1076 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Oct. 15 



fresh water to remove any honey, or it will 

 be sticky. The propolis being found at the 

 bottom, take it out. Make it into a ball or 

 cake. In the winter time it will be brittle 

 enough to mash into a powder. In the sum- 

 mer put it in a vessel containing cold water, 

 and it can then be reduced to a powder, or 

 granulated. In a gallon of wood alcohol put 

 a handful or more, according to the consis- 

 tency you need. The wax and sugar must 

 be removed from the propolis. Other im- 

 purities will sink in your solution. As in 

 the case with leaf shellac, put a little ground 

 glass or coarse sand in the solution, and 

 by shaking the bottle it will cut up the pro- 

 polis and dissolve it quicker. Put on with a 

 brush as many coats as you need. If you 

 wish to make lacquer work on small things, 

 especially metal, place the article, after 

 shellacking thickly, in the stove oven, if it 

 is not too hot, and it will give a fine luster. 

 Propolis ground is a good counter-odor for a 

 sick-room. Wrap it up into tapers with thin 

 paper, or drop a few grains on a hot stove. 



I color my shellac, when I need it, with 

 any dry paint — yellow, blue, red, or white. 

 All my rake and hoe handles are varnished 

 red so as not to be lost in the grass. Ham- 

 mer and hatchet handles are shellacked too. 

 About half of my hives have a coat of it. 



Washington, D. C. 



A MODEL APIARY. 



Honey Crop Materially Increased by Sowing 

 Sweet Clover on Waste lands. 



BY JOHN BODENSCHATZ. 



This apiary was started by me when fif- 

 teen years of age, with one colony, gradual- 

 ly increasing until I now have 250 in three 

 apiaries. As will be noticed, I run for both 

 extracted and comb honey. Having a large 

 number of colonies from which to choose, 

 those that cap whiter than others are run 

 for comb honey, and those that do not cap 

 as white are run for extracted. 



Some years ago, when white clover failed 

 to yield honey, bee-keeping was a total fail- 

 ure about this section. Finding that sweet 

 clover blossoms right after white clover, 

 and thinking that, if one failed, the other 

 would certainly do something, I sowed sev- 

 eral hundred pounds in vacant lots, along 

 roads and quarry-holes where it thrived the 

 best. I was highly repaid several years aft- 

 er, as my yield from sweet clover alone ran 

 into the thousands of pounds, and it is hold- 

 ing its ground well, and spreading, crowd- 

 ing out all weeds. 



The apiary shown in the illustration is sit- 

 uated nearly in the center of this village of 

 3500 population. The house shown is the 

 honey-house. You will notice that there are 

 two hives on the chimneys. These and others 

 I use as decoys, and catch large numbers of 

 swarms every year with them. 



All our queens are clipped, as it is a much 

 smoother way of hiving swarms, and you 



can laugh at some that want to abscond, 

 which happens once or twice with me. 



Several years ago this apiary was reduced 

 to about 20 colonies by foul brood; but I 

 have it now in fine and healthy condition. I 

 had only one colony that showed the disease 

 this year, and that was promptly dealt with 

 by removing all combs and honey, and let- 

 ting them start anew. I find that this is 

 the safest way to deal with them. 



Our honey crop this year amounts to about 

 12,000 lbs., about half extracted and half 

 comb. 



We winter on the summer stands, using 

 winter cases for protection, and find this the 

 best of any method I have ever tried for 

 this location. 



All bees are now handled by my brother, 

 as I am engaged in the drug business; but it 

 seems that I can't keep away from them, as 

 they were the principal means for me to 

 start a store of my own. 



Lemont, 111. 



[Your bee-yard of stacked-up hives is sug- 

 gestive of large yields of honey; and if these 

 yields are due to the sowing of sweet clover 

 in waste places, then we have right here 

 practical evidence of the value of artificial 

 pasturage. Where there is plenty of waste 

 land, there certainly could be no objection 

 to sowing sweet clover in any quantity. At 

 all events, whether he sows any or not, the 

 bee-keeper gets the credit of sowing sweet 

 clover wherever it does grow. So long as 

 sowing this clover in waste places does no 

 harm, and so long as it is always a praise- 

 worthy act to make two blades of grass 

 grow where but one grew before, or rather, 

 we may say, in this case, to make something 

 grow that is useful in place of something 

 that is valueless, there is no harm in the 

 bee-keeper increasing his own salary by the 

 method indicated. 



As a general thing we may say artificial 

 pasturage has been exploited again and 

 again; but as a rule there has been nothing 

 tangible or definite to show, for the reason 

 that the acreage necessary to supply a colo- 

 ny of bees with honey-yielding flowers is 

 vastly greater than the average person sup- M 

 poses— so great, indeed, that no one could " 

 afford to sow and cultivate and seed good 

 land for the purpose. But when there are 

 hundreds and perhaps thousands of acres of 

 waste land, and the seed can be sown broad- 

 cast without cultivation, the situation is al- 

 tered. Gleanings would like to have a 

 show of hands from those who have been 

 able to increase their annual crops of honey 

 by scattering sweet clover in waste places, 

 or, in fact, the seed of any honey-yielding 

 plant on such waste lands. Dr. J. L. Gandy 

 made great claims of what he was able to 

 do; but investigation did not estabhsh the 

 claim that his yields of honey had been in- 

 creased by the sowing of the seed of any 

 honey-plant. As a matter of fact, the nat- 

 ural honey-flora in his locality was very 

 abundant— sufficiently so to account for any 

 flow of honey he may have had. —Ed.] j| 



