1080 



GLEANINGS IN BEP: CULTURE. 



Aug. 15 



while some of my neighbors complain of a 

 poor season nearly every summer. 



SECOND-HAND HONEY PACKAGES. 



I almost beg of you not to buy second- 

 hand packages to ship extracted honey in. 

 I don't know when 1 ever read better advice 

 than our friend Muth gave us a short time 



KIG. l.^HU.ME OF .AK.SKS BKAY, SANTA CLARA CO., CALIFORNIA 



ago in Gleanings on this subject. Don't 

 use those poor packages. If you do, you not 

 only bear down the market price of honey 

 but you indirectly raise the freight rate. 



Don't bother with starters of comb founda- 

 tion in your breeding or extracting frames; 

 but put in full sheets of foundation and pre- 

 vent your bees from building that worst nui- 

 sance of the apiary — namely drone comb. 

 The man with a lew colonies may have 

 time to fuss with starters; but if you have 

 many hives to care for, the sooner you cut 

 out this starter business, and the shifting 

 around the apiary of brood, the better it 

 will be for your net income. The earlier 

 in the spring you can have every hive 

 in your apiary, and every comb in those 

 hives filled with worker brood, then keep 

 them so to the end of the season, the less 

 reason you will have to worry about poor 

 honey seasons and overstocking. We have 

 never had a strong colony of bees backed 

 up with a hive full of worker brood fail to 

 give us a good surplus. 



preparing for w^inter. 

 Don't neglect to prepare your bees early 

 in the season for winter. This part of the 

 business should here at the north be all fin- 

 ished befoi-e September 10. To a certain ex- 

 tent we are preparing our bees all summer 

 for the next season; then when the final 

 finish comes, the last of August, we have 

 but little to do, and I am sure that they will 

 winter with less loss if they have a chance 



to quiet down and are undisturbed during 

 the fall months. 



Don't try to winter weak colonies. If you 

 are anxious to save all you can, then feed 

 them syrup made from granulated sugar as 

 soon as the harvest commences to close, so 

 as to keep them breeding until they are 

 strong in bees. If you attend to them in 

 this way they will often 

 be your best colonies 

 in the spring; but if you 

 can not do this you 

 had better unite two or 

 more together in the 

 fall; for a weak colony 

 in the fall is usually a 

 dead one in the spring. 

 Don't try to winter a 

 queen the third winter. 

 I am sure it doesn't pay. 

 She is almost sure to 

 die, either in the winter 

 or early spring; and .f 

 she lives she is so slow 

 to start brood in the 

 spring that you will 

 have a weak colony un- 

 til mid-summer; and it 

 will require more val- 

 uable time to build it 

 up than thi'ee queens 

 would cost 



Don't fail to keep 

 your bees as warm and 

 comfortable as is pos- 

 sible during the first 

 four or five weeks after taking them from 

 their winter quarters. We contract the en- 

 trances of all colonies to f by 1 or 2 inches 

 In domg so it prevents robbing to quite an 

 extent, and helps them to enlarge their 

 brood-nest, which is very important at this 

 season of the year. We also try to retain 

 all the heat we can at the top of the hive. 

 We put a piece of canvas first over the 

 top of the frames, then a board under cov- 

 er, cleated so as to form two dead-air 

 spaces; then our outside telescope top, 

 which is kept well painted so as to prevent 

 any rain from entering the hive. You may 

 think this is taking more pains than is nec- 

 essary. We think it has much to do toward 

 helping the bees to give us a nice surplus 

 during the summer. 



Don't put your bees into winter quarters 

 that will subject them to unnatural condi- 

 tions. If you do you will lose many colo- 

 nies, both during the winter and spring. It 

 is almost impossible to save a colony that 

 has been poorly wintered. We may talk 

 and write of the thousand and one different 

 things connected with successful bee-keep- 

 ing; but when they are all summed up the 

 whole combined is not of as much impor- 

 tance as perfect wintering. We could make 

 more money the following season from 

 strong colonies when taken from their win- 

 ter quarters if they were in nail-kegs than 

 could be made from little weak sickly col- 

 onies in the best hive that was ever con- 

 structed. 



