680 



Gleanings in Bee Culture 



wiFirm 



J. E. Crane, Middlebury, Vt. 



Stirring honey undoubtedly will make it 

 candy more quickly; but the best quality 

 can be secured only by using well-ripened 

 honey. See page 550, Sejit. 15. 

 4^ 



Dr. Miller refers, page 516, Sept. 1, to bees 

 tearing down worker comb and building 

 drone comb. Since this matter came up I 

 have spoken to a number of bee-keepers 

 who seem to think it a very common occur- 

 rence. 



Early this year it was thought there would 

 be an unusual crop of honey in the clover 

 belt; but September reports show the crop 

 of clover honey the lightest for many years. 

 This indicates how uncertain the honey- 

 flow is, and how little one can foretell what 

 the crop will be. 



With the number of Gleanings for Sept. 

 1, Mr. Baldwin finished his series of articles 

 on "Bee-keeping in Florida," which has 

 given such a clear idea of conditions in 

 that land of flowers. Few articles are more 

 fascinating than those regarding other sec- 

 tions of our broad country, for the good 

 things are not all in one place. Every sec- 

 tion has its good and bad points. 



On page 534, Sept. 1, O. B. Metcalf gives 

 some objections to a gravity strainer for 

 thick honey. We have found it almost im- 

 possible to strain very thick honey through 

 any fine strainer. I have wondered whether 

 the strainer could not be enclosed in a wa- 

 ter-jacket and the temperature raised to 125° 

 by heat from a stove, or by steam, and thus 

 make straining a simpler process. 



Page 552, Sept. 15, our genial friend Doo- 

 little advises keeping bees better rather than 

 to buy more, and tilling a small farm well 

 rather than to enlarge it. Good advice, 

 surely, and it reminds me of a sturdy little 

 German whom I met a few weeks ago in 

 the southwestern part of our State. He has 

 supported his family, and secured a compe- 

 tence on a twenty-acre farm. I was congrat- 

 ulating him on the productiveness of his 

 farm when he laughed heartily, and said 

 the man he bought it of could not make a 

 Jiving on it. 



That letter by J. E. Hand, page 515, Sept. 

 1, on outdoor feeding, with notes by the ed- 

 itor, is a good step in advance of any form- 

 er facts along this line. It certainly is 

 much less work to feed in the open than 

 to each individual colony. The possibili- 

 ties seem to warrant outdoor feeding in 

 spring to get bees ready for the clover har- 

 vest, especially between fruit bloom and clo- 

 ver. The feeding of dilute sugar syrup (or 

 shall we call it sugar water?) in the open, 



seems to offer great possibilities. Already 

 it seems to be of great value in queen-rear- 

 ing in the prevention of robbing when han- 

 dling bees; in keeping bees away from fair- 

 grounds, and for stimulating brood-rearing. 

 I have found, however, that a good way to 

 keep bees away from fairgrounds is to kill 

 the first bees that come. Only a few scat- 

 tering bees find it first; and if these are dis- 

 posed of, not enough will come later to make 

 any serious trouble. 



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Mr. Doolittle advises, page 454, Aug. 1, a 

 temperature between 80 and 90 degrees, 

 never below- 70, for keeping comb honey 

 perfectly, which is, no doubt, all right, but 

 I fear it is not very practical; for how many 

 bee-keepers are there who have such a place 

 during winter? Perhaps one in five hun- 

 dred. For the benefit of the other four hun- 

 dred and ninety-nine let me say that well- 

 ripened clover comb honey has been kept 

 in places far different from and far cooler 

 than Mr. Doolittle suggests. In fact, we 

 have recently bought several such lots of 

 honey, most of it wintered in a chamber of 

 an ordinary dwelling-house, and we found 

 it in fine condition. Some of it, however, 

 which had been wintered in an out-building, 

 where the temperature must have been be- 

 low zero many times, was somewhat crack- 

 ed. Most of this honey was free from gran- 

 ulation, and looked as though but recently 

 taken from the hive. 



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That article by Wesley Foster, page 456, 

 Aug. 1, " Let's be Intelligently Honest," is 

 decidedly good except the quotation from the 

 Rural New - Yorker, which, as I happen to 

 know, is rather misleading. The reason for 

 using barrels for apples here in New Eng- 

 land is not for the pur pose of put ting a bush- 

 el of poor-quality fruit in the center of the 

 barrel, but rather because it has been the 

 custom for a long time to use barrels, prob- 

 ably because it is cheaper, and requires less 

 work. I heard an extensive apple-grower 

 from a neighboring town say last fall, when 

 asked why he did not put up his apples in 

 boxes, that he preferred barrels, and should 

 continue to use them as long as he could 

 get from seven to ten dollars a barrel for his 

 No. 1 Greenings and from ten to fifteen dol- 

 lars a barrel for the same grade of Spies, and 

 he had between two and three thousand 

 barrels of this grade of Greenings alone the 

 previous fall, and he can't supply the de- 

 mand for his apples. I could name a good 

 many fruit-gjowers in this locality who get 

 fancy prices for apples in barrels. Apples 

 from the Pacific coast in boxes? Yes, that 

 is the best for them, for their beautiful color 

 is their best asset; but when it comes to fla- 

 vor, Wesley, you should eat some of our 

 Vermont apples, and then you would say 

 that "I have boasted less than I should." 



