THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



569 



easily found upon the lawn in front 

 of their hives, and were quickly Icilled, 

 the swarm of course returning to its 

 old hive, and there remaining and 

 doing considerable work in complet- 

 ing the partly-tilled sections, until led 

 OH by the young queen, usually about 

 ten days after killing the old one. 

 During this ten days the increase of 

 the colony by hatching brood brings 

 a much "larger swarm than would 

 have been received if the tirst issue 

 had been hived ; you have the hrst 

 and second swarm in one, led off by 

 a young queen. 



Now hive the swarm upon empty 

 frames prepared with heavy founda- 

 tion starters ; in one week remove all 

 new combs and replace with empty 

 frames as above. The young queen 

 will now commence to lay and the 

 bees will build mostly worker combs 

 as fast as they are wanted by her. 



The sections should now be placed 

 upon the hive, and plenty of them. 

 Extract the combs removed, cut them 

 out for use as starters in the sections. 

 Cut all but one hatching queen-cell 

 from the old colony, and in one week, 

 examine the combs for the young 

 queen, and, if laying, extract all the 

 brood-combs. But little brood now 

 remains unhatched, and is all firmly 

 sealed, and is the only practical time 

 of the season to extract the brood- 

 combs. Should no increase be de- 

 sired, while the swarm is out, cut all 

 queen-cells, extract the combs, and 

 return the colony to the old hive, 

 tiering up with sections. 



Austin,o,Minu. 



For tlie American Bee JournaL 



Bee-Lawsuit— BucMeat for Honey. 



T. F. KINSEL. 



A few years ago a case like this 

 occurred three miles from here : A 

 party owned a colony of bees (having 

 paid $10 for them), which was left on 

 the farm of another. This latter farm 

 was rented to an intemperate man, 

 who was some annoyed by the bees. 

 The owner of the colony neglected to 

 move them, and the renter took them 

 to the road (a few rods away) and 

 burned them. He did this in the 

 evening when all the bees were in the 

 hive. A lawsuit was the result, by 

 which the man who burned the bees 

 had to pay $10 for them, and the costs 

 of said suit, which amounted to SlOO 

 in all. The case was ably argued, so 

 you see that the officials of Richland 

 County, Ohio, have some respect for 

 bees, and considerable regard for 

 their legal rights. 



I have learned by dissecting, that 

 bees carry honey and iooHen,atthe same 

 load, from buckwheat, and that they 

 work on it only in the morning. There 

 is not a bee to be seen on the buck- 

 wheat blossoms in the afternoon. 

 Will this pollen injure the bees V Will 

 it militate against wintering ? Will 

 some one who knows, answer these 

 questions ? This buckwheat {i}4 

 acres) is 14 rods from my apiary, and 

 early in the day it is literally swarm- 

 ing with bees, loaded with pollen and 



honey, as far as I have tested the 

 matter by dissection of bees. If pol- 

 len is injurious, what shall I do i* 



So far the bees have only stored 

 surplus in colonies run for extracted 

 honey, but the combs in the brood- 

 chamber are very full of brood, nearly 

 5 to () frames in a 10-frame Simplicity 

 hive. There certainly will be no lack 

 of young bees to go into winter quar- 

 ters if there is any good in this fact. 



All honor to the " Query Depart- 

 ment " in the Bee Journal. It 

 alone is worth the price of the sub- 

 scription. A bee-keeper, however, in 

 adopting another's opinion or plan, 

 should never forget that we have a 

 large country, and that a course pur- 

 sued successfully with bees in New 

 York by Mr. Doolittle, might fail en- 

 tirely in Texas, though carried out to 

 the letter. 



Shiloh,6 O., Aug. 30, 1886. 



For tlie American Beo JoumaL 



Native Bees of Ceylon. 



J. n. ANDRE. 



Volume XXI of the Bee Journal 

 mentions at different times a race of 

 foreign bees, by some person who has 

 seen them in their natural state. I 

 cannot give their names, etc., but in 

 "Ritle and Hounds in Ceylon," a 

 book of sports of 40 years ago, the 

 author. Sir Samuel Baker, drops out 

 of his regular line of elephant, buffalo 

 and elk hunting, at times, and in one 

 instance gives a short sketch of the 

 native bees, which I doubt not are 

 the same as mentioned in the Bee 

 Journal ; and thinking that many 

 would be interested, 1 have copied the 

 part referring to the bees, and will 

 let the Englishman tel! his own story: 



"The principal underwood in the 

 mountainous districts of Ceylon is 

 the nillho. This is a perfectly straight 

 stem from 12 to 20 feet in length, and 

 about \}4 inches in diameter, having 

 no branches except a few small arms 

 at the top, which are covered with 

 large leaves. This plant, in propor- 

 tion to its size, grows as close as corn 

 in a field [We doubt not but what the 

 author means grain, as that is their 

 national style to speak of all kinds of 

 grain, such as wheat, oats, barley, 

 etc., as " com "], and forms a dense 

 jungle difficulty to penetrate. 



