1883 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



465 



casion required, and conveyed a meaning which is 

 far from being correct. I desire to beg his pardon 

 for the language I used in my reply; and while I 

 might have done so in a private letter, I prefer to 

 do it in as public a manner as my reply was made. I 

 intended simply to indulge in a little pleasantry at 

 the expense of Bro. H., and joke him a little on his 

 position, and wrote as I did without stopping to 

 think just how it would read when written. I think 

 too much of Bro. H. as a bee-keeper and a man, and 

 have too strong a desire to retain his good opinion, 

 to be guilty of personally assailing him, and I trust 

 he will accept this apology in the same spirit in 

 which it is made, and believe me when I say I did 

 not intend to misrepresent him, or injure his feel- 

 ings. J. E. Pond, Jit. 

 Foxboro, Mass., July 7, 1883. 



MRS. cotton's hive, ETC. 



On page 424, Juvenile for July, I notice part of 

 my letter with your remarks. I hope you will cor- 

 rect the same in your next issue. By referring to 

 my letter you will find that I stopped extracting on 

 account of the loose large wheel accidentally falling 

 on the floor and breaking in two, and not for want 

 of a honey-knife. For this reason I wrote to you 

 and asked your kindness in sending me another to 

 replace the broken one, and, to my astonishment, 

 here it came in less than one week, thereby enab- 

 ling me to extract what I had to leave on account of 

 the accident. Many thanks, friend Hoot, for prompt- 

 ness and kind-heartedness in sending it gratuitous- 

 ly, and paying postage out of your pocket besides. 

 But this is just one out of the many thousand in- 

 stances where you have done likewise, as shown in 

 your much'valued journals. 



This is the best honey season here for a period of 

 ten years. 1 have 23 colonies, nearly all in your 

 chaff hives, and a few which are in Lizzie Cotton's. 

 1 will sell those in Cotton hives in fall or spring, as I 

 will not have them any longer in my yard. It is a 

 clumsy and unhandy hive; and colonies in such fall 

 short of Simplicity and chaff in storing honey, about 

 30 lbs. per hive in one season. I would by no means 

 make or buy another such hive in future. 



I shall get about 1000 lbs. of honey this season. 

 Fred Alderfer, near here, has already that amount, 

 and expects a good deal more from 30 colonies. He 

 makes fdn., extractors, sections — in fact, all kinds 

 of bee material. 



A young swarm of my neighbor's increased itself 

 to 4, but no surplus so far. Last year I got only 

 about 6 lbs. comb. I had no extractor then, flad I 

 had one, 1 might probably got extracted honey, say 

 25 or 30 lbs. I keep all queens clipped. About 3 

 days after the swarm has left the hive, I examine 

 closely and cut out all ceils save the largest. This 

 puts a certain stop to second swarming. After the 

 young queen is found laying, I clip, and thus have 

 no trouble whatever in swarming. It's a certain 

 cure for deserting, as well as for absconding in the 

 spring of the year. Another advantage is, when 2 

 or more swarms issue at the same time, to prevent 

 their clustering together. If the queens can not ac- 

 company the swarms, why, they will return to their 

 old separate homes, where each will find their queen 

 and an empty hive. I clip only one'wing. 



Hatfield, Pa., July 19, 1883. E. K. Blanck, M. D. 



Thank you, friend B.,ior your kind words. 

 I certainly supposed that]it was asjyou stat- 

 ed, that you stopped forj want *of a honey- 



knife. Well, either you or I made a mis- 

 take ; but we have too much business even 

 yet to stop to see who was at fault ; neither 

 do I remember sending you a wheel without 

 charge. But when I heard of your mishap 

 I presume I felt an anxiety to help you, just 

 as I like to be helped when I am crowded. I 

 am glad of your report of Mrs. Cotton's hive, 

 because it has been suggested, as an excuse 

 for the great prices she charges for them, 

 that they give greater yields of honey than 

 other kinds of hives. 



]adi^§^ 



fi WOULD say to " Maggie " (p. 396), I can not but 

 think the greatest reason of bees leaving the 

 ^^* hive is hiving them too near to where they 

 clustered. I have kept from 30 to "iO swarms for the 

 last eight years, and in that time have had but one 

 swarm leave. My hives stand in a pear and peach 

 orchard between two apple orchards; as they seem 

 to prefer an apple-tree they usually cluster from 

 two to six rods from the hives. I have my hives 

 ready beforehand ; and just where I want them to 

 stand, I hive just as quietly and just as soon as pos- 

 sible. The swarm I spoke of leaving came out on a 

 very windy day and clustered at the foot of a peach- 

 tree. Situated as they were, I concluded the most 

 convenient way for me would be to set the hive 

 down by them; as I was very busy I took the old- 

 time way, and let them stay there till night. The 

 next morning they left for the woods, without clus- 

 tering. Alice. 

 North Woleott, N. Y., July 11, 1883. 



I feel as if I must speak once, and let you know 

 my luck with my bees. Well, one died last winter; 

 the other, a nice swarm, came out two weeks ago. 

 They alighted about 20 feet high on a cherry-tree. 1 

 had no one to climb that height, and they hung an 

 hour. I thought when they left I could alight them 

 again, or could find some one that could climb; but 

 they left. Now, I have given up having any more. 

 I will agree with Mrs. Harrison, that it is not too 

 hard wort for women, if the bees will only be ac- 

 commodating enough to alight on my little trees, so I 

 could hive them, as I do not feel afraid of them. 

 Last year, with a boy's help, I hived a swarm. No 

 sooner done, than a neighbor had a swarm, and they 

 called on me, and I went there. A peddler came 

 along, and I asked him to saw the limb off. 



From your friend and well-wisher,— 



Westport, Conn., June 25, 1883. 



May I be permitted to make a brief statement 

 with reference to a paragraph in Mr. Hutchinson's 

 article in July Gleanings? With full appreciation 

 of the kindness of Mr. Hutchinson's intentions, I 

 am pained that he should have thought it necessary 

 to make in our behalf a public defense against what 

 was only an implied — or perhaps, rather, a hypo- 

 thetical — charge. The defense being made, I am 

 compelled to say, in behalf of the truth, that Mr. 

 Hutchinson very much misunderstood me; that I 

 did not make the remark he attributes to me, nor 

 did I say any thing intended to convey to him the 

 idea that we paid our girl " five dollars a week." 



I may have said that we would gladly have paid 

 that amount for competent help, and I, probably, did 



