1492 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Dec. 1 



he received them in French and German as 

 well as Latin. He said he did not tind it 

 difficult to learn to read in the different lan- 

 guages sufficiently to read the books he had 

 bought, as he could lay out on the counter 

 before him the grammar and dictionaries of 

 the different languages, and study them as 

 he had a few minutes' time from his business. 

 At the time I saw him he was making out a 

 catalog of the fiowerless plants of New 

 P^ngland, as ferns, mosses, etc., for Harvard 

 University. 



But what has all this to do with bee-keep- 

 ing? It is that our minds may be broaden- 

 ed, our knowledge increased, and we be bet- 

 ter fitted for our work. With the same 

 amount of strength exerted, a sharp ax ap- 

 plied with skill will do far greater execution 

 than the dull ax in uncertain hands. Then 

 the pleasure of wielding the ax is many times 

 increased. 



000/1 t tic 



TEN-FRAME GALLUP HIVES; THE ADVANTAGE 

 IN USING STANDARD GOODS. 



"How deep the snow is here, Doolittlel" 



"Yes, Mr. Sharp; we have a good foot of 

 snow on the ground." 



"Is not this something unusual for this 

 time of the year? To-day is only November 

 14th, I believe." 



"Yes. It is unusual to have so much snow 

 so early in the season. I suppose that you 

 do not have it thus in Indiana? " 



"No, I hope not. I have heard that Cen- 

 tral New York is a place which gives hardy 

 bees; but I never thought you had winter be- 

 gin thus early. Have you the bees in the 

 cellar yet? " 



"No. The bees have not had a flight since 

 the 25th of October, and I was in hopes they 

 might have one more flight before they were 

 housed ; but I guess I have missed it in not 

 getting them in before this snowstorm of the 

 past three days came on." 



"But you could get them in now, could 

 you not? " 



"If I am obliged to, yes: otherwise, no. 

 You see that the snow commenced to come 

 before it was freezing; then later it com- 

 menced to freeze, so the snow and slush are 

 frozen on the hives, which makes a bad mess 

 when the hives are set in the cellar, as this 

 slush then thaws off, letting the water run 

 down all over the hives, bottom-boards, and 

 cellar, thus placing the bees in a poor con- 

 dition to start with. I have been caught this 

 way once or twice before during the last 

 twenty years, and only once have I had to 

 set them in in this condition, as it generally 



warms up enough to thaw the snow off the 

 hives, if nothing more, before winter really 

 sets in. But you must have had some pur- 

 pose in coming down from Indiana (by let- 

 ter) to see me." 



' ' Yes. I should like to ask a question or 

 two in regard to bee-hives." 



"Well, there are bee-hives, and then there 

 are bee-hives." 



"What do you mean by that? " 



"Well, I mean that, when I was younger 

 than I am now, I thought there was only one 

 hive in the world that was best suited to the 

 wants of the bees; but now I am not so par- 

 tial to any one hive." 



"What hive was the one of your more 

 youthful years ? ' ' 



"That hive was the Gallnp.'''' 



"Strange! That is just the hive I am us- 

 ing, and that was the hive my father used. 

 You see that I came up in my father's foot- 

 steps." 



' • If your father used the Gallup hive it is 

 not so strange that we have used the same 

 hive. Elisha Gallup was one of the great 

 writers on bees during the seventies and 

 eighties, and he had a large adherence, for 

 his articles always had an attractivenes;} to 

 beginnei's. Then Mr. Gallup's great forte 

 was, in that he would sit up nights to ans- 

 wer the questions of the merest beginner, 

 one who did not know his first A B C in the 

 matter of keeping bees, and he would so go 

 into the minutia; of the matter that it would 

 be plain to the one who hardly knew a bee 

 from a wasp. I have a stack of letters four 

 or five inches high that came fi'om him while 

 trying to guide my tender feet in the way of 

 bee-keeping." 



"That was vei-y good of him, I am sure. 

 But how many frames should be used in a 

 Gallup hive for the best success?" 



"That depends upon what you mean by 

 'success.' If it is bees and successful win- 

 tering you are after, then probably the num- 

 ber of frames Gallup used in his hives would 

 be best." 



"What was that numl)er? " 



"Twelve." 



"But I use only ten. What number did 

 you use ? ' ' 



"I started out with the regular Gallup 

 hive, so of course used twelve. But I soon 

 saw that, as a rule, the bees would fill two 

 or three of these frames solid with honey at 

 the opening of the honey harvest from white 

 clover, so that I was carrying from 15 to 17 

 pounds of white honey in the hive from year 

 to year, when this same honey might go into 

 the surplus boxes and be sold at a good fig- 

 ure, thus giving me three or four dollars for 

 each hive, if I could manage to have this 

 first white honey stored in the boxes, while 

 the bees would winter just as well on dark 

 honey stored in the fall of the year." 



"I see the point. How did you manage to 

 bring things where you wished them? " 



"Simply by taking out three of the twelve 

 frames and inseiting dummies made of inch 

 lumber, with the top-bar of a frame tacked 

 on them, to take the places of the frames." 



