1198 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Nov. 15 



My bees are all in double-walled hives, but 

 not filled with chaff. W. S. Williams. 



Julian, Pa., Oct. 26, 1905. 



[Your plan of wintering is all right, but it 

 involves a lot of work. If time is money, 

 a straight out-and-out double-walled chaff 

 hive or winter case would be cheaper. But 

 where one is situated as many are on the 

 farm, when they can not always employ 

 their time profitably, he can put up his bees 

 in the fashion described, very cheaply. —Ed.] 



TOWNSEND PLAN OF PRODUCING BOTH COMB 



AND EXTRACTED HONEY IN ONE SUPER 



NOT LIKED; HONEY FROM WHEAT 



STUBBLE. 



I raise both the extracted and comb honey, 

 and have tried the Townsend plan of pro- 

 ducing both in one super, but do not like it 

 as well as my old way. With the Townsend 

 plan there is no way to hold the section to- 

 gether in the center, and the bees put in all 

 the propolis they can, and that makes lots of 

 work to clean them. My other way is as 

 follows. It is not a new plan, but I think 

 it a good one. 



I have supers that use the Danzenbaker 

 frames for extracting, and in apple bloom I 

 put on these supers. When they are about 

 full I raise up the extracting-super and put 

 under a super with sections, and I have nice 

 filled ones, and before the end of the honey- 

 flow I put on extracting-supers again. In 

 that way I have no unfinished sections, and 

 1 can keep swarming down to almost nothing. 

 I leave on my supers until they are all capped 

 over, so as to have a good grade of honey. 



We get most of our honey from white 

 clover, but this year it was a failure— lots of 

 bloom but no honey. We have the willow- 

 herb, which brings lots of fine white honey 

 of good flavor. But the best honey, I think, 

 we get comes from wheat-stubble. Right 

 after the wheat is cut, the stubble fills up 

 with honey. It is as sweet as honey in the 

 stubble, and the bees just pile it in the sec- 

 tions. It is the finest honey I ever had 

 or tasted. This may seem strange, but it is 

 the truth. If it had not been for the wheat 

 stubble our honey crop would have been a 

 failure. There are only two kinds of wheat 

 that produce this kind of honey. They are 

 called Jones' Fife winter wheat and Gold 

 Coin winter wheat. When we cut this wheat 

 the horses' legs and the machinery get so 

 sticky and full of honey that a person almost 

 sticks to it as a fly does to tangle-foot. 



Spangle, Wash. Adolph Suksdorf. 



REPORT OF AN ASTONISHINGLY GOOD CROP. 



From time to time I have read in your pa- 

 per, but not always with that intense in- 

 terest that perhaps I should have had, the 

 reports from various bee-keepers about their 

 crops for 1905. I note that some reports 

 are good, some fair, and others very bad— 

 the goodness, badness, or fairness depend- 

 ing on the amount of honey and the price 

 per pound. 



I want to submit the report of my crop 

 for 1905, which, so far as I have read, ex- 

 cels all others. 



I have 29 colonies all in good condition, 

 and nearly all in active work under direct 

 observation. I have spent this season about 

 half my time (in giving the bees the best 

 care) ; I have harvested 9 sections of honey, 

 a lot of odds and ends showing the work of 

 the bees; 29 "tons" of h— happiness, and 

 325 stings. 



I have learned much that I never knew 

 before about these wonderful little crea- 

 tures, and I close the season with the apia- 

 ry stocked full of plans, and myself full of 

 ambition to get more happiness and more 

 stings next year, to say nothing of informa- 

 tion. Yet there are old fogies who will tell 

 you it doesn't " pay " to keep bees. 



Edward F. Bigelow. 

 • Stamford,';Conn., Oct., 1905. 



[There are hundreds and hundreds of 

 others who keep bees, not for the honey or 

 money they get of them, but for the tons 

 and tons of happiness that will be theirs. 

 One old bee-keeper, Mr. Frank McNay, who 

 used to manage several outyards in Wiscon- 

 sin, and who kept bees strictly for the dol- 

 lars and cents he could get out of them, 

 recently wrote that, since he had got to 

 California, and had gone into the fruit bus- 

 iness, he just had to get a few bees, as he 

 felt lost without them; and there are hun- 

 dreds of others who have had the same ex- 

 perience. There is. in fact, no rural indus- 

 try that brings us closer to nature than the 

 keeping of bees. 



I will say to our readers that Professor 

 Bigelow is one of the most enthusiastic bee- 

 keepers I ever met. He does not keep bees 

 for honey that he may get out of them, but 

 that he may delve down into one of the most 

 interesting departments of nature study 

 that the world affords. Our readers will 

 remember him as being the professor who 

 talked to the schoolteachers at the Home of 

 the Honey-bees, which picture was given on 

 page 914, Sept. 1.-Ed.] 



report of ALEXANDER PLAN OF CONTROL- 

 LING INCREASE. 



Gleanings has been a great help to me. 

 I started in the bee business last February 

 with ten colonies of bees; and as I have to 

 be away from home a great part of my time 

 I did not know how I should manage during 

 swarming time; so when I saw all the dif- 

 ferent ways in Gleanings for controlling 

 swarming I decided that I would try the E. 

 W. Alexander plan on page 425, and as my 

 bees were getting ready to swarm I began 

 changing them up as Mr. Alexander said, 

 and it worked finely. I did not have a swarm 

 come off at all after eleven days. When I 

 took the top bodies off I always found from 

 three to six ripe queen-cells, so I had no 

 trouble about getting queens, and the colonies 

 with the young queens made the most honey. 



Florence, Ala. Chas. Moeller. 



