76 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Eeb. 



books according to size ; but for Mrs. Cot- 

 ton's own good, and that sales of the boolc 

 mav be increased, 1 would suggest that it be 

 sold cheaper, or more matter added to it. 

 People are in the liabit of getting a pretty 

 good-sized book on bees for a dollar, and I 

 fear they will be disappointed. I believe 

 Mrs. Cotton to be an earnest, hard-working 

 w^oman, and I wish to see her succeed. In 

 fact, I shall be glad to sell her book, if she 

 will permit me so to do. I am satisfied she 

 sees the mistakes she has made, and is will- 

 ing to correct them. 



Her advice in regard to feeding bees sugar 

 syrup to produce tine comb honey will prob- 

 ably meet with more severe censure from 

 other hands than mine. The recipe for 

 making bee feed, for which she charged 

 $10.00 (see Gleanings, page 8, Jan. No., 

 1874), Ave copy from page 33 as follows:— 



RECIPE FOB FEED. 



To eij^ht pounds of coffee crushed sugar, add two 

 quarts of ssofl water, and whites of two eggs; bring 

 to the boiling point over a flow tire, being very care- 

 ful not to burn it. Skim off carefully all scum or 

 sediment that rises, so that the feed, when cool, will 

 be perfectly clear and about the consistency of new 

 honey. 



I confess it is a little hard to see how one 

 Avho is trying to do right should charge 

 $10.00 for such a recipe, but at the same 

 time, I do not know but that it is the best 

 recipe I have ever found offered for sale. 

 You knoAv how I have talked to you about 

 selling recipes in these years past. Well, 

 although this is an excellent bee -feed, 

 whether you use the eggs to clarify it or not, 

 I should hardly like to indorse the following, 

 which we tind in Mrs. C.'s book, page 39: — 



The feed is of the same color as the nicest white 

 clover honey, and when put in boxes bj' the bees 

 with the honey collected from flowers (I have no 

 doubt in many instances in alternate layers in the 

 same cell with honey from flowers), it can not be 

 distinguished, either in color or taste, from honey 

 collected whoUy from flowers. 



Although ]\Irs. C. does not quite say so di- 

 rectly, w^e are led to infer that the great 

 yields of box honey she has obtained (over 

 380 lbs. from a single hive) were secured by 

 feeding the bees with this sugar syrup. This 

 honey was all sold at 3.5c per lb. Now, if 

 people will buy this honey at 35c, or even 2.5c 

 per lb., there will be no great difficulty in 

 getting $50.00 profit from a single hive, as 

 Mrs. C. has so long claimed in her advertise- 

 ments. The hive Which she calls the Con- 

 trollable hive, is only a slight modification of 

 the large hive of Jasper Ilazen, and the one 

 later made by j\Ir. Quinby. It is simply a 

 very large hive, with boxes all over the top 

 and sides, giving ample room for a very 

 strong colony to store honey during a great 

 yield. The chaff hive embodies the same 

 principle, with a permanent winter covering. 

 Why do I consider the book a good one, and 

 wish to extend its saleV Mostly because of 

 one point. This one point is the energy and 

 zeal with which she recommends building 

 each stock up to its fullest strength by feed- 

 ing with sugar syrup, clear up until the 

 white clover opens. In fact, she insists that 

 the hive be crammed with bees and honey ( !), 

 and even commence building the comb in 

 the boxes, and storing some honey (!) in 

 them before they get any from white clover 



at all. Sucli a course can not fail to give an 

 enormous yield, as we almost all of us know 

 already, if a little of the sugar syrup should 

 get mixed with the honey, I presume it 

 Avould do no great harm, for it is not poison- 

 ous at all. To get these great yields, she 

 recommends but about a dozen hives in a lo- 

 cality. Now, although the book says noth- 

 ing of the extractor or comb foundation, it 

 is well worth the dollar for the energy with 

 which she puts the points above mentioned. 

 A very good picture of Mrs. Cotton is giv- 

 en as the frontispiece of the book; and as 

 one takes a good look at the face of the au- 

 thor (which by the way is by no means an 

 unprepossessing one), it is with a feeling of 

 sadness that so much energy has been spent, 

 at least in part, in a mistaken direction. 



STRAY THOUGHTS FBOITI ORCHARD 

 APIARY. 



No. 1. 



IMPORTANCE OF GOOD DRONE? 



ANY of you have doubtless noticed that, while 

 some stocks will store honey all through the 

 season, others equally strong do nothing. 

 Now, I believe the cause of this is because queen- 

 breeders are too careless in regard to mating their 

 queens. I think It is just as important to have good 

 stoek on the side of the male, as on that of the fe- 

 male; and if bee-keepers would take as much pains 

 in selecting their drones as they do their queen- 

 breeding stock, I think the number of idle stocks in 

 the country would decrease every year. 



For the past few years I have been trying, by close 

 and careful breeding, to secure a strain of bees that 

 would excel in the three most important points; 

 namely, industry, proliflcness, and hardiness. To at- 

 tain this end, I adopted the following plan: I kept 

 a record of all my stocks through the summer, and 

 marked the ones that stored the most honey under 

 the same favorable circumstances. In the spring I 

 marked those that appeared to winter the besti 

 judging from their condition in the fall, and also 

 those that bred most rapidly in the spring. I then 

 let the marked hives raise all the drones they 

 wished, and kept all others cut off. I then bred 

 from the best imported stock, and mated my queens 

 with m.v selected drones, and kept a record of them 

 the next j'ear as before. Those that proved the most 

 industrious, prolific, and hardj', I allowed to raise 

 drones, keeping all others cut off. By this plan of 

 the "survival of the fittest," I think I have succeed- 

 ed In obtaining a strain of bees that are industrious, 

 good breeders, and that will stand this cold climate 

 well. It has taken a great deal of pains and perse- 

 verance to accomplish this; but I think the result 

 more than pays me for my labor. 



MAKING COMB FOUNDATION. 



In rolling fdn. 10 or 12 ft. to the pound, the sheets 

 stick to the rolls badly when they come through, 

 and have to be picked up, which takes a great deal 

 of time and patience. Two years ago I thought of a 

 way to remedy this, which is, to fold a strip of very 

 thin paper over the end of the sheets. They can be 

 put on very fast with starch, and can be taken away 

 from the machine as rapidlyasthe very thick sheets. 

 The paper can be cut off, ancl the wa.x melted up 



