534 



THE AMERICAi? BEE JOURNAL. 



and they depend ou fall flowers for 

 their surplus, there will be a short 

 crop, for the grip of the drouth has 

 been terrible, and the fall bloom will 

 probably be very light. Our drouth 

 began the middle of May, and yet 

 there is only a slight let up here— in 

 some quarters there is no let up at 

 all. But, happily, other sections 

 have recently been visited with copi- 

 ous showers. 



Here at Iowa City the month of 

 July gave us one-tenth of an inch of 

 rain-fall, when the average here is, 

 for that month, Ave inches. When it 

 is remembered that for half of May 

 and all of June the rain had been 

 equally light, and that the tempera- 

 ture has been higher than usual, some 

 faint idea can be had of how our 

 country is parched and sizzled. Prob- 

 ably some of our brother bee-keepers, 

 who are getting no honey at all this 

 year, will say that we ought to be 

 satisfied with" such a yield as I have 

 reported above. But of course we are 

 not satisfied 1 and, may be, we ought 

 not to be. To be satisfied means rest 

 and stagnation. Progress in all the 

 affairs of life comes from those who 

 are not at ease. To be dissatisfied is 

 the condition essential to future 

 growth. 



Iowa Citv,o Iowa, Aug. 17, 1886. 



Gleanings. 



Bee-Keeping in Cia. 



A. J. KING. 



The honey-bee was introduced into 

 Cuba from Spain at a very early period 

 of its history; and being a land of 

 perpetual flowers, with no winter to 

 impede their labor, they soon spread 

 to all parts of the island, and bee- 

 keeping has long since become one of 

 the established industries. There is 

 probably no other country of equal 

 extent on the globe, which has fur- 

 nished an equal amount of honey and 

 beeswax. The latter has, for more 

 than two centuries, illuminated the 

 churches of both this island and the 

 mother country, besides furnishing 

 the supply needed for other purposes, 

 while the former has found a remu- 

 nerative market in all civilized coun- 

 tries, chiefly in Germany, Engla'.id, 

 France, and the United States. 



A Cuban bee-hive is very simple, 

 consisting merely of a hollow palm 

 log, or oblong wooden box, 10 to 15 

 inches in diameter, and 5 to 6 feet in 

 length, open at both ends. These 

 hives are arranged in a horizontal 

 position, 3 or 4 feet high, supported 

 on a frame work of longbamboo poles 

 resting on posts driven into the 

 ground. When these hives are full 

 of honey, the Cuban bee-keeper, after 

 thoroughly smoking the bees, thrusts 

 into one end of the hive, a long sword- 

 shaped knife and cuts the combs loose 

 from the inside walls. He then in- 

 serts a long iron rod, flattened at the 

 end, and bent in the form of aright 

 angle, clear into the brood-nest (which 

 generally occupies about 15 inches in 

 length of the centre of the hive), cuts 

 the combs, and pulls them out one by 



one. lie then performs the same 

 operation on the other end of the 

 hive, and so continues until the whole 

 apiary is gone over. The combs are 

 now submitted to pressure, and the 

 wax separated from the honey. Of 

 course, the honey so obtained is not 

 very pure, being mixed with pollen, 

 propolis, dead bees, and the juices of 

 larvce, all of which tends to cause 

 fermentation; Cuban honey (than 

 which, when pure, there is no finer in 

 the world ) has gained an unenviable 

 repulation. Native apiaries, of from 

 50 to 300 or 400 colonies are frequent, 

 and sometimes as many as 2,000 are 

 kept in a single yard. The season for 1 

 surplus honey extends from October 

 to April, theheight of the flow being 

 from the middle of December to the 

 middle of February ; but there is 

 almost always a sufliciency for breed- 

 ing purposes, and hence the Cuban 

 bee-keeper never resorts to feedhig. 

 He " robs " his hives only once or 

 twice during the year, and seems sat- 

 isfied with an average production of 

 75 to 100 pounds of honey, and 4 or 5 

 pounds of beeswax per hive. 



Nearly three years ago the writer 

 introduced for the Messrs. J. N. & P. 

 Casanova, 100 colonies of Italians in 

 movable-frame hives, together with 

 all the modern appliances necessary 

 to insure success. They were located 

 about 18 miles southeast of Havana, 



8 miles from the ocean, and, we be- 

 lieve, constitutes the first apiary on 

 modern principles ever seen in the 

 island of Cuba; and to the gentlemen 

 referred to belongs the credit or this 

 great change in the systems of bee- 

 keeping, from which promising re- 

 sults will undoubtedly be realized by 

 many of their brethren in the near 

 future. 



