2U 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



May 



R. J. Fox, in April No., asks for a recipe for mak- 

 ing honey vinegar. Here is how I make it: I 

 sweeten water by rinsing all articles that get any 

 honey on them, including the comb and cappings, 

 that I intend to render into wax, and I use all honey 

 in this way that I consider unsalable, making the 

 water as sweet as I would if using molasses (I can 

 not tell exactly how much honey I use to a gallon, 

 perhaps one gallon of honey to 4 of water). I make 

 it quite sweet, and then add mother from other vin- 

 egar-barrels, which I always have on hand. When 

 I rack off the vinegar to sell, I save the mother in 

 the bottom of the barrel for this purpose; and the 

 more I put in, the better — never less than a gallon 

 of mother to a barrel of sweetened water. Set in a 

 warm place. 



By the way, my bees (131 swarms and 2 nuc'.el) are 

 all in very fine condition, only two showing any un- 

 easiness, and they with the nuclei set too near the 

 end of my ingress air-pipe, and they got too cold, so 

 that their breath condensed on the honey, which 

 soured some of it, and gave them a little touch of 

 the dysentery, but I have cui'ed them. I shall not 

 take them out of cellar until maple blooms. 



Mauston, Wis., April 7, 1883. H. V. Train. 



Let ia your pure air through a sub-earth 

 pipe, friend T., and then it won't chill those 

 near it. 



THE RESUIiTS OF ONE WOMAN'S BEE- 

 KEEPING. 



(Omtinuedfrom latit month.) 



A SUBSTITUTE FOR GLOVES. 



fJiHE best protection for the hands I have tried is 

 thin cloth wrapped around several times. I use 

 ' one of the thin cloth flour-sacks; cut a hole for 

 the thumb, then wrap round and round, covering the 

 hand and wrist entirely, so that only one-half of the 

 lingers and thumb is exposed; then pin securely, 

 and once between first and second finger; let the 

 pin be on top of hand. As the cloth is white and 

 clean, bees are not angered with it; and if they try 

 to sting through, they can not; neither is it cumber- 

 some to the hand, and keeps the bees from getting 

 up the sleeves. 



BEE-HATS, ETC. 



For a bee-hat I use for myself and girls a five- 

 cent boy's hat, with green wire screen sewed in 

 front, with calico curtain sewed ai-ound back and 

 sides, and below wire cloth. I like the cloth for 

 sides, first, because the sun in the morning and 

 evening, shining in through the side, prevents my 

 seeing without difficulty, sometimes; and secondly, 

 one does not get so tanned up. For "company" 

 hats I make the curtain long enough to come down 

 below the waist, so as to protect the hands, then 

 make several plaits or folds, in the back and sides, 

 at bottom of curtain, so as to give room for arms 

 and shoulders. 



A NOVEL WAY OP MAKING ARTIFICIAL SWARMS. 



Out of all three of our honey- ouses, at the close 

 of the bee work, we had to take a swarm. We knew 

 that it seemed impossible to get the bees all out of 

 our Timber Honey-house; but not until large sheets 

 of nice white comb began to appear did we suspect a 

 queen; and, indeed, I had not noticed the lai-ge 

 cluster up in the cone of the building until it was 

 very large, although our hand said he had. So we, 

 Charley and I, set a hive, without bottom-board, on 



top of the house; fastened it there by a board, one 

 end of which was against the hive, and the other 

 end nailed to a post at side of house, then Charley 

 bored two auger-holes down into the cluster below; 

 then standing on a barrel inside, I smoked them up 

 into the hive that had combs to receive them; cut 

 down the combs, and saved them also. But Mr. A. 

 had to finish the rest, which was a little more than 

 Swede Charley and I could do, to take an enormous 

 swarm in a bottomless hive off the top of a house. 



Our honey and storage houses at home were al- 

 most solid full of honey, and we had to wait until 

 honey was removed before we attempted the swarms 

 in them; but by the time we got to it they had nice 

 sheets of new comb built between the shelves, and 

 had lengthened out the cells of honey, injuring the 

 looks of a few sections (not many); but the way we 

 got them out was by brushing the clusters into a pan 

 of warm water, and skimming them out into a nu- 

 cleus sitting near the door that had received bees be- 

 fore, and was queenless. The bees that stuck to the 

 sections, we carried to the door and brushed off. We 

 soon had all out, and not very many died from being 

 wet. The queen was all right, and it is now one of 

 our best colonies. 



The honey the bees had put into the new combs 

 built was the nicest I ever ate, so thick and waxy; 

 the bees had not injured the sections by uncapping, 

 but had taken out the unsealed honey; but as they 

 found plenty of that, no harm was done. The queen 

 was probably taken in the last-named house when 

 we took off the racks for winter, and also the one in 

 the storage-house, and then all the bees that came in 

 united with her. Although we brushed out multi- 

 tudes of bees, yet each day we brought in more un- 

 til thej' were contented to stay there, and would not 

 cluster on the screen door. At the close of the hon- 

 ey harvest we could not leave the wooden door open 

 very long, as the bees outside smelled and saw the 

 honey inside. 



REMOVING THE BEES FROM THE CELLAR. 



We think it pays best in our locality to keep bees 

 in the cellar as long as we can keep them quiet in 

 the spring, and have discarded feeding for pollen. 

 Last spring we kept them in a few days too long, as 

 one Saturday night they seemed very warm and un- 

 easy, although doors and windows were open. The 

 sun rose warm and bright, but we dared not close 

 the doors, as they were buzzing loudly; still, ve 

 threw several pails of water around in the cellar, 

 then got large blocks of ice and placed all around, 

 which cooled them off somewhat bj' morning, so that 

 they could be carried out. Mr. A. and hand were up 

 by 3 o'clock, carrying out hives. Our bees seem not 

 to mind sitting on a new stand; but we set them 

 where we want them. A man from Iowa said that 

 when he set out his 40 colonies in the spring, they all 

 flew out and became one huge swarm, but settled. 

 He put his hand in the cluster and saved 19 queens, 

 I think, and the rest of the bees he put with them. 



HOW TO DISPOSE OF BROKEN HONEY. 



I am sorry to have written such a long letter, and 

 am afraid you won't know how to take time to read 

 it. A word more, and I will close. As soon as we 

 could get time, Mr. Axtell and a hand took pans of 

 cut-out honey, some rough and unsealed, but good 

 honey, one afternoon, and went down to the coal 

 bank, sold what he had for his two loads of coal, and 

 engaged enough more to the amount of $30.00 worth, 

 15 and 16 cts. per lb. for the honey, and next day two 



