764 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



June 1 



•on to hold enough honey for winter stores, 

 for, after taking one comb out and feeding 

 the bees ' ' until the combs were full, except 

 ^vhere a few square inches of comb were oc- 

 icupied with brood," two starved. Beat this 

 if you dare in the United States. 



The item under the head of " What the 

 Government of Belgium is doing for Api- 

 culture," page 240, may well arrest oar at- 

 tention — so small a country, 258 bee socie- 

 ties, and subsidies from the state, to the ex- 

 tent of 21,780 francs— over $5000 per annum. 

 .^ 



OVERSTOCKING. 



At the risk of returning to a somewhat 

 threadbare subject, let me say that I believe 

 that the danger from overstocking is much 

 magnitied. Bee-keeping being my sole means 

 of livelihood, in order not to have my eggs 

 all in one basket I scatter the bees. Local- 

 ities not very far apart may vary as to nec- 

 tar, owing to seasons, etc. I have had two 

 apiaries five miles apart vary 50 per cent in 

 the honey crop. 



MORE THAN ONE QUEEN IN A HIVE. 



When I was with D. A. Jones, Beeton, in 

 1880, he repeatedly tried having two or more 

 queens in a hive separated with queen-ex- 

 cluding metal. For a time these queens 

 would go on in their compartments and then 

 be missing. I am afraid this would be the 

 case with several queens in a hive. I also 

 doubt if several queens in a hive will pre- 

 vent swarming; but then, 1 may not know 

 any thing about it. How is it that, if two 

 swarms vinite, having laying queens, the 

 bees will accept either queen; but when both 

 are left with the united swarm one queen 

 will be destroyed? 



SMALL ENTRANCES. 



Prof. Cook favors small entrances because 

 the bees have these in a bee-tree. To be log- 

 ical he must also favor irregularly built crook- 

 ed combs, as these are also found in a bee- 

 tree. Small entrances and limited storage 

 room tend to much swarming, and in this 

 way bees perpetuate themselves in nature. 

 But we are after surplus honey. If we fol- 

 low nature as suggested in the small entrance, 

 we should not keep bees at all in this coun- 

 try, as our bee is not even a native of it. 

 .& 



THE SEASON. 



Soft maple in the woods in the country has 

 at this date, April 30, not yet come into bloom 

 — fully three weeks later than is generally 

 the case, and the latest I can remember 

 its coming in. Unless stimulative feeding 

 has been practiced, there is a very limited 

 amount of brood in the hive. 



TWO OF MORE LAYING QUEENS IN ONE HIVE, 



I have now the pei'mission of F. A. Lock- 

 hart, Lake George, N. Y., with whom I have 

 had a good deal of business dealing, to tell 

 publicly that he has been practicing having 



several laying queens in one hive for five 

 years. He told me of this privately some 

 time ago. He writes, "You are the only 

 party I ever told any thing about managing 

 bees by using two or more queens in a hive. 

 This new system for building up strong col- 

 onies in the spi'ing, and for i-earing large 

 prolific queens and mating the same from 

 the parent hive, is a dandy." 



I have profited immensely by visits among 

 New York State bee-keepers, and I am grate- 

 ful to them for many hints, and have re- 

 spected their confidences. 



PROFITS IN BEE-KEEPING. 



Modern 3Ietho(ls Reduce the Cost of Pro- 

 duction. 



BY E. W. ALEXANDER. 



In your footnote following my article in 

 the Feb. 15th is.'iue of Gleanings on "Bee- 

 keeping as a Business," you think some of 

 your subscribers may take issue with my 

 statement as to the net profit in the work — 

 namely, $5.00 per colony, spring count, clear 

 of all expenses. Well, as to that I am sui'e 

 a very large per cent will question that state- 

 ment, and I will admit that perhaps not ten 

 per cent of the honey-producers of the Unit- 

 ed States are making that amount per colo- 

 ny. I will also admit that, during the thirty 

 years of my comb-honey experience, I did 

 not make $2.00 per colony clear of expenses 

 from the many colonies I had then. Neither 

 did I make $3.00 per colony clear of expenses 

 in producing extracted honey during the first 

 several years I was engaged in that business. 

 But during the last few years there have 

 been great changes made in producing hon- 

 ey. First, our bees are now bred from much 

 better honey- gathering strains than formerly. 



Then some have studied out and perfect- 

 ed certain methods in caring for their weak 

 colonies in early spring, so we now have no 

 more losses in that way, and we have cer- 

 tain ways of making increase whereby not a 

 bit of brood is lost — not even an egg. There 

 has also been great improvement in extract- 

 ing and curing the honey, which has much 

 to do with selling it readily at a good price; 

 and a few of us have dearly learned the fol- 

 ly of all that out-apiary expense, such as 

 keeping several horses, paying dear rent for 

 a place to set the bees, and losing a large 

 part of the working force from each out-yard 

 in absconding swarms. 



It is only a few years since it cost me 4 

 cents per lb., cash out, to produce extracted 



