1907 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



1259 



tion of comb honey. Probably their bees are 

 trained differently, or the locality has some- 

 thing to do with it. I have practically no 

 use for a honey-board between a comb-hon- 

 ey super and the brood-nest. The cases of 

 the queen entering the sections are so rare 

 that it is not worth considering. 



If queen-excluders are so much in the way, 

 why not make an entrance above them? In 

 fact, I have several hive-bodies with holes of 

 ] or J inch. These are frequently used as 

 supers for extracting-combs, and the bees 

 seem to use these holes very little, appearing 

 to prefer to pass down through the honey- 

 l)oard and out at the regular entrance. It 

 seems to me that, if the bees have such an 

 aversion to honey-boards, they would use 

 such upper enti'ance almost entirely in pref- 

 erence to crowding, squeezing, and strug- 

 gling (as some would express it) through the 

 perforations in the honey-board. 



Bluffton, Mo. 



[There will soon be on the market a queen- 

 excluder that will overcome entii'ely the ob- 

 jections that have been urged against the or- 

 dinary perforated metal with its more or less 

 rough edges, that thus far do not seem to be 

 entirely avoidable. The new product we 

 shall illustrate shortly in th^se columns. Ex- 

 perts who have examined it pronounce it 

 perfect. — Ed.] 



IIONEV PLANTS NEAR DR. MILLER'S 

 HOME. 



Plent> of Goldenrod, but no (lioldeiirod 

 Honey. 



BY DK. C. C. MILLER. 



The region rovind about Marengo is not 

 noted as one abounding in a variety of prof- 

 it,al)lc honey-plants. So true is this that bee- 

 keepers have said to me, "Why don't you 

 pull up stakes and settle in some good honey 

 locality?" Well, I'm here; and after one 

 has settled in any locality the ties that bind 

 him to that locality are likely to become 

 stronger as the years go by. When I settled 

 hei-e, more than fifty years ago, it was not as 

 a bee-keeper, but as a physician; and I nev- 

 er dreamed of having any thing to do with 

 bees until I had been here five years, and not 

 till years after that did the thought of mak- 

 ing a business of bee-keeping enter my head. 

 If I had known in the first place what I now 

 know, very likely I should have trekked to 

 some Ijetter locality, even after fifteen or 

 twenty years of peaceful residence here. 



For some time after becoming a bee-keeper 

 I didn't care whether it was a good locality 

 or not; and after I did care it was some time 

 before I knew enough to know how poor a 

 locality it was. Possibly I'm not gifted in 

 that way. I suspect that G. M. Doolittle 

 would nose around here for half a day and 

 tell me much about my locality that I never 

 knew before. 



There's goldenrod. Some bee-keepers up- 

 on seeing it here just before breaking into 



bloom would say, "Why, with all that mass 

 of goldenrod you ought to have your hives 

 filled for winter, and at least a little surplus, 

 even if you have no other honey-plants." for 

 it's well scattered, and wherever it has a 

 chance it thrives. Just in front of the home 

 apiary, where for four or five years the 

 ground has not been cultivated on account 

 of the bees being there, goldenrod has taken 

 possession. I wish you could see it. Last 

 summer it was a mass of goldenrod, and the 

 center was solid yellow, making a beautiful 

 sight. 



But goldenrod is of no value here except 

 for its beauty. On Sept. 7 more bees were 

 on it than usual, but generally only files and 

 beetles frequent it. Why it should be value- 

 less here and valuable in some localities, I 

 don't know. 



I'lG. 1. -.V L.VKIJK li \..Si\VU()l) TKKE NK.VK 

 MARKNGO, ILL. 



Then there's basswood, one of the very 

 best honey-plants that grow — generally reli- 

 able as to yielding, and yielding enormously 

 when it does yield. Fig. 1, a beautiful speci- 

 men which grows right in front of our house, 

 shows how well suited to it are the soil 

 and climate here; and when the bees are 

 busy on its blossoms the sound is charming. 

 But the woods are not full of such trees. 

 Probably there isa't a spot in the county 

 where they're as thick as on my place, and 

 they were mostly planted; and you can't get 

 a plantation of bassvvoods into full bearing 

 in a day. This tree was planted 25 or 80 

 years ago, and it's only 16 inches in diameter 



