1356 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Nov. 1 



the subject of pure foods. Now as never be- 

 fore are the various States trying to protect 

 their citizens from fraudulent and unwhole- 

 some foods. Let us rejoice. 



CLEANING SECTIONS. 



"Isn't cleaning sections the dirtiest, stick- 

 iest, and most monotonous job of the season ''. ' ' 

 Well, that depends. It is certainly dirty; 

 and, during hot weather, it is usually sticky; 

 whether it is monotonous depends on how 

 you work. If you have no interest in your 

 work but to remove the propolis you certain- 

 ly have a pretty dry, uninteresting job; but 

 if you have carefully marked each clamp 

 when put on or taken off the hives so you 

 can tell just which yard and hive each clamp 

 or super came from, I know of no more in- 

 teresting or fascinating work connected with 

 bee-keeping. 



"But isn't it a lot of work to mark so 

 many clamps?" Some, but it pays. We 

 let a letter stand for the yard; thus, N. 23—2 

 is enough, and reads north yard, hive 23, 

 clamp 2. W. 10 — 4 stands for the fourth 

 clamp from hive number 10 in the west yard. 

 But it adds immensely to our jjleasure while 

 cleaning honey. We find comparatively few 

 supers filled just alike. One may be of 

 pearly whiteness and delicate comb; the next 

 may be white on the outside while the cen- 

 tral combs ai'e badly stained; another nearly 

 free from propolis, while another is sadly 

 soiled. Still another may have gnawed the 

 cloth cover over the sections and mixed the 

 refuse with the capping, ruining them for 

 fancy honey or any use but the extractor. 

 You can tell which yard, and also the indi- 

 vidual hives, that produce the whitest combs. 

 If you find supers having many sections con- 

 taining pollen it is easy, by referring to your 

 records, to find whether this condition was 

 caused l)y (jueenlessness or otherwise. You 

 will find that the work in many supers was 

 done so poorly that the hive demands a 

 change of queen. You can tell the hives 

 containing the most desirable queens for 

 your use. When you fintl a super, as I did 

 the other day, marked W. 43 — 5, with white 

 handsome combs, you will know that this 

 particular hive has filled five supers; and if 

 your pulse does not /juicken, and the blood 

 in your veins tingle to your finger-tips, your 

 experience will be different from mine. 



Where one has hundreils of hives in sev- 

 eral yards it is impo.ssible to tell very accu- 

 rately your best colonies while you handle 

 them during the busy season. You haven't 

 time; but when you clean your honey yoii 

 may find many hives producing such supe- 

 rior combs in such abundance as easily to 

 place them at the head as most desirable to 

 breed from. 



SWEET CLOVER, WHITE AND YELLOW, 



I have watched the sweet clover.s side by side for 

 years, and with me the yellow is quite four weeks 

 earlier than the white kind. My memorandum for 

 this season is, "first yellow blossoms open May 22; 

 first white blossoms. June 2.5." A, L. Amos. 



Comstoek. Neb. 



ALL ABOUT APICULTURE. 



I was born. Circumstantial evidence to 

 that effect is clear. As to when, I know only 

 by hearsay. I have been living ever since I 

 can remember. Some of my friends take is- 

 sue me on this point, and say 1 am not alive 

 and never was. I was brought up on a farm. 

 That is clear too. I am a self-made man. 

 Sayl but didn't I have an easy job? 



The first symptom of the bee fever mani- 

 fested itself about ten years ago, and I wrote 

 to The A. I. Root Co. to see what could be 

 done for it. They advised me to go to some 

 neighbor bee-keeper and get pointers. I 

 went to a neighbor who informed me he had 

 two gums of bees. One was in an old ice- 

 cream freezer and the other was in a sheet- 

 iron gasoline-oven. A nail-keg was in read- 

 iness to catch an expected swarm. This keg 

 was thoroughly rubbed with peach-leaves as 

 a sure preventive against absconding. My 

 first question was: "What kind of hive do 

 you recommend?" 



" Well, the oven makes the best winter i"e- 

 positoiy; but the ice-cream freezer is the 

 best summer resort." 



"How about the nail-keg?" 



"Oh I well, I take that up with brimstone 

 in the fall." 



I then asked; "What constitutes the prin- 

 cipal nectar-secreting fiora in this locality? " 



"The which? " 



"Of what do your bees make honey? " 



"They do best when the ladies next door 

 are making sun-dried cherry and strawljerry 

 preserves. 



I always heard that a fruit country is good 

 for bees. I tried to get some more informa- 

 tion, but he assured me that was all there 

 was to it, so I returned home a full-fiedged 

 bee-keeper, thanks to the advice of the Root 

 Co. 



I got some bees and thought I would raise 

 some queens. The first queen I raised had 

 a playful way of laying a cell half full of 

 eggs, laying them criss-cross, helter-skelter. 

 and almost any way. I began to think there 

 might possibly be something about bee cul- 

 ture that I did" not understand; but my broth- 

 er helped me out this time. He said; 



"That (jueen of yours mated with a blue- 

 bottle fiy, because that is just the way the 

 files lay eggs in my beefsteak." 



One day a lady hearing that I wanted more 

 bees phoned me that a tremendous swarm 

 was hanging in a tree in her yard. I coukl 

 have them by coming after them. How 

 easy! There now was great activity about 

 the house. A shawl-strap was hunted out 

 from the attic, with which a hive was se- 

 cured; then, mounting my bicycle, I sci^rch- 



