1903 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



623 



In a private letter received from Inspect- 

 or N. D. West, he says he "believes" that 

 the formaldehj'de scheme is a boon. He 

 thinks, however, that he and his colleagues 

 deserve as much credit for its introduction 

 as an}' other person, except Prof. Harrison, 

 of Canada. He says he "believes," by 

 which I take it he is not yet prepared to 

 make a positive statement until some fur- 

 ther experiments have been made. 



FURIOUS SWARMING AT MEDINA. 



Bees have swarmed more furiously at 

 our home and outyards this season than 

 we have ever known them to do before. The 

 season was so rainy and cold up to the 

 28th of June that the bees were on the verge 

 of starvation, although rearing brood at a 

 good rate. Well, when we did have bright 

 days and hot weather, or what the farmers 

 call "corn weather," the nectar came in 

 with a rush, for the fields were white with 

 clover everywhere, and basswood was just 

 beginning on the 28th of last month. The 

 result Avas, the bees poured out of the hives 

 like shot out of a gun. They did not stop 

 to fill up their hives; but the long-hoped- 

 for weather had come, and it was "hur- 

 rah, boys!" or, rather, "hurrah, girls! 

 let us swarm now, and not wait for more 

 cold and rainy weather to set in." 



The result was, I had to drop my work 

 here in the office, and turn out and help 

 the "boys," who had more than thej' could 

 do in giving the bees more room. I enjoyed 

 shinning up the trees at the basswood yard, 

 for swarms; but let me tell you I let one of 

 the boj's do most of the "shinning;" for at 

 41 I do not feel quite as agile as I did 

 tW'Cnty or more years ago. 



FIVE-BANDERS FOR COMB HONEY — THEIR 

 ANCESTRY. 



Neighbor H., or Mr. H. B. Harrington, 

 who years ago made a specialty of Cyprian 

 queens, reared thousands of them, hived 

 several swarms of five banded bees at the 

 home yard on Sunday, June 28, while the 

 rest of us were at church. When I got 

 back, he asked how long we had been keep- 

 ing Cyprians. 



" Why," said I, " we haven't any." 



"Ohl but you have," he insisted. "They 

 have the same markings, and act in the 

 same nervous way. You can't fool me. I 

 know the Cyprians well." 



I believe he is right. I have alwaj's said 

 that the five-banded bees were quite apt to 

 show Cyprian traits, and that I believed 

 their ancestry was pure Cyprians. But 



whatever their origin, I find many of them 

 good workers, as were the Cyprians; and, 

 as I have said in a Straw in this issue, I 

 think the}' are a little more inclined to en- 

 ter comb- honey supers than the average 

 leather-colored Italians. 



The time was, when we had nothing but 

 imported stock direct from Italy in the 

 yards, when we could go through them al- 

 most any time without a veil, bare- armed. 

 One season I worked unprotected for six 

 weeks without getting a single sting, and I 

 was in the yard constantly. Now that we 

 have a sprinkling of five-banders as well as 

 of the leather-colored stock, let me tell you 

 I very seldom go through any of the yards 

 without a veil on. This sprinkling of ex- 

 tra-yellow blood of Cyprian origin makes 

 the bees crosser. 



how TO GET SWARMS DOWN FROM THE 

 TOPS OF TREES. 



Elsewhere I speak of the fact that we 

 have been shinning up trees to get swarms. 

 You may wonder why we did not pursue 

 the good old orthodox plan of having the 

 queens' wings clipped, or why the colonies 

 had not been shaken, to stop all of this un- 

 necessary climbing and chasing. In the 

 first place, some of our customers object to 

 having their nice queens clipped — don't like 

 the looks of them. In the second place, the 

 swarming weather caught us by surprise. 

 We had about given up having any honey- 

 flow, and the problem had been to keep our 

 bees from starving. But the season opened 

 up and the bees swarmed, and how should 

 we get them out of our tall basswoods? No 

 way under the sun but to climb after them. 

 We used a jack-knife to cut off the limb on 

 which the swarm hung, then by carefully 

 dodging among the limbs we climbed down 

 to the ground as best we could, handing 

 the swarm to an attendant as soon as he 

 could be reached. But the jack-knife in cut- 

 ting jarred the limb. I finally took down a 

 big pair of pruning-shears, two big potato- 

 sacks, and some stout string, supplying the 

 boy who did the " shinning" with all these 

 before he went up the tree. The shears 

 were handy for clearing out a space through 

 which to let the bees down. After reach- 

 ing the swarm, the boy would proceed to 

 slide the bag up around the bees. Then he 

 would grab the neck of it around the limb, 

 and with the pruning-shears clip it ofi". He 

 could then with his rope let down bees, 

 limb, bag, and all, or he could climb down 

 without danger of jarring the bees off, or 

 without any fear of being stung. In de- 

 scending through the tree, holding a limb 

 from which a big swarm is hanging, one is 

 liable to bump it against the foliage, dis- 

 lodging many of the bees, filling the air 

 full of them. These will in all probability 

 alight on the limb nearest where they were 

 first clustered, with the result that another 

 climbing is necessary to get all the bees. 

 The coffee-sack or bag saves all this trou- 

 ble. The pruning-shears are a vast im- 



