844 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Oct. 1. 



so small insects can't crawl up; but the 

 bees, with a little exertion, can. 



H. A. HiGGINS. 



[The scheme of putting- hives on stilts or 

 posts, in cans of water, is ver3^ often used 

 by bee-keepers in the South to keep ants 

 and other insects away from the bees. The 

 only possible objection to it is the fact that 

 a clipped queen can not very well get into 

 the hive; and I do not quite see how you 

 overcome the difficulty, for I believe the av- 

 erage ant can reach up as high as the aver- 

 age queen. But after all, the difficulty 

 with a clipped queen is small when you re- 

 member the swarming season extends over 

 a very limited period; and if any one is 

 present he can find the queen under or near 

 the hive, cage her, and recover the swarm. 

 But if the hive were resting on the ground, 

 the queen might run back into the hive, 

 making it necessary to hunt for her, not 



t.veen the same and the hive. There was 

 no sign of other brood or eggs. Did the 

 queen go up through the zink, and lay one 

 egg- in the queen-cell prepared for it, and 

 lay no other eg-gs, or did the bees move the 

 egg from the lower story? I have handled 

 a good many extracting--supers, but never 

 found a queen-cell before, without other 

 brood. F. W. Humphrey. 



Oronoque, Ct., July 24. 



[It is generally believed that eggs in 

 queen-cells are put there by the bees rather 

 than that the queen lays them there her- 

 self. I have seen bees myself transporting 

 eggs, carrying them in some way under 

 their chins; but whether they were going to 

 put them in some other cell or in a queen- 

 cell I can not say. Therefore it would not 

 be impossible for a bee to carry an egg 

 through the perforated zinc and put it in a 

 queen-cell above. They are quite inclined 



APIARY OF J. W. CULVKY, ROLLING PKAIRIE, IND. 



only on the ground but in the hive. If the 

 plan of shaking swarms is successful, this 

 difficulty of clipped queens may be almost 

 entirely overcome. — Ed.] 



THE BANNER APIARY. 



"I send you a picture of a part of my api- 

 ary. I have 132 colonies in this yard. Not 

 many of them show in the picture. My 

 bees have done well this summer. I had a 

 large swarm come out to day. They will 

 have to look to me for their winter food. 



J. W. CULVEY. 



Rolling Prairie, Ind., Aug. 25. 



A QUEEN-CELL ABOVE PERFORATED METAL. 



While extracting yesterday I found a per- 

 fectly developed queen-cell on a comb taken 

 from a super with queen-excluding zinc be- 



under some conditions to build cells above 

 perforated metal or any portion of the hive 

 from which the queen is excluded; if, there- 

 fore, a cell were started, it would not be at 

 all strange to find an egg in it, even if there 

 was a queen below that could not pass the 

 metal. — Ed.] 



MOSQUITO hawks; bees balling THEIR 

 OWN QUEEN. 



I wish to ask a couple of questions. Have 

 you ever known mosquito hawks to bother 

 bees? I have lost over 50 queens this season 

 while they were mating. For a long time 

 I could not tell what was taking them. At 

 last I found out. Then I set to work to kill 

 the pests. I killed several hundred of them. 



I also had a nucleus a few days ago turn 

 on its own queen and ball her. What was 

 the cause? H. F. Stafford. 



Tallahassee, Fla., July 25. 



