244 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Mar. 15 



I run for comb honey, and want the very 

 best hive I can buy. Which is the better — 

 the 8 or the 10 frame Langstroth? 



Winchester, Ind., Nov. 24. C. A. Yost. 



[For the production of comb honey, espe- 

 ciall}' a fanc}' article, I know of nothing- 

 better than the Danzenbaker. While, as a 

 rule, one hive will not produce any more 

 honey than any other standard hive, yet the 

 one tnay put more of it in )iiarketable shape. 

 Our own experience is that the Danzenba- 

 ker will have less honey in the brood-nest 

 after the honey- flow, and more in the sec- 

 tions. The brood-nest being- shallow, the 

 honey is forced abo\e. Take, for example, 

 the Danzenbaker and eig^ht-frame Lang-- 

 stroth-Dovetailed hive, each would produce, 

 we will say, 75 lbs. of honey, both comb 

 and extracted. The Danzenbaker might 

 have the proportion of 65 lbs in the supers 

 and 10 in the brood-nest, while the eig-ht- 

 frame Dovetailed, being- deeper, might have 

 50 lbs. of comb honey in the supers and 25 

 lbs. in the brood-nest. In this supposable 

 case the Danzenbaker would have 15 lbs. 

 more of comb honey, which, we will say, is 

 worth 15 cts. per lb., as ag-ainst, perhaps, 

 15 lbs. of extracted honey at 7 or 8 cts. per 

 lb. in the eight-frame Dovetailed. 



This is, possibly, putting the proportion 

 a little stronger than it would be in prac- 

 tice; but Mr. Vernon Burt, who is rapidly 

 changing his eight-frame Dovetailed hives 

 over to Danzenbaker, says, after three or 

 four years' test, he is fully satisfied that he 

 can clear more money with the Danzenba- 

 ker than he can ofl: the eight-frame Dove- 

 tailed. In other words, he converts honey 

 in the brood-nest into comb honey at a high- 

 er price. If he sells this at 15 cts., he puts 

 in its stead, after the honey season, a three 

 or four cent syrup made from the best gran- 

 ulated sugar. He therefore cleans up ten 

 or eleven cents if the proportions I have 

 named hold true. Suppose he cleaned up 

 only five cents, then for every pound of hon- 

 ey he gets more from the Danzenbaker than 

 he would over the Dovetailed, he makes five 

 cents. If in the supposable case he gets 5 

 cents more, his profit in the Danzenbaker 

 over the Dovetailed will be 75 cts On 100 

 colonies this would amount to $75. Now, 

 please do not, any of you, go and take this 

 supposable case and make out that I claim 

 that the Danzenbaker will clean up 75 cts. 

 per hive more than the Dovetailed. I sim- 

 ply wish to illustrate that a shallow hive 

 may, under favorable conditions, make more 

 money for its owner than a deeper hive that 

 will accommodate just so much more honey 

 in the brood-nest.— Ed.] 



APIARY IN STRAIGHT ROWS OR ON THE HIT- 

 AND-MISS PLAN. . 



Up to this time I have had my hives (50 

 colonies) scattered around promiscuousl}% 

 giving me some trouble in attending to them 

 this way. A few days ago I put them in 

 two straight rows, about a yard apart. 

 Some one to-day suggested that this would 



give me trouble, the hives all looking so 

 nearly alike the young queens would get 

 mixed up and I would be likely to lose 

 some of them. Will you kindly give me 

 your idea? W. P. Smith. 



Penn, Miss., Feb. 9, 1903. 



[It is true, there is some objection to hav- 

 ing hives, in straight rows, all hives alike, 

 and all opening in the same direction. At 

 our yard in Medina we found it necessary, 

 years ago, to have the entrances point to 

 the four points of the compass, and to ar- 

 range them so there would be no two hives 

 pointing in the same direction within thirty 

 or forty feet. 



If you happen to have a variety of hives, 

 mix them up in the row; then, where possi- 

 ble, station one hive near a shrub for shade; 

 another near a tree, and another near some 

 other distinguishing object. 



The plan we now like best is grouping, 

 putting three or four hives in a cluster, per- 

 haps ten inches apart, and each group ten 

 feet from any other group. One group can 

 be placed under a big tree, and another 

 group under a small one. Still another 

 can be placed near the bee- house, and an- 

 other before some other equally prominent 

 object. A bee, on returning from the field, 

 seeks its group and then singles out its 

 own hive-entrance in the group, which, if 

 there are three hives, may be the one in the 

 middle or the one on either side. The bees 

 in one group do not get mixed up; but it 

 sometimes happens that young bees will fly 

 from one hive in a group, say from the 

 northeast corner of it, and return to the 

 northeast corner hive of the group next ad- 

 joining. But all this will be avoided if one 

 group looks difl^erent from some other on 

 account of some surrounding object. Where 

 trees are scarce there can be several groups 

 in between the trees. Those groups un- 

 shaded should be covered with shade- 

 boards. This alone will make a distin- 

 guishing characteristic, and will help to 

 avoid the general confusion. 



Unless one is rearing queens' he does not 

 need to pay so much attention to the ar- 

 rangement of his entrances. It is only the 

 young bees that get confused, as a rule, 

 and they are generally accepted in any 

 hive. — Ed.] 



AN OPEN LETTER FROM THE SAMBLFR'S 



PASTOR ; THAT CLOUD OF SORROW ; 



SOMETHING OF THE RAMBLER'S 



CHURCH LIFE. 



A friend has sent me a copy of your jour- 

 nal containing the obituary notice of John 

 H. Martin, formerly of Hartford, N. Y., and 

 I can not forbear writing a few words, as 

 his friend and former pastor, expressing 

 my appreciation of your estimate of this 

 noble man, who has gone to his reward, and 

 adding my own tribute to his Christian 

 character and sterling worth. 



My ministry began with the First Con- 

 gregational Church of South Hartford, N. 

 Y., April, 1889, of which church John H. 



