736 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



December, 1920 



most of the hives. Finding neither a queen 

 nor a sign of a queen makes it hard to know 

 for sure whether a colony is queenless or 

 not. But presently I found one queen, then 

 another, on the ground. They had evidently 

 run off the under side of the super cover. 

 Then another on the lower side 'of a queen- 

 excluder that was being taken off; and still 

 others in about the same way, as tho, hav- 

 ing nothing to do below, they were roaming 

 around at the tops of the hives, or ran up 

 there as soon as smoke was blown into the 

 entrance. One was dead in a ball of bees on 

 an alighting-board, another was on the up- 

 per side of the super cover of a hive that 

 had not been opened, tho I've no idea in 

 the world where she came from nor how she 

 got there. She took to wing, and that's the 

 last I ever saw of her. I never had such 

 trouble before, and did not try to finish. 

 Eobbing was bad, too. Then a heavy cold 

 overwhelmed me, and I had to give up a lit- 

 tle requeening I had planned to do on some 

 blacks we had bought and a few other odd 

 colonies. We are wintering on almost solid 

 honeydew, except a few colonies that were 

 given sugar syrup made from a hundred 

 pounds of granulated sugar we had bought 

 for 13 cents when it was retailing for 27 

 cents — because it was tainted with kero- 

 sene. What, oh what, will we find next 

 spring? Instead of the good record of last 

 March, every colony alive and every one 

 queenright, there will likely be a loss. 

 * * * 



One experience that we had this fall was 

 amusing. The only wax we have ever ren- 

 dered has been from cappings, in the solar 

 wax-extractor. This fall we had a little comb 

 we wanted to get the wax from. Our small 

 solar isn't of much help with comb, and 

 there was scarcely enough to pay to send 

 away. And ever since I started reading bee- 

 keeping literature I have read about the 

 very amateurish method of boiling comb up 

 in a sack and getting the wax off the top 

 of the water. And I have looked at many 

 pictures of this time-honored operation, al- 

 ways with a pair of cut-off hands rubbing 

 the sack of combs between two sticks. And 

 always the authors have assured us it was 

 not very efficient, would not get all the wax, 

 and was very mussy, yet had been used 

 widely as a makeshift when there was only 

 a small amount of comb. We seem fired with 

 the ambition to try all traditional beekeep- 

 ing "stunts" once. So on a sunny daj' in 

 late October, we made a fire in the back 

 yard, between two piles of bricks, and set 

 over it an old boiler which the beekeeping 

 department had previously acquired from 

 the laundry department by the simple 

 means of declining to clean it up after hav- 

 ing boiled combs in it. "Oh, we'll buy a new 

 one and charge it to the bees," we had de- 

 clared in spirited and unanimous refusal. So 

 on this autumn day, we put into it a sack 

 of comb, covered it with water, weighted 

 it down with bricks, and prepared to prod 



it occasionally with sticks. While it was 

 slowly heating, we were doing other things, 

 tho I kept wandering back to exult over a 

 drop or two of wax showing on top. "Boil- 

 ing yet?" Mr. Allen asked as he joined me 

 once. It wasn't, so he put on more wood. 

 "That ought to bring it," he remarked and 

 we left it again. It brought it all right. I 

 was out near one of the rambler roses that 

 was hopefully putting out dainty little Octo- 

 ber blooms, when the realization was borne 

 in upon me that for several minutes there 

 had been a peculiar hissing sort of sound 

 coming from somewhere. I started for the 

 fire and I wish you could see wha,t I saw. 

 The boiler itself was scarcely visible. In 

 the midst of leaping flame there was a waxy 

 mass of seething foam boiling up over in a 

 hissing sheet. "Oh, come quick! Come 

 quick!" I screamed helplessly, in fine dis- 

 regard of grammatical niceties. But Mr. 

 Allen, having just gone to the fartherest 

 end of the cellar, heard nothing and the 

 wax poured on out into the fire like an oily 

 Niagara into a fiery furnace. And I kept on 

 screaming. Till at last I remembered the 

 hose lying near and sent a stream of cold 

 water into the boiler, whose contents be- 

 came quiet for a minute, then started climb- 

 ing up the sides again. More water, this 

 time on the fire also. ' ' We 've lost all our 

 wax!" I wailed as Mr. Allen came up and 

 calmly raked the rest of the fire from under 

 the boiler. But not to be cheated from do- 

 ing as the hands in the pictures do, we fished 

 out the sack, rubbed it with sticks, squeezed 

 it as dry as as possible, and tossed it out. 

 The rest we left till the next day, when we 

 found a disreputable-looking boiler, with a 

 fairly thick sheet of somewhat dirty wax. 

 So, in spite of its loss, that afternoon shows 

 on its credit side two or three dollars worth 

 of wax, a little experience, a little fun, and 

 a memory to smile at in years to come. 



A few days ago I met an intelligent 

 woman who is prominent in a local poultry 

 organization where progressive methods of 

 chicken-raising are upheld. Yet she told me 

 that when she decided a year or two ago to 

 get some bees, she let a man convince her 

 that ' ' those patent gums ' ' weren 't any 

 good. ' ' He made me two gums himself, like 

 tall boxes all fixed up with little sticks 

 across, and only charged a dollar apiece for 

 them, and he gave me the bees to put in 

 them," she said. "But I've never got any 

 honey. ' ' 



(Mrs. Allen, if you could have seen Mr. 

 A. I. Eoot carrying your beautiful poem on 

 Dr. Miller in the October Gleanings about 

 the office here, and reading it aloud to us, 

 with tears in his eyes, you would have been 

 intensely gratified. Over and over he would 

 repeat the last line: "Because you lived and 

 loved, and smiled, and died." It was indeed 

 a beautiful tribute. — Editor.") 



