GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



wing or wings, without taking some other 

 portion of her body, particularly a leg. 

 Queens are adepts at getting their feet 

 against the finger and trying to pry them- 

 selves loose; and if they cannot pi*y against 

 something under them, which is away from 

 their wings, they will ti-y to do it against 

 something above them, where the wings are 

 to be cut. To be safe when I clip, I like to 

 let the queen rest on my knee, holding her 

 by the thorax from above. When that is 

 done .she pries against the knee, and there 

 is no danger of cutting a leg off when clip- 

 ping. The same can be effected by holding 

 her with one finger under and another above 

 her; but this method is less certain. I like 

 to advise the cautious way. Some beginners 

 chase a queen across a comb with a pair of 

 scissors, making a lunge at her wings — a 

 method of which I never made a success. I 

 clip the wings on both sides ; others clip 

 one each year, using the markings as a 

 record. 



If a beginner wants to find a queen with- 

 out shaking and combing the bees thru a 

 queen-excluder the following rules should 

 be observed : 



1. Do not jar the hive in which you are 

 about to hunt the queen. 



2. Smoke the bees very gently, giving no 

 sharp puffs. 



3. Take the combs out as quietly as pos- 

 sible, and look them over intently and fair- 

 ly rapidly, not forgetting corners or open- 

 ings between the comb and frame. Set the 

 combs, after examination, outside of the 

 hive until all have been removed or until 



the queen has been found. Do not forget 

 to look among the bees left in the hive. 

 With black bees, not Carniolans, she will 

 quite often be found off the combs. 



4. If the queen has not been found after 

 trying the above I would recommend look- 

 ing them over one by one and replacing 

 them in the hive, and, if not found, then 

 leaving the work for another time. My 

 reason for advising the latter is because by 

 that time the bees will have assumed abnor- 

 mal positions, getting into clusters, etc., in 

 the hive or on the combs, and then it is more 

 difficult to find the queen. 



5. When hunting for a queen, do not talk 

 about other things; do not think about 

 other things, but do as a writer somewhere 

 once said — say "Queen, queen, queen," men- 

 tally, all the time. In other words, keep 

 your mind on the object of your search, and 

 then you are most likely to find her. 



6. Perhaps this should come first of all. 

 If the hive has a honey-board and a bee- 

 space above the frames, you can try giving 

 the colony a fairly sharp smoke, say cover- 

 ing about a minute, and you may find the 

 queen on the under side of the honey-board. 

 This is more likely to be the case with black 

 bees. 



7. Never try to clip a queen when the 

 bees are likely to rob. Do not try to find 

 her at such a time. Some of us have to do 

 the latter, but it is not work suitable for a 

 novice. If done, do it as nearly at the close 

 of the day as possible, but not after the 

 shades of night are falling. 



Brantford, Ont., Can. 



AN UNPRECEDENTED SEASON 



BY G. C. GREINER 



The past season, unquestionably, goes on 

 record as the best honey season beekeepers 

 of the present generation ever experienced 

 in this locality; and, as nearly as I can 

 judge from reports I have received, other 

 parts of the state were favored in a similar 

 manner. 



On page 748, Sept. 15, Mr. J. E. Crane 

 refers to Quinby's book, saying, " Clover 

 will sometimes continue to bloom all sum- 

 mer and 3'ield honey." Then he adds, "Such 

 a season was 1865, as I remember. I have 

 been looking for another for the past fifty 

 years, and it has come at last." That is 

 exactly my experience, except that Mr. C. 

 has fifty years to fall back on, while I can 

 call an experience of only forty years my 

 own. If I am not mistaken, the year 1887 

 was an uncommonly good honey season — 



perhaps tlie best in my recollection ; but it 

 was nothing like the one just passed. 



With the exception of a few days be- 

 tween the dandelion and alsike-clover flows, 

 honey has been coming in continuously 

 from the time the early spring sources, such 

 as elm, soft maple, the early fruit trees, 

 etc., yielded nectar, until the middle of Oc- 

 tober. All my summer's honey-house work, 

 including extracting at the close of the 

 white-clover flow, could be done with the 

 doors wide open, and not a bee would offer 

 to molest me. Even as late as the middle 

 of September bees would improve favorable 

 days with such uncommon display that I 

 had occasion at different times to call mem- 

 bers of the family to the beeyard to witness 

 the strange spectacle. -m 



It is not strange — yes, it would be only a 1 



