180 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



ApiI. 



height of entrance; left off one end, so as to set 

 well up to the parent hive and over alighting-board. 

 Then took an old box hive and nailed three cleats on 

 the bottom, leaving one side open for bees to enter 

 freely. These and a piece of burlap 1^ yards square 

 I placed close at hand; when my next swarm came 

 out I caged the queen, placed the platform in front, 

 and swarming-box on top, nearly up to the parent 

 hive; I then placed the queen in front, and waited 

 their return. As soon as I saw any indication of 

 their returning 1 closed the entrance and front of 

 parent hive with burlap. This cut off their enter- 

 ing the parent hive, and they at onca took to the 

 box. As soon as they began to enter nicely I releas- 

 ed the queen, and all was well. Jn from three to 

 five minutes 1 carried them to or near where they 

 were to remain, and fixed their future home at my 

 leisure. This being done, I set them off and turned 

 the platform up to the entrance, and shook them in 

 front; the bees wore iiivcd, and the old hive unmo- 

 lested. 



I have practiced this for two years, with success 

 every time, and a boy or girl 13 years old can hive a 

 swarm in this with ease. 



BEES ALIi RIGHT. 



My 20 stocks, packed on summer stands, were out 

 in full force March 2d. Temperature was 48° in 

 shade, and 68 in the sun. I opened most of them, 

 and found them intiptop condition, plenty of honey, 

 and bright as gold dollars, and brood in nearly all of 

 them. In one stock, standing at the south end of a 

 large building, and' in a warm location, I found 3 

 frames abo|it Ja full of brood in all stages, and they 

 had commenced the fourth. The bees cover 6 Amer- 

 ican frames nicely. Would you consider this early 

 brood detrimental? This is my fifth winter with 

 frame hives, and I have yet to lose my first colony. 

 In the winter of 1880-'81, 1 lost 6 in box hives, all I 

 had. 



SWARMING OUT IN FEBRUARY. 



A neighbor of mine Informs me, Feb. 17th, he had 

 a stock swarm out clean, and go in with another 

 stock. It was a last-year's swarm, and left 30 or 40 

 lbs. of honey, all clean and nice ; what was the cause? 



C. L. BOSTWICK. 



Sandy Hook, Conn., March 5. 1883. 



Many thanks, friend B. I have no doubt 

 but that your plan will work nicely. Now 

 for the ladies, if not for many of our sex al- 

 so, we want all these appurtenances light, 

 so you can catch them up and run, if need 

 be. Well, make the platform of thin bass- 

 wood, securely nailed or screwed together, 

 and then use a basket instead of a hive. If 

 the bees are sometiuies allowed to stay in it 

 long enough to have a few combs built in 

 top, all the better. Now, who can give us a 

 strong willow-basket, in the shape of an old- 

 fashioned straw bee-hive, just to be used 

 for hiving swarms y You see, they would 

 never smother in it, no matter how hot the 

 day was, and they could also very easily cling 

 to them.— Who can make them, and how 

 much per hundred ? 1 hardly think the 

 large amount of brood will do harm, if you 

 have bees enough to cover it well. — I could 

 not tell why the bees swarmed out, without 

 seeing the hive. If they stood very close to 

 another colony, I should suppose they might 

 have been queenless, and simply walked or 

 flew over to the hive that had a queen. 



SEPARATORS OR NO SEPARATORS. 



FRIEND HILTON'S "TESTIMONY." 



EFIND on page 587, 1883, " What Friend Hasty 

 thinks; doing without Separators." My expe- 

 rience being so different from his, I can hardly 

 refrain from giving it. I ran 17 colonies the past 

 season for comb honey, and what increase they gave 

 by natural swarming. I use a combined honey and 

 shipping crate on the second story of my chaff hives. 

 The second story being single-walled, I can place 3 

 of these crates on each colony, holding nine 5x6 

 sections and no separators. I can use one, two, or 

 three crates, as the colony may require (I will send 

 you a photograph of the hive and fl.xtures as soon 

 as I can get some taken). 1 used full-sized sheets of 

 fdn. in my sections, and the result Is, that the 17 have 

 inci-eased to 41, and I have taken 1435 lbs. of honey, 

 mostly in 5 X 6 sections, using no separators except 

 a few on some broad frames In brood-chamber, and 

 I have not had a dozen sections but that I could 

 crate, and my 5x6 sections were filled a great deal 

 better than the 4M x Hi which I had in the brood- 

 chamber, as every one testifies who saw the honey. 



Now about the ! sales: It is nearly all gone in our 

 little home market, at 20 cts. net. I commenced 

 putting it on the market in July, and it has been a 

 staple article here. Now I am fully satisfied I could 

 not have obtained this amount with separators, or 

 got my honey in as good shape. My honey did noi; 

 come in five pounds a day either; but when the bees 

 took possession of one of those crates they just filled 

 them full and drew out the fdn. in all the sections at 

 once; where if I had used separators they would not 

 have done so. I go through my apiary once a week, 

 and take out all that are finished, dropping in a sec- 

 tion with a full sheet of fdn. between two others if I 

 can; but I never take off the crates unless I want to 

 examine the brood-apartment. 



Toward the close of the season I take the unfin- 

 ished sections in the third crate and put them in the 

 other two, and end the season with one crate of nine 

 sections on each hive, just as I commenceMn the 

 spring; so you see I have but comparatively few un- 

 finished sections. I extracted 78 lbs. from my unfin- 

 ished sections, making 1513 lbs. from my^l7 colonies, 

 spring count, or 89 lbs. per colony. 



Georoe E. Hilton. 



Fremont Center, Mich , Dec. 4, 1883. 



^ — ^ 



SIIiVE:RIIlIL.L BUCKWHEAT. 



FRIEND PERRY S EXPERIENCE WITH IT. 



fl OR about seven years, bee-keeping has been a 

 fine specialty with me. During that time we 

 have not had a season but that bees in my lo- 

 cality have gathered honey enough to keep up brood- 

 rearing from the middle of April to the first of Sep- 

 tember, and sometimes much later, there being a 

 constant succession of honey-flowers from elm, ear- 

 ly in the spring, to goldenrod, late in the fall; but 

 our best honey-plants, and from which we derive 

 our principal surplus, are white clover, basswood, 

 and buckwheat. The supply from all other sources 

 is always quite slow. White clover and basswood 

 flourish in abundance here; but for buckwheat I 

 have to depend chiefly on what I sow, as there is but 

 little raised by the farmers around me. I have rais- 

 ed more or less of the old kind of buckwheat every 

 year; tout this is the_flrst season that I have had 



