.lANlAln, I'J'Jl 



G L E A X 1 N G S IX B K K C U L T U K b: 



HEADS OF GRAlTn ggglO TDIFFERENT FIELDS ^ 



Rendering I most heartily endorse what 

 Diseased. editor has to say in December 

 Combs. Gleanings (page 714) regarding 



the shipping of diseased combs 

 — at least I endorse up it to the point where 

 he advises heating tliem in water, and then 

 shipping the residue. I am not at all sure 

 that they would be sterilized by such 

 treatment, unless they were boiled for a 

 long time. Another fatal objection to such 

 a plan is the fact that such residue will be 

 destroyed by mold in a very few days, espe- 

 cially in warm weather. I have tried the 

 method more than once and have always 

 found that the last state of those combs 

 was worse than the first. 



After rejecting the Editor's suggestion, I 

 do not find it so easy to give a better one. 

 I have rendered many diseased combs my- 

 self, and think that I can do it safely; but 

 it requires such very careful handling that 

 it is doubtful if it ever pays, unless one has 

 a place especially prepared for the work. My 

 advice to all who have diseased combs is to 

 dig a hole in the ground, make a good fire 

 in the bottom of it, and burn the combs, 

 frames, honey, and all, and then fill the 

 hole with earth. As an inspector who has 

 watched the attempts of the average bee- 

 ma'n to treat diseased colonies and save the 

 wax, I do not wonder that diseases of bees 

 are widespread. It seems rather a marvel 

 that any healthy colonies are to be found. 



Newman, Ills. C. F. Bender. 



DO^Cic: 



Beekeeping in Bees in northwestern Wash- 

 Northwest ington are wintered out- 

 Washington, doors in single-walled hives. 

 Sometimes a cheap shed is 

 erected over them. The problem here in 

 wintering is not protection from the coM 

 so much as it is protection against damp 

 ness. The spring bees came thru the winter 

 in good condition, with but few losses. 



Bees can often take frequent flights thru 

 the winter months. In February they start 

 to gather pollen. In the latter part of April, 

 according to weather conditions, the frui'. 

 bloom and the dandelion bloom start, which 

 often offer a surplus of honey, if the colo- 

 nies are strong and weather conditions arc 

 favorable. Sometimes a wet spring will hin- 

 der the bees from working, and as a result 

 often affect the fruit crop. The white-clover 

 flow starts in June and extends well out 

 into July. After the white-clover flow, 

 nectar is gathered from the fireweed, 

 which in many localities grows and blossoms 

 abundantly, and which is a source of much 

 delicious honey. These are the three major 

 flows, altho tlierc are many flowering plants 

 that bloom along thru tlic sjiriag and sum- 



The I will try to give a few facts of 



Honey feeding honey to my babe. At 

 Babe. nine weeks she was very ill, and 

 we could see that the two phy- 

 sicians who were doctoring her were giving 

 her no relief. We felt that she was fast 

 slipping from us. In desperation we began 

 experimenting with her food ourselves. We 

 started her on Eskay 's food and added l^ 

 to 1 teaspoon of honey to each bottle, and 

 between each feeding when she would cry 

 from hunger we used a comforter dipped in 

 honey. We kept her bottles regular that 



nier. 



Fcrndale, Wasli 



Carl J. Menze. 



This baby, honey fed. was won back to health. 



way, increasing the honey according to the 

 increase in food. She gained from the first 

 feeding. After her first honey bottle as we 

 called it, she went to sleep and slept eight 

 hours tho she had not been sleeping more 

 than ten minutes at a time for a few weeks. 

 May I add it was the longest eight hours in 

 my life I ever put in. We felt that perhaps 

 we had killed her; but when she woke up 

 she was fine, and has never been ill since. 

 Today she has all the honey she can eat 

 and has it practically every meal. At 20 

 months she has 20 teeth and is strong in 

 every way. I find honey superior to sugar 

 for a child 's food, since sugar tends to fer- 

 ment the food in the child 's stomach while 

 honey does not have that tendency. 



Mrs. F. R. Tompkins. 

 Niagara Falls, N. Y. 



Egg-, Having had considerable time on 

 Eating my hands this past season, I have 

 Bees. been able to study the habits of my 

 bees more closely than ever before. 

 I have an obseryation hive in which I put 

 a virgin queen with a handful of bees. I was 

 naturally interested to see when the queen 

 began laying, and I spent a lot of time 

 watching for her. Finally I saw her come 

 out of the crowd and lay in the lower cells, 

 but next day these cells were empty. In a 



