1420 



•GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Nov. 15 





should have no other occupation during the 

 summer. Accordingly I resigned in order 

 to be able to give my whole time to the more 

 pleasant and profitable business of looking 

 after my own bees and other interests. Mr. 

 H. S. Groves, of Fruita, is my successor. 



Count me on the side of spelling reform. 

 I should like to see Gleanings, and, in fact, 

 every other magazine and newspaper, adopt 

 it. It is evident that our present absurd 

 spelling must be reformed in many respects. 

 We have already done a great deal in that 

 direction; and the only question now is 

 whether the reform shall continue gradually, 

 as in the past, or whether we shall take a 

 sensible stand and sweep away at once a lot 

 of the worthless excrescences that disfigure 

 our language. 



My experience with the Alexander plan of 

 putting a weak colony over a strong one in 

 the spring has not been very encouraging, 

 though I am not ready to condemn the plan. 

 Generally the queen above soon disappeared, 

 though sometimes it was the other way. The 

 first time I tried it, it made me smile when 

 I opened the hive, ten days after uniting 

 them, to see how prosperous the upper nu- 

 cleus looked, plenty of brood and bees, and 

 the queen "jvist humping herself" laying 

 eggs. But when I looked below I found 

 neither eggs nor queen, and the smile van- 

 ished. Since then my experience has been 

 varied, but on the whole unsatisfactory. 



RIPENING COMB HONEY. 



The way of piling up supers shown on p. 

 1347 is not new. Heddon told us how to 

 ripen extracted honey that way fifteen or 

 twenty years ago, and many bee-keepers pile 

 their supers thatvyay. Its disadvantages are 

 that they are not dust-proof nor mouse-proof, 

 and that they take up a great deal of room, 

 which most bee-keepers do not have to spare 

 in their honey-houses. Dr. Miller's way is 

 better, though it takes more time. 



For several years I was bee-inspector of 

 Mesa County. I resigned this position last 

 spring. I had not considered the matter of 

 sufficient importance to chronicle in these 

 columns before; but so many of my cori'es- 

 pondents consider me still in that office that 

 I make this announcement. During the three 

 years that I filled the position I felt that I 

 was not able to do full justice to it on account 

 of lack of time, even though I employed sev- 

 eral assistants whenever practicable. A bee- 

 inspector, under the conditions that obtain 

 here, should be able to give his whole time 

 to the work if necessary. In this county, 

 about the size of the State of Delaware, with 

 its thousands of colonies of bees, and with 

 localities in which foul brood has been ram- 

 pant for a number of years, an inspector 



SUPER-ELEVATORS. 



The use of hoisting machinery of some kind 

 in connection with bee-hives is bound to be- 

 come more general, and will prove to be a 

 great boon to the bee-keeper, especially to 

 the one who produces extrac^ted honey and 

 practices tiering up. Any one who has lifted 

 off supers, and then lifted them on again all 

 day on hives that are tiered up four or five 

 stories high, especially if the supers are of 

 the ten-frame Langstroth variety, will agree 

 to the desirability of something of the kind. 

 W. Z. Hutchinson, in the Review, mentions 

 and illustrates a contrivance of his own for 

 lifting supers enough to place a bee-escape 

 under them. It is true that Doolittle has 

 told us how to do this without actually lift- 

 ing the whole weight of the supers, but it 

 would be much better to lift them clear if it 

 can be done without too much time. Some 

 of the wagon-jacks in common use could be 

 easily modified to do this work, and it is pos- 

 sible that something of the kind could be 

 made so as. to lift them high enough to put a 

 super under. If this could be made to work, 

 it would not be so cumbersome nor recjuire 

 so much operating room as the tripods and 

 other hoisting devices that have been illus- 

 trated. 



LONGEVITY OF BEES. 



I agree with the editor on the subject of 

 long tongues, and in the main with Mr. 

 Crane on page 1172 on the impoi'tance of 

 strength and endurance of the worker bees, 

 but I do not think he pucs sufficient stress on 

 longevity. The working life of the bee is so 

 exceedingly short that a very little addition 

 to it counts heavily, both in the building-up 

 of the cokmy for the honey harvest and in 

 effective work during the yield. In the lat- 

 ter way it is important even where the fiow 

 is of short duration, but immensely more so 

 when the honey-flow is of long duration. In 

 selecting a breeding queen, if I could be as- 

 sured that her bees would live even four or 

 five days longer than the average, I should 

 count that point very strongly in her favor. 

 It is true that Mr. Crane considers longevity, 

 for he says that greater endurance means 

 longevity, but I think they should be more 

 separated. If I were to place in the order of 

 their comparative importance from a honey- 

 producing standpoint only, the most valua- 

 ble traits to be considered, they would be 

 about as follows: 1, industry, or vigor; 2, 

 longevity; 3, strength of constitution, or en- 

 dui'ance; 4, prolificness of queen; 5, length 

 of tongue. It will be noticed that I do not 

 give prolificness as high a rating as many 

 would be inclined to. My favorite breeding- 

 queen for several years was not especially 

 remarkable for prolificness, but she was al- 