MODERN BEE-KEEPING VS. THE OLD 

 WAT. 



The year following the introduction 

 of these bees, 113 colonies of them 

 gave, in a period of four months, 

 43,000 pounds of choice honey, being 

 over 380 pounds per hive, or more 

 than four times the amount produced 

 on the old plan. The success of this 

 experiment far exceeded the most 

 sanguine expectations of the Casa- 

 nova brothers, and, being gentlemen 

 of means, tliey at once set about and 

 completed one of the best appointed 

 modern apiaries to be found in any 

 country ; and for the benefit of the 

 readers I will briefly describe it. 



The apiary and buildings cover 

 nearly three acres of ground, in the 

 form of a rectangle, sloping to the 

 southeast with a descent of 10 feet in 

 a hundred. Near the centre of this 

 plot are two sheds, each 200 feet long, 

 extending across the plot in parallel 

 lines, east to west, and about 30 feet 

 apart. Opening out from the north- 

 ernmost of these sheds are 6 others, 

 extending to the north line of the 

 plot in parallel lines 25 feet apart. 

 At the centre of the south one of the 

 two first mentioned is another shed 

 extending to the south 60 feet, to the 

 extracting room. These sheds are all 



9 feet wide. 6 feet high at the eaves, 

 peaked palm-leaf roof about a foot 

 thick. They are high and airy, af- 



fording perfect protectibn from sun 

 and rain, and are always comfortable, 

 even in the hottest weather. 



Along both sides of the sheds, just 

 inside of the eave-lines, are the long 

 rows of two-story hives, painted 

 white, 5 feet apart, and, of course, 

 facing outward, so that the flight of 

 the bees in no way interferes with 

 the workmen. The ground, all slop- 

 ing toward the honey-house, makes 

 the wheeling-in of the loads of well- 

 filled combs comparatively easy. The 

 extractor is a 6-frame reversible, of 

 heavy galvanized iron, and delivers 

 the honey through a large pipe on top 

 of the centre of a broad screen, cover- 

 ing the top of an evaporating-tank 

 holding 8,000 pounds, where the honey 

 is freed from any little pieces of comb, 

 etc., which may have got in by acci- 

 dent. From the concave bottom of 

 this tank an iron pipe extends down 

 the sloping ground GO feet further, to 

 a^broad covered shed where the honey 

 is received directly into the bung- 

 holes of the tierces by merely turning 

 the large faucet on the end of the 

 pipe. Along the lower side of this 

 barreling shed, and coming close up 

 to it, is the roadway, which is enough 

 lower than the floor of the shed to 

 admit of the rolling of the filled 

 tierces into the carts ready for trans- 

 portation to the depot. 



It will thus be seen that, from first 

 to last, there is no dipping or lifting 

 of honey required. We might go on 

 and describe the uncapping arrange- 

 ment, with their screen bottoms and 

 troughs leading to the evaporating- 

 tank, and many other useful appli- 

 ances of the large airy extracting 

 room ; but our " story " is already 

 drawn out beyond the space we sup- 

 posed necessary to tell it ; so we will 

 close by saying that everything is 

 built substantial, ample, and yet 

 simple, and contrasts strongly with 

 some of the little " cluttered up" ar- 

 rangements too often seen in our own 

 country. 



New york,(x N. Y. 



For tbe American Bee Journal. 



Pieiiol and Fonl Brood. 



D. A. DIMITRY. 



After noting the editor's approval 

 of the suggestion made by Dr. J. C. 

 Thom, on page 491, in reference to 

 the cure of Bacillus alvei, by the 

 Cheshire method, I thought it would 

 not be amiss to give my experience 

 in the matter. 



Last summer I found among 14 

 colonies that I had purchased, 5 or 6 

 that were badly affected with the 

 malady, it such it may be termed. 

 The bees were in box-hives. At first 

 I determined to destroy bees, hives 

 and all, and in that way remove all 

 possibility of the disease spreading. 

 Further thought convinced me that 

 this was a cure rather too heroic ; and 

 I concluded to transfer the infected 

 colonies immediately to movable 

 frames, with new comb and healthy 

 brood. I followed the plan laid out, 

 and in two or three weeks realized 



