4;{(i 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTUIIE. 



Sept. 



not give you a strain of bees tliat I will war- 

 rant to work on red clover in the fall, friend 

 11., nor do I think anybody else can furnish 

 you bees that will do it "invariably. Last 

 fall I saw a field in Summit Co. where the 

 Italians roared on it in August as they do 

 on white clover in -Tune. 



ADDING KXTRA COITIBS IN BUILDIING 



IP STOCKS. 



^y INCE I have been a readpr of Gleanings I have 

 ^k been looking for some thing- from some of the 

 ' veterans in regard to the manner of adding 



combs for surplus, but I have found nothing more 

 explicit in all my reading of bee literature than 

 "give more room as it is needed." Doolittle did an 

 excellent service for the ABC cLiss when he told us 

 in such a clear and explicit style his method of 

 building up colonies in the spring (see April No.) If 

 ho would tell us in the same explicit manner how he 

 adds surplus combs he would still further merit our 

 thanks. 



In the hope of calling out some thing on this sub- 

 ject, I will give the method which I have followed 

 the present season. If it is faulty, will you or some 

 other veteran please tell me wherein it Is so, and ex- 

 plain in detail a better way? 



I build up my colonies according to Doolittle's 

 plan till I have the lower story full of frames which 

 are crowded with brood and honey. Then, if the 

 bees are gathering honey freely, I take out three or 

 four frames which contain honej' and sealed brood 

 and pJace them in an upper story, putting a couple 

 of frames of fdn. in the middle of the lower story 

 with a division-board at the side. I put a division- 

 board in the upper story so that it may come direct- 

 ly over the one in the lower story, and fill up the 

 vacant space with empty combs. As the queen 

 needs more room below, I add frames of fdn. ; and as 

 more storing room is needed above, I add empty 

 combs. 



BEES E.\TING HOLES IN DUCK. 



Can you tell me how to prevent the bees from eat- 

 ing holes in the duck of chaff division-boards? 

 Would painting the cloth, or coating it with tallow, 

 work well? J.\mes McNiell. 



Hudson, N. Y., Aug. 1, 1881. 



I confess, friend ISL, that I should never 

 have thought of giving directions for so sim- 

 ple a matter as giving the bees more room 

 as they need it, when one is so fortunate as 

 to have the empty combs right at hand. I 

 think I should wait until the bees and queen 

 have occupied fully every comb with eggs 

 and stores, and then I would give them one 

 comb right in the center of the brood-nest. 

 If I intended to use the extractor, I would 

 wait until they are pretty closely crowded 

 below, and then give them access to the 

 whole upper story, if I had empty combs to 

 till it. If not, I think I would niove a cou- 

 ple of combs up from below, putting sheets 

 of fdn. in their stead, and then fill the rest of 

 the upper story with fdn. If I am correct, 

 Doolittle does not use an upper story with 

 his shape "of frames.— I do not think vou will 

 find any thing that will keep the bees from 

 gnawing the sheets placed over them. Duck- 

 ing, pretty well saturated with linseed oil, 

 has been recommended, and very likely the 



oil might have the effect to make them let 

 the fabric alone. The wooden mats have 

 the durability Avanted. but they are not as 

 nice as cloth to handle, and are more apt to 

 kill bees unless one is very careful. 



•^•^•< 



BEE-TAVES IN TEXAS. 



^srs| KOM a recent number of the The Fnuf/i'.s Ciim- 

 J'f* panimi I copy the foU.iwing: 



' "Four of us, my ranch partner Alfred Dins- 

 more, and myself, with a young fierman house-car- 

 penter named Wert Anspach, and a c.ilored boy 

 called Grant, had set out that day for a load of honey. 

 " A load of honey will sound oddly, perhaps, to 

 readers East, but that is the way we get it here. Wild 

 honey, rich stores of it, is laid up by the native bees. 

 The settlers often have resort to a bee-tree when 

 their stock of sugar and molasses runs low. The 

 honey is. drained from the comb, and put away in 

 jars; and the wax makes excellent candles. 



"Twelve or thirteen miles north of our locatioii, 

 in the canon of Lipan Creek (headquarters of Wich- 

 ita River), there is a bees'-nest, which has supplied 

 us and the families of three other Stockmen for the 

 last four years. 



" This enormous bee-hive is in the cliff on the 

 north side of the canon, fronting south. The en- 

 trance to it is up some forty feet above the creek- 

 bed, where there is a horizontal crack eight or ten 

 inches wide, running along the face of the precipice 

 for four or five hundred feet. This crack opens 

 back into recesses in the shattered crags behind; and 

 here the bees, colony on colony, have their nests, 

 and have laid up honey for many years. By going 

 around and operating from the top of the cliff, we 

 have at odd times dislodged considerable portions of 

 the rock with blasts of gunpowder and crowbars — 

 suthcient to secure many hogsheads of comb. Still 

 deeper down, in great holes and pits, there seem to 

 be vast deposits of old, thick, black candied honey, 

 which has been drained from the combs above, year 

 after year. Lower down the face of the cliff, espe- 

 cially on very hot days, the honey weeps and oozes 

 out at little cracks and seams of the fissured sand- 

 stone — so much so that the creek-bank is there com- 

 pletely honey-soaked, and the water for a mile or 

 two below will at times be perceptibly sweetened. 

 Much of this escaping honey the bees themselves 

 carry up the cliff. 



" On a pleasant June day, in the canon and high 

 above It, the air will be darkened by the incoming 

 and outgoing bees, millions on millions of them, 

 along the whole length of the crevice. The ordinary 

 drowsy hum of a hive is here intensified to a deep, 

 solemn roar, distinctly audible a mile below. 



"To go honey-gathering here on a summer day 

 might be a perilous business. We have always made 

 our raids on the nest during cold weather, generally 

 on some chill? daj' toward Christmas, when the btes 

 are lying torpid, and a winter silence has fallen up- 

 on this whole vast apiary." 



The writer then goes on Lo tell how a " norther" 

 came down on them, before they had quite reached 

 the bee-cave, and they were obliged to seek the shel- 

 ter of a friendly cliff, where they built a fire which 

 drove some bears from their den among the rocks. 

 They were fortunate enough to kill the bears, which 

 were very fat; and the writer remarks, that "their 

 llesh had a noticeablj- sweet taste, which we attribu- 

 ted to their getting so much honey hereabouts." 



