

 were the source of this prosperity be removed 

 to a public park, in order that they be kept 

 for the next generation as an object-lesson. 

 No visitor is allowed to take any flower or 

 fruit into the orchards for fear of the scale. 

 Riverside is the greatest orange-producing lo- 

 cality in the world, 16,000 acres of land being 

 devoted to it. What a paradise for the bee- 

 keeper ! Perhaps the editor will give us some 

 personal notes from these great orchards next 

 spiing. 



BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW. 

 Mr. Hutchinson's journal is always uniform- 

 ly good. It never falls below the line of what 

 might be called a little extra. The issue for 

 October starts out with an editorial article on 

 wintering in clamps, nicely illustrated. The 

 hives are buried till the tops are just even 

 with the ground, on a hillside or a gentle 

 slope. The hives rest on rails. They are then 

 covered with straw and other rubbish, then 

 with rails, and finally with earth and old vines 

 and straw. Perhaps friend Hutchinson -will 

 lend us that cut — hope so. The photos were 

 made by himself, and in photography he is 

 away up, as is well known. Relative to these 

 clamps, the editor says : 



I don't remember where I first got the idea, but I 

 do remember having some correspondence on the 

 subject with Mr. C. J. Robinson, of Richford, N. Y. 

 He very persistently urged me to give no ventilation. 

 He asserted that the bees would winter better with no 

 ventilation — that the hibernation would be more per- 

 fect than in a "sea of oxygen." I was very loath to 

 take this advice; and it was with many misgivings 

 that I finally ventured to risk six colonies with no 

 ventilation except that which would come through 

 the earth. At the same time I buried a dozen other 

 colonies, giving them ventilation by means of a four- 

 inch tube laid along the bottom of the trench, and ex- 

 tending out into the outer air. There was also a sim- 

 ilar tube at the top, extending from the bottom of the 

 pit up through the earth some three or four feet. I 

 remember that I had a thermometer hung, by means 

 of a string, in this upper tube, and that I often climb- 

 ed up and drew up the thermometer to learn the tem- 

 perature. The outside ttmperature had very little ef- 

 fect upon that inside the pit. When the mercury 

 stood at zero in the open air, the thermometer drawn 

 up from the clamp showed 43". It did not vary three 

 degrees from this in all winter. The bees wintered 

 perfectly in both clamps. It seemed as though they 

 were just about the same as when set in the previous 

 fall. The straw around them, and the hives and 

 combs, were dry and clean, and free from mold. 



\ii 



Relative to introducing queens with abso- 

 lute safety, that veteran in the business, M. 

 M. Baldridge, of Illinois, says : 



The only .safe way I have tried is to give the queen 

 to hatching brood, the same as you advise ; but I place 

 the same in a top story over the brood-nest, with a fine 

 wire screen between. This keeps all robber bees and 

 the bees of the bottom story away from the queen, 

 and insures the requisite heat for both the queen and 



