1903 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



325 



logic is a little strained. I have never held 

 the opinion that the disease with which we 

 are familiar, and which has made such 

 havoc among- our bees, ever resides in any 

 thing but the larval growth of insects. In- 

 deed, it is probably confined to the larvae 

 of bees exclusively. 



TESTING BARRELS AND CANS FOR LEAKS. 



Editor Hill, of the American Bee-keep- 

 er, referring to what was recently given in 

 Gleanings for testing honey-barrels by 

 blowing air into them, says it is " very un- 

 reliable." And then he goes on to say: 



a decidedly better wa^' is to place the lips firmly in 

 or against the aperture, draw into the lungs and ex- 

 halt- through the nose all the air possiiile, by repeated 

 draughts, which necessarily become shorter as the air 

 is pumped out of a tight leceptacle. By this means 

 much more povser, with less effort, is ex rted; and in 

 case of a leak, in testing cans, the inrushing air from 

 outside, while the breath is momentarily held to listen, 

 will reinflate the j.arily collapsed tin, thereby keeping 

 up a constant crackle and ring as the sides rtadjiist 

 themselves to the original position. In testing barrels, 

 when a leak occurs, and whiie the bung is yet stopped 

 by the human pump, the hissing of rushing air may 

 be audible : or if the leak be verj- small, the suction at 

 bung will be gradually reduced, and readily recogniz- 

 ed by the pumper. 



But Mr. France (and I regard him as one 

 of the most careful and conservative bee- 

 keepers I know of) illustrated at the con- 

 vention how reliable the pressure plan was 

 with him. He explained that, when a bar- 

 rel is pumped full of air, the hand should 

 be dipped in water or moistened with sali- 

 va, and be held over the hissing place. 

 Bubbles will form at the point of the leak, 

 and all that will be found necessary will 

 be to drive a hoop down at that point until 

 the hissing ceases. But when the process 

 is reversed I can hardly see how the leak 

 could be located so readily. I'll have Bro. 

 Hill show me the trick when I go to Florida. 



STOPPING THE MIXING OF SWARMS WITH A 

 BLANKET OR SHEET 



As the swarming season will soon be on 

 in many localities, I hasten to place the let- 

 ter of G. C. Greiner, on this subject, before 

 our readers. It appears that the plan of 

 stopping the swarms as advocated by Mr. 

 McEvoy, in our last issue, page 28U, is a 

 nesv old kink. Mr. Greiner writes: 



The reported scheme of retaining or confining an 

 outcoming swarm by means of sheet or blanket is an- 

 other case of a long-known little kink that is new to 

 many, even to some of the bee-keeping veterans. 



More than twenty years ago we used to run to the 

 house after sheets for that purpose, and last summer 

 I stopped a number of swarms in this way. Some 

 times the plan works like a charm; at other t mes it 

 doesn't. Your supposition of bees boiling out from 

 under the sheet is quite correct. In spite ol all tuck- 

 ing up and stopping every little openii g visible I have 

 failed raanv times to stop them. They would come 

 out and find an outlet somewhere, even'if they had to 

 crawl through the grass. The trouble is, we are not 

 always ready with the sheet just in time, when they 

 first begin to issue; and it takes but a very few min- 

 utes for quite a large portion of the swarm to be in 

 the air. Then if the queen is with them, which she is 

 apt to be, all the sheets of the household will be of no 

 use. 



But there is another case, when a sheet will do good 

 service. It sometinjes happens that a swarm, instead 

 of alighting somewhere else, takes a notion to enter 

 the hive of another colony, which may mean its own 

 annihilation. A sheet thrown over such a hive will 



prevent the calamity, and induce the swarm to alight 

 where it is more desirable. G. C. Greinkr. 



La Salle, >.. Y. Apr. 4. 



When several swarms are coming out at 

 once, the bee-keeper is put to his wits' end, 

 and will be glad to grasp at a straw; and 

 even if the blanket or sheet plan does not 

 hold the bees in, it may succeed to such an 

 extent as to save him a great deal of an- 

 noyance. 



PROFITS IN THE HONEY BUSINESS. 



One of our subscribers would like tc» 

 know something about the profits of bee- 

 keeping OQ a moderate scale. He has just 

 been investing in the business, and wishes, 

 to know what he may reasonably expect.. 

 The question is a hard one to answer, as so 

 much depends on the locality and the man, 

 and the number of bees to the area. 



On the average, perhaps, in the Northern 

 States, in what is known as the rain-belt, 

 one might expect to get anywhere from 25 

 to 50 lbs. of comb honey, and perhaps from 

 25 to £0 per cent more of extracted. There 

 will be some seasons when he might secure 

 as much as 100 lbs. on an average, and oc- 

 casional seasons when there would be nei- 

 ther comb nor extracted, and the bees would 

 require to be fed. Taking one year with 

 another, a small bee-keeper ought to aver- 

 age about 35 lbs. of comb honey, on a con- 

 servative estimate, providing he has reason- 

 able skill and love for the business. The 

 comb honey might net him, deducting the 

 expense of selling, from 8 to 12 cents; the 

 extracted, from 4 to 7. These figures do 

 not include the labor of producing the hon- 

 ey nor the cost of the fixtures. The cost of 

 the supplies, exclusive of sections and foun- 

 dation, ought to be sufficient to cover 10 to 

 20 years if no increase is made. Suppose 

 we put the comb honey at 25 lbs. as the 

 average, and the price secured 10 cents net. 

 The actual money he would get from the 

 commission merchant or grocer might be 

 about $2.50; but out of this he must deduct 

 a certain amount for labor, and 10 per cent 

 on the cost of supplies, to be on the safe side. 



With only a few bees the labor would 

 count for nothing, as the work would be 

 performed by some member of the family or 

 by the man of the house, who could, during 

 his spare hours, do a little with bees and 

 work in his garden. In case of one two, or 

 three hundred the labor item must be figured. 

 The larger the number crowding the avail- 

 able territory the smaller the profit per 

 hive. In other words, a small apiary will 

 always yield larger returns proportionally 

 than the large one. I would not care to go 

 into all the details, as there are so many di- 

 verse conditions that might arise that some 

 one might be apt to take my figures and say 

 that they do not fit his locality; but a rough 

 estimate for an apiary and in a locality not 

 overstocked, not including the labor on the 

 S2.50 actually received for honey sold, ought 

 to leave a net profit somewhere about $2.00. 

 This would be on the basis that the locality 

 did not require much feeding in the fall. 

 If feeding was found to be necessary, 50 



