462 



Gleanings in Bee Culture 



He is also fond of bee-tree hunting, but 

 only for the sport and pleasure of it, not for 

 l)rotii. for he, Uke all others here, declares 

 that the gain in cutting down a iree, good 

 and bad together, is very sHght. Tlie bees 

 are usually in very large trees, and the 

 heavy fall mashes bees and combs so sadly 

 that it is seldom the bees can be saved with 

 a queen, an(i combs are ahnost always 

 worthless. He has one yard of pure Carni- 

 olans, one of i)ure Caucasians, and three of 

 pure Italians; the rest are a mixture of all. 

 He is a hustling bee-man, who does not be- 

 lieve in getting cross over his work, but 

 practices his motto, which is, "Smile while 

 you work." Fig. 11 shows how his good 

 nature is outside as well as within — a quali- 

 ty that seems transmitted to his thirteen- 

 year-old son. Mr. Plerlong is a man well 

 worth knowing. 



Headers of (Ilkaxings should make the 

 actjuaintance of Florida's veteran queen- 

 breeder, Mr. .). B. Case, of Port Orange, on 

 the East Coast. A bee-keei)er all his life, he 

 has been a l)reeder of queens twenty years. 

 Of New .Jersey originally, he has kej^t bees 

 as a specialty in Florida for 24 years, and 

 always on the East Coast. Of his two 

 queen-rearing apiaries, one containing 100 

 colonies is shown in Fig. 13. The other 

 contains (50 full colonies and 20 nuclei. In 

 the former apiary, shown, there are about 

 .'500 nuclei on an average. Situated on the 

 picturesque Halifax River, Mr. Case used 

 to call his location one of the best for honey 

 in Florida; but the changing conditions, 

 recorded elsewhere in this article, have 

 made it very jjoor for sur])lus honey. Hon- 

 ey-Hows are too short and light, but favora- 

 ble for stimulating breeding, and hence 

 good for queen-rearing. He uses scupper- 

 nong grapevine trellises for shade, as shown 

 in Fig. 14, and lines uj) his bees in two rows 

 of hives. Strong colonies alone, he finds, 

 can protect themselves against the attacks 

 of the nocturnal or "bull-dog " ants, though 

 he also wages incessant warfare on their 

 nests. The past year, however, he tells me 

 that he has grown lax about fighting the 

 nests, but does not suffer much more than 

 when he was more zealous in that particu- 

 lar. He attributes it to the gradual elimi- 

 nation of the pest. He has a sovereign 

 remedy against them, and was the first, so 

 far as I know, who used it. It is as follows: 

 Mix equal parts of tartar emetic and sugar. 

 In the runs j^lace this, in shallow boxes cov- 

 ered with screen to keep bees from it; the 

 ants eat it with eagerness, carrying it also 

 to their nests, where it is fed to the young 

 larva^ with fatal effect. It is far superior to 

 arsenic and other poisons, in that it will 

 not so easily drive the ants away from it 

 from being too strong, and will not prove 

 fatal if perchance any thing or any one 

 but ants should partake. He uses strong 

 nuclei, three to four frames in each one, 

 and agrees with the writer that only strong 

 nuclei are worth fooling with in Florida. 

 For example. Mr. Shumard, who has been 

 using, or trying to use, the baby nuclei the 