" Every seven years this nillho 

 blossoms ; the jungles are then neither 

 more nor less than vast bouquets of 

 bright purple and white flowers. The 

 perfume is delicious, and swarms of 

 bees migrate from other countries to 

 get their harvest of honey. The 

 quantity collected is extraordinary. 

 The bee-hunters start from the low 

 countries and spend weeks in the 

 jungle, in collecting the honey and 

 wax. When looking over ah im- 

 mense tract of forest from some ele- 

 vated point, the thin blue lines of 

 smoke may be seen rising in many 

 directions marking the sites of the 

 bee-hunters' fires. 



" Their method of taking the honey 

 is simple enough. The bees' nests 

 hang from the boughs of the trees. 



and a man ascends with a torch Oi 

 green leaves which creates a dense 

 smoke. He approaches the nest and 

 smokes off the colony, which, on quit- 

 ting the exterior of tne comb, exposes 

 a beautiful circular mass of honey 

 and wax, generally about 18 inches in 

 diameter, and li inches thick. The 

 bee-hunter being provided with ves- 

 sels formed from the rind of the 

 gourd attached to ropes, now cuts up 

 the comb and fills his chatties, lower- 

 ing them down to his companions be- 

 low. When the blossom of the 

 willow fades, the seed from this is a 

 sweet little kernel with the flavor of 

 a nut. The bees now leave the 

 country and the jungles suddenly 

 swarm, as though by magic, with 

 pigeons, jungle-fowl and rats. At 

 length the seed is shed and the 

 nillho dies. The jungles then have a 

 curious appearance. The underwood 

 being dead, the forest trees rise from 

 a mass of dry sticks like thin hop- 

 poles. The roots of these plants soon 

 decay, and a few weeks of high wind 

 howling through the forest, levels the 

 whole mass, leaving the trees stand- 

 ing free from underwood. The ap- 

 pearance of the ground can now be 

 imagined. The young nillho grows 

 rapidly through this, forming a tang- 

 led barrier which checks both man 

 and dogs." 

 Lockwood,? N. Y. 



Local Convention Directory. 



1886. TiTne and vtace of Meeting. 



Sept. 16.— Eastern Indiana, at Richmond. Ind. 



M. G. Reynolds, Sec. Williamsburg, Ind. 



Oct. 7.— Wis. hake Shore Center, at Kiel, Wis. 



Ferd Zastrow, Sec, Millhome, Wis. 



Oct. 12— 14.— North American, at lndianapolia,Ind. 

 P. li. DouKherty, Sec, Indianapolis, Ind. 



Oct. 19, 20.— Illinois Central, at Mt. Sterling, Ills. 

 J. M. Hambaugh, Sec, Spring, Ills. 



Oct. 27-29.— Western, at Kansas <'ity. Mo. 



P. Baldwin, sec,. Independence, Mo. 



Dec. 1, 2.— Michigan State, at Ypsilanti, Mich. 



H. D. Cutting, Sec, Clinton, Mich. 



^" In order to have this table complete. Secre- 

 taries are requested to forward full particulars of 

 time and place of future meetings.— KD. 





'mmEmm 



Using Separators.— R. S. Becktell, 

 Three Oaks, ? Mich., says : 



On page 555, Mr. F. J. Crowley 

 says : " One prominent in our bee- 

 associations, and living near me, who 

 was not in favor of separators, has a 

 nice mess ; the combs are all bulged," 

 etc. It is quite evident that the man 

 was not a practical bee-keeper, and 

 that he used the old style of 2-inch 

 wide sections. I have been using 1- 

 pound sections 4%xi^axm inches, for 

 the'past four years, without separa- 

 tors, and not one comb in 100 could 

 be called bulged. I have 10,000 of 

 them full of clover and basswood 

 honey, and I would not go back to the 

 old style. 



