644 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



July 1 



What Doc said was drowned by the ex- 

 plosion of laughter at his appearance, 

 which, I think, was just as well from t e 

 nature of a few selections which reached 

 my ears. Doc picked himself up and said, 

 " Well, laugh, you blamed idiots; I have 

 my opinion of anj' one who will laugh at the 

 misfortunes of others." 



" OhI come, Doc," said Fred; "you'd 

 laugh if you could have seen yourself as we 

 saw you," and Fred struck out for the is- 

 land; but he had made scarcely twenty 

 paces when he dropped the saw he was 

 carrying, and began wildly clawing the 

 air in the endeavor to save himself from 

 falling. 



"Whoop! grand right and left," sung 

 out Doc, as Fred finished the performance by 

 bringing up with his arms around a water- 

 beech. Fred looked around. I was laugh- 

 ing, of course, but Doc was just simply 

 paralyzed. He was doubled up like an old 

 jick- knife, and not a sound escaped him; 

 but we cculd see his sides nip and buckle, 

 and finally he got out two or three grunts 

 followed by "Oh! oh! oh! whoop!" and then 

 a prolonged "haw, haw, haw," which 

 seemed to relieve him so he could straighten 

 up. The tears were running down his 

 cheeks, and his face looked like a brick 

 smokehouse overgrown with red Rambler 

 roses. 



" I say, Doc, you feel better, don't you? 

 I have my opinion of any one who will 

 laugh" — but Doc's "haw, haw, haw" 

 cut .short any effort of Fred's to get back 

 at him, so he picked up the saw, and, with 

 a marked degree of care, pushed forward 

 toward the island. 



Some twenty- five or thirty feet from the 

 shore of the island giew a large elm. 

 Pieces of bark scattered about showed that 

 the coon had gone up. I was admiring the 

 clear ice, and saw several inches below the 

 surface pieces of both drone and worker 

 comb. I called attention to this, and we all 

 became enthused. 



" We'll get a bee- tree, anyhow," said I. 



" Yes, and may be two or three coons," 

 said Doc. 



" Wei', yes; you may; but I wouldn't be 

 surprised if we didn't find a coon." 



" All right," said Fred; " we'll take the 

 coons, and 3 ou can have the bees and hon- 

 ey;" and I saw him wink slyly at Doc. 



" All right, boys; I'll stand by that." 



The tree proved to be a thin shell, and a 

 few minutes of work brought it crashing 

 down full length upon the ice. We were 

 quickly at the top. Here we found a hole 

 eighteen inches long and a foot wide, going 

 entirely through the body of the tree. I 

 could hear the hum of bees, and found that 

 they were above the opening Further in- 

 spection showed that comb had been taken 

 out Irom the trunk above this opening a dis 

 tance of eighteen or twenty inches, proba- 

 bly as far as the coon could reach. 



We now cut off the body where we thought 

 the bees were, and again about three feet 

 higher. This gave us a section about three 



feet in length. The bees were found in a 

 fair sized cluster, and so compact that the 

 cluster was not even broken by the fall. 



We now searched for the coon, but none 

 could be found. In fact, there was no 

 lodging- place for this roving bee-hunter, as 

 the tree was hollow throughout. 



Fred and Doc were disappointed, but I 

 did not care much, being more interested 

 in the bees. Hei e was a hive at least forty 

 feet from the ground, robbed of a large por- 

 tion of its stores, and exposed to fierce 

 winds in the coldest winter known in this re- 

 gion for years, when the mercury ranged for 

 several weeks in succession from 4 to 25 de- 

 grees below zero, and on one occasion 40 de- 

 grees below, with no bottom protection of 

 any kind. I took the section with bees and 

 honey, and placed them in the cellar; but 

 tl ey died before spring, evidently from 

 lack of stores. 



THIN VS. THICK TOP-BARS. 

 Advantages in Favor of the Former. 



BY S. T. PETTIT. 



Mr. Root: — While considering the supe- 

 riority of thin top- bars, compared with thick 

 ones, first let us notice the gain by using a 

 y% instead of % top bar. For this purpose 

 let us take the ten-frame Langstroth from 

 which to make our calculations, presuming 

 it to be an average- si zed hive now in gen- 

 eral use in the United States and Canada. 



The gain in comb depth in each frame is 

 ]i inch; in ten frames the gain is 2 '2 inches 

 X 17=42 "2 square inches of comb by 50 (the 

 lowest estimate of cells to the square inch) 

 makes 2125 cells gained in the brood cham- 

 ber alone. 



The difference between ^s and % is "2 

 inch, would give a gain of 4250 cells to the 

 biood-chamber. 



Many use the same top-bars in both brood- 

 chamber and extracting supers, and in such 

 cases the gain is indeed a consideration of 

 no small importance; nor is it in the brood- 

 chamber alone. 



It must be borne in mind that we are not 

 discussing the size nor the depth of hives. 

 These are quite different considerations al- 

 together; but whatever the dimensions of 

 the hive may be, we certainly should econ- 

 omize every possible internal available inch 

 that can be used to advantage. Hives cost 

 too much to v^ aste an3'^ inside space. I am 

 too economical of money and personal com- 

 fort to buy, handle, and haul about most of 

 my lifetime worse than useless wood. It 

 has been held by some that a depth of % 

 is necessary to prevent the bees from using 

 black wax from the brood-chamber to cap 

 sections. 



Once I was led to fear danger from that 

 source; but I doubt there being any danger 

 if they are properly handled. I took comb 

 honey, with and without excluders, for a 

 period of about 16 years over ^s top- bars, 

 and I question if any one could detect any 



