1881 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTUIIE. 



hive that was full of combs; gave them one sash of 

 cg-gs and unsealed brood from the mother colony; 

 and one sash with some honey and a saucer of syrup 

 on top of frames; put in some oM rags and tucked 

 them up warm and nice; found my saucer empty 

 next morning. They are now gathering pollen, and 

 working finely. A swarm of bees day before Easter 

 in North-western Missouri: How is that? Have 1 

 overdone the business, or what is the matter? To- 

 day, April £0, is the first day the bees have worked 

 on the elm bloom. All vegetation is very late. 

 Fruit-buds just beginning to swell. Well, I must 

 quit— too iDUg now, etc. " There, John, hand round 

 the waste-basket." Alexander Floyd. 



Guilford, Mo., April ;:0, 1881. 



No Avaste- basket at all, friend F. I am 

 always glad to hear from the new scholars, 

 aud a letter like yours, full of hope and fresh 

 enthusiasm, is a "jewel after our long season 

 of blasted hopes. You have done just right, 

 and your new swarm is the reward of faith- 

 fulness and diligence, and nothing else. 

 Go on and prosper, and let us hear from you 

 often. 



^VIIAT KILL.ED THE BEES? 



HAS THE SHALLOW L. FRAME liEEN WORSE lOR 

 WINTERING ? 



COMMENCED five years ago in the A B C class 

 with one swarm, and have now some few over 

 one hundred, all from that swarm, aud I have 

 never lost any of any account until this winter. The 

 advocates of a def p frame who have wintered their 

 bees, claim it was the frame that did it; but I think 

 that the facts will show that bees in hives with deep 

 frames crosswise of the entrance have died just as 

 badly, if not worse, than those in the usual hives. 

 Out of o~ hives of bees liought by a Medina man this 

 spring of the Nunn brothers of Norwalk, IT' were in 

 the Am. hive, aud 20 in Langsiroth. They all died 

 in the Am. hives but two, aud there were 10 in the L. 

 hives that lived. 



POLLEN AND ITS INFLUENCE ON DYSENTERY. 



I have a small apiary in Litchfield, located on a 

 branch of Black lliver, where the bees gathered so 

 much pollen that they tilled frames from top to bot- 

 tom aud from end to end. The bees were all in 

 chatr hives on 2-1 frames. In Sept. I packed the bees 

 on the ten lower frames, taking all the frames that 

 had pollen in to build up the Holy-Land apiary. 

 Wherever 1 put a frame of that pollen, the bees win- 

 tered badly, were sick, and a good many of them 

 died. The bees that I left without the pollen, though 

 I did not see them again till the 18th of April, were 

 everyone alive aud in splendid condition. 1 hear 

 from one of his neighbors that R. Crow's large apiary 

 in his square-frame hives, only one mile away, are 

 all dead. Jt was not the hives, but the pollen that 

 killed them. In our Cyprian apiarj-, in the old chaff 

 hives that the bees had well waxed up and were 

 packed earl J', though part of their stores were grape 

 sugar, all arc alive and strong, while those that I 

 packed late in ucav hlvos, though I united two or 

 three small colonies, to make one large one, almost 

 all are dead, and what are alive are very weak. I 

 never had good luck uniting bees in the fall; 1 would 

 rather feed the weak colonies, and build them up 

 strong. I don't think it is luck wintering bees, but 

 Jfnowlug all the conditions under which bees should 



be put into winter-quarters. Dl (h^ fireplace, you 

 must have young bees; for if the bees arejill old in 

 the fall, they will all die of old age l)ef ore fpVing. I 

 think that is the thing that killed A. L Root^ls beo.S;\ 

 he would fill every order for beee, an4 incputtidg; 

 them up, by shaking the combs they?ia b^es will fly^^ 

 and the young bees only fall into th{>cage; and be- 

 sides, the old bees arc those that do ttie out-d6or. 

 work, aud the young stay at home and do fhe-bausS- 

 work and are, therefore, the ones that get sold. I 

 know this is the case, for I helped put up his bees, 

 and besides, I know how it worked in my apiary. 



Another thing- that helped to kill them: There 

 was a large fruit-evaporator about sixty rods from 

 his apiary, and the bees worked on the decayed fruit. 

 I know some of our hives had the scent of bad peach- 

 es, and I tell you that is not good winter stores fur 

 bees. I will ti-y to give some more hints between 

 now and next fall. fl. B. Harrington. 



Medina, O., April 26, 1881. 



A VISIT TO NEIGHBOR H.'S APIARY, 



¥0U see, he came along with that fast 

 horse of his, just about supper time, 

 — and asked me to step in. lie didn't 

 have the old rickety buggy, tut he has got a 

 new light one, just right to go around to his 

 apiaries with. I observed a hole in the bot- 

 tom, even if the buggy was new, and men- 

 tally resolved not to step through that hole. 

 8upper time is a very important hour with 

 me, and so I just stepped up to the door of 

 the lunch-room and asked *•' Lu " to give me 

 a paper bag of sandwiches. You know I 

 am always careful and prudent. Patsy 

 bounced us over rough roads, and fairly 

 made us skim the ground, when we came tb 

 a level piece, and finally landed us at the 

 apiary. 



"Neighbor II.,'' said I, " do you know 

 when it was I first saw this garden V" 



"No, "said he, "I don't." 



" Well, it was about 20 years ago. I ad- 

 mired the garden very much then (more than 

 I do now, in fact), and I admired a straw- 

 berry bed that stood over in that corner; but 

 if I recollect aright, I admired the farmer's 

 daughter who lived here a great deal more 

 than either, as she helped me pick straw- 

 berries that June evening." 



II. said he didn't remember the strawber- 

 ries, that he knew of, but he did remember 

 admiring that farmer's daughter's younger 

 sister a few years later, and, come to think 

 of it, I do not believe we either of us ever 

 got really over it, and that is how we came 

 to be brothers-in-law. 



I lifted the cover to a chaff hive, and took 

 out the cushion. Under a sheet of duck Avas 

 a tin-pan cake of maple sugar, tunneled and 

 honey-combed all through, and a rousing 

 colony of bees it was. I opened another and 

 another, and every hive had the same cake 

 of sugar, or the remnants of one. and about 

 the same amount of bees. We took a queen 

 and 1 lb. of bees (worth now $6.00) from one 

 moderately sti'ong colony, but did not seem 

 to hurt them materially in numbers. I pre- 

 sume the apiary would furnish SoOO.OO worth 

 of bees and queens to-day, and then build 

 up, without trouble. Said I, — 



"Look here, H. Y"ou Avould kill a weak 



