1881 



GLEANINGS IX BEE CULTURE. 



219 



APIS DORSATA. 



FTTHffDER FARTICDLAUS IN KEGARD TO THE " CHASE" 

 AFTER THE WONDERFUL BEES. 



M S friend Jones" letter that accompanies 

 P^ friend Benton's letter is (luite inter- 

 — ' esting we give that also. 



Friend Root : ~1 send you another very interestiug- 

 letter from Mr. Benton, and it seems that these 

 wonderful bees are creatiua- great excitement in the 

 bee world. I have come to the conclusion that they 

 may be valuable, even though we lose some of them 

 in winterinj? (some thing I do not anticipate). Could 

 we not extract the stings from the dead ones, and 

 sell them for toothpicks? 



I will be able in your ne.xt, I hope, to give your 

 readers full particulars of this wonderful bee, and 

 all about Sir. Benton's future movements. In the 

 meantime, I will say that he has been instructed to 

 bring several hundred queens from Cyprus and Pal- 

 estine,— principally Holy-Land queens, and after re- 

 cruitiug his bees from Java,Cey Ion, and other places, 

 he will bring them with all his Holy-Land and Cyp- 

 rians by the quickest route he can to Liverpool; fly 

 and prepare them there, and forward them on to 

 me, and I will meet them when they land, and he 

 will return back for more and further researches. 

 I will give you more full particulars in fwlure, as it 

 appears from his last letters that he has not got 

 some of my instructions sent him there, but I hope 

 he will, as they are very important. I have cabled 

 him, which is very expensive. Yours faithfully,— 



D. A. Jones. 



Here is what Frank himself says :— 



Batavia, Java, Feb. 14, 18S1. 



Dear Mr. Jo?iejf:— I arrived here with hives all O.K., 

 though some are weak. I will try to save them all. 

 I have, after much work, finally got on the right 

 track and on the right side of some of these Dutch 

 officials, and fully expect to sell the lot of hives— as 

 many as I can put in order— at £5 each. I thought 

 Ceylon a pretty hard place to accomplish any thing 

 in— much harder than Cyprus or Palestine; but it is 

 not a circumstance. There are no interpreters 

 here— no natives can speak English, German, or 

 French, and only those who have fine government 

 positions can speak Dutch. Having gotten hold of 

 some good men now, I think Iwill get help to secure 

 wild bees; but since they haxo, every one of them, to 

 be gotten from the forest, to be kunted as yet, and 

 then secured, I do not believe I can get a large num- 

 ber; but I think I shall not meet with losses on the 

 return. Yours in haste,— Bexton. 



Bentenyoeo, Java, Feb. 15, 1881. 



Friend Jonc>' :—I scribbled this note yesterday 

 with a pencil, but came away without mailing it in 

 Batavia. The matter of selling the bees is more cer- 

 tain now. I brought them a day or two ago to this 

 place by rail, and am fixing them up as best I can; 

 and as soon as the sale is completed will remove 

 them to the Government Agricultural School, which 

 is near the hotel where 1 am slopping. The queens 

 are all right, but in some hives there are but a hand- 

 ful of bees, and in the strongest only three combs. 

 They are brood rearing, and I shall keep it up by 

 feofling all they will take, and equalizing brood. 

 Then I will leave instructions about continued feed- 

 ing. The Government wants to make a thorough 

 test of the matter of introducing European bees 



here. The bees Mr. Itykens took from Europe, 24 

 hives, nearly all died before he reached Port Said. 

 Five colonies in very weak condition arrived here, 

 and have since gone up. Mr. Rykens is now in Europe, 

 sick; but they expect him to return sometime. The 

 head of the Government Department of Agriculture 

 has instructei one of the officers of the Govern- 

 ment Agr'l School here to furnish me aid in secur- 

 ing some of the wild bees, opis duisata; so as soon as 

 I have gotten the hives 1 bought in fair shape I wiU 

 start out after them. I have not yet seen a bee of 

 this race, but have seen two combs of these bees, 

 which are three feet by three and a half feet, and 

 are IV2 in. thick where brood was reared; 20 cells, 

 about, to the square inch. Bees must be 7iof an inoh 

 long. The combs are never built horizontally— could 

 not be, but are perpendicularly placed on the 

 branches ef trees. The natives get the honey and 

 wax from them, although I was told this morning 

 by a gentleman who has been here for 50 years, that 

 they "sting fearfully." Of course, too much depen- 

 dence must not be placed upon such a statement. 

 Many who are not bee-keepers would say the same 

 of our honey-bees. 



I can not now tell exactly how much money I will 

 have when I get back to Cyprus, for I do not know 

 what I must pay out yet. The very cheapest man- 

 agement I can adopt is still costl}-. Everj' move 

 made by an American or European costs " like six- 

 ty" here. There is no choice; the money must be 

 " forked over" or notlthig can be done. They bleed 

 everybody who comes, else he goes away without 

 having accomplished any thing. I hope to leave 

 here March 4th for Singapore, and take the steamer, 

 which should meet me there for Ceylon. I have 

 promised to arrange the boes I have left tkere, some 

 hives of which are now in Point de Galle, and for 

 which I was to be paid on their delivery in Colombo. 

 Then I expect to get colonies of apis dorsata there, 

 now that I have learned more of the matter, and 

 know where they are actually plentiful. 



From Ceylon I will sail about INIarch the 3Tth, ar- 

 riving in Port Said about April 13th; then Cyprus, as 

 soon as possible; thereafter, where I expect to re- 

 ceive further iuPtructlons as to future operations. 



Fr,a.nk Benton, 



BOX HIVES. 



wh^vt heddox says of them. 



^J E VERAL years ago I proposed to run an apiary 

 ^> on the box-hive system. Novice at once made a 

 ' department for mo, and any other old fogies who 

 might still adhere to such old notions. When I made 

 the proposition, that if any one would purchase ray 

 present apiary I would commence a box-hive apiary 

 and would start with box hives and black bees, I 

 expected to soon write an explanation of the style of 

 box hives. What first moved me to make such a 

 proposition was, that I had just visited the Bingham 

 apiary and found tho only hive of any merit that I 

 had ever seen, that did not embrace the Langstroth 

 principle. The box hive, a» you all know, was a hive 

 made of frames whose ends were tight-fitting. Just 

 before my article abo^■e refaered to was written. 

 Novice called this same plan "a box hive." Well, I 

 thought if that was a box hive, surely a box inches 

 deep, 24 long, and 11! 2 wide, would be also. In a box 

 of that kind, I proposed to put eight movable top- 

 bars, to which the bees would attach their combs, 



