620 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



July IS 



the bees are rushing- me so that I must get 

 up at 4 o'clock in the morning- if I get any 

 time to write. Say, if I should quit work- 

 ing with bees and reading so much about 

 them, don't you believe I could furnish you 

 a better quality of straw? I'd then have 

 time to polish up each straw nicely, and 

 not put ' ' below ' ' for ' ' above ' ' nor 

 "above" for "below." [No apology is 

 needed, doctor, only it does me good to " rub 

 it into you " as a sweet revenge for your 

 having pointed out my misplaced words. 

 The quality of your straw is all right. If 

 your strength will permit, keep on .as you 

 have been doing, and hereafter I will 

 change the below s to aboves when they get 

 misplaced, and say nothing about it. — Ed.] 



I'm doing nowadays what I've not been 

 able to do for several years. When a su- 

 per of sections is ready to come off the hive, 

 I just take it off without doing any thing 

 about driving the bees out, cover up the 

 hive, then set the super on top and let the 

 bees take their time to march down the side 

 of the hive to the entrance. Not the slight- 

 est hint of robbing if it stands there all 

 day. [In other words, that means you are 

 having a remarkable honey-flow. Some 

 time last week, when our basswood was at 

 the height of its run, we took some broken 

 combs, or combs that had been built to the 

 cover, containing honey, and set them on a 

 board temporarily until we could take care 

 of them. It was not long before a few rob- 

 bers were hovering over them, notwith- 

 standing the bees v/ere dropping in at the 

 entrance in a waj' that seemed as if they 

 could not be working stronger. It is possi- 

 ble that the very bad weather we had been 

 having for three weeks prior had got some 

 bees to smelling around to see what they 

 could steal; and these same bees, doubtless, 

 when they ran across some honey in these 

 exposed combs, were ready to help them- 

 selves rather than go to the fields. Hereto- 

 fore I have always thought it was safe to 

 exposfe honey in the height of the honey- 

 flow. I now conclude that sometimes you 

 can not and sometimes you can. — Ed.] 



A BARE -WRIST, when working with bees, 

 is more free from stings, I think, than one 

 with the ordinary shirtsleeves whose cuff 

 •will allow the entrance of the hand. If the 

 wristband is such that the button is sewed 

 on, I have it sewed on far enough back so 

 as to make the wristband a snug fit. If a 

 detached cufl'-button is used, I take mj^ 

 pocket-knife and punch a fresh hole further 

 back in the part of the cuft' that is under. 

 [Yes, 3'ou are right. An open sleeve does 

 invite the bees to sting more than one that 

 is closed tightl3' around the wrist. The 

 average shirt-maker seems to think, howev- 

 er, that it is necessary to have a loose band. 

 I have been using lately, with considerable 

 satisfaction, some oversleeves made of dark- 

 colored material, that fit tightly around the 

 wrist, and reach up beyond the elbow, at 

 which point it is gathered with a rubber 

 cord. I also like gloves with good long 



sleeves reaching up to and beyond the el- 

 bow, with the fingers cut off when the 

 weather is not too hot; and I like them also 

 when I have to tackle a colony of cross yel- 

 low five-banded bees. And, by the by, 

 these bees are much crosser than the aver- 

 age of leather-colored stock direct from im- 

 ported queens; but I am not sure but they 

 go into comb- honey supers a little more 

 readily than the regulation Italians direct 

 from Italy. See editorials. — Ed.] 



Later. — Since writing the foregoing our 

 shop-girls have, at my suggestion, gotten 

 out a new pattern of glove and sleeve that I 

 like better than any thing I have seen yet. 

 It is simply a long-sleeved glove without 

 any fingers or thumb; that is, the whole of 

 the fingers and thumb stick through holes 

 close to the palm of the hand. — Ed.] 



Speaking of having the empty super un- 

 der or over, you say, Mr. Editor, p. 580, 

 "In the one case the bees are induced to 

 finish up the work already begun; in the 

 other case they begin another job before 

 finishing the first, with the possibility that 

 neither will be finished as it should." 

 That's just it; in the first case a lot of 

 bees must stand looking on while the job is 

 being finished, while in the second case they 

 are all at work. Even if you object to that 

 statement, j'ou must admit that, when in- 

 duced to commence work sooner in the add- 

 ed super, there is just so much more 

 ground for the bees to be at work on. The 

 argument in favor of foundation because it 

 gives at once a larger field on which the 

 bees can be working applies with equal 

 force to placing the supers in such position 

 as to get the bees working on a larger sur- 

 face as soon as possible. "The possibil- 

 ity that neither will be finished as it 

 should" is a very remote possibility at the 

 beginning of a season when I have every 

 reason to expect from the colony 3, 4, 5, or 

 more finished supers. All the same, I'm 

 doing more at putting empty supers on top 

 than I ever did before; and I heartily thank 

 O. L. Hershiser for stirring us up about it. 

 [I do not reallj' know on which side of the 

 argument I am. The events of the past 

 week have shoved me one day on this side 

 and the next on the other. But I am glad 

 that Mr. Hershiser has called attention to 

 this matter, for the fraternity at large had 

 begun to assume that it was good practice 

 alwaj's to put the empty super under the 

 partly filled one, at the beginning of the 

 honej'-flow at least. But (would j-ou be- 

 lieve it?) in some cases colonies that were 

 treated on the tiering-under plan, new su- 

 per put under the one partly filled, com- 

 menced work in the new supers, and actual- 

 ly abandoned the upper supers, or nearly 

 so, where the work was already begun. I 

 was astounded — never saw the like of it 

 before. Then I began to feel that, if\ had 

 followed Hershiser's plan of putting the 

 emptj' super over, the bees would have con- 

 tinued their work in the lower super, and 

 graduall3' worked intothesuper above.— Ed.] 



