1883 



JUVENILE GLEANINGS. 



565 



10 cents a colony. Tell him I will give him 

 50 cents a colony if he will warrant ours, 

 and he may have all the granulated sugar to 

 feed them he wishes, and he may also double 

 them up as strong as he pleases. Now, 

 then, may be there is a chance for him to 

 make us a visit and make some money be- 

 sides. If he does not take the offer up, it is 

 open to any other bee-friend. If I could 

 give the apiary my personal supervision, as 

 I used to do, I should not be so much 

 troubled about loss ; but with our great bus- 

 iness it is now impossible ; and our boys who 

 have been trained for the work are all going 

 off to school. I am glad they are going off, 

 for I would rather lose the bees than to have 

 thp boys lose an opportunity for getting an 

 education. I feel very much pleased, friend 

 II., to get such kind words as yours from my 

 pupils; and when reading your letter I made 

 up my mind that there would be no trouble 

 at all about your succeeding, if your en- 

 thusiasm held out. and vou followed the A 

 13 C book as you have been doing, and did 

 every thing up well and thoroughly. Text- 

 books are excellent helps, but they can never 

 make up for want of energy and thorough- 

 ness. Perhaps I should mention to your 

 bee-friend that we now have between 800 

 and 400 colonies ; but I presume he would 

 double them up to one-half that amount, or 

 still smaller. 



SOME PRACTICAL, ITIATTERS FROM 

 FRIEND POND. 



HIVING BEES ON THE SABBATH. 



fAM an advocate of a strict observance of the 

 Sabbath; not in the letter only, but in the ?pir- 

 it. I hold it to be sinful to do augrht that will 

 cause offense to any one — that is, legilimate of- 

 fense; still, I believe we must take care of those 

 things that a wise and merciful God has given us, 

 and not allow loss or injury to any property that he 

 has allowed us to come in possession r>f. In regard 

 to hiving bees on the Sabbath, had God intended we 

 should not do so, he certainly would not have given 

 them the swarming fever on thai day. We, how- 

 ever, must make these matter? questions of individ- 

 ual conscience. I feel it my duty to stay at home 

 from church, and hive any swarms that issue on 

 the Sabbath. Did I not do so, I should feel chat I 

 was not taking proper care of the possessions an all- 

 wise Creator had bestowed upon me. I think the 

 best creed to be observed in the matter is the one 

 shown up by the slave down South, whose master on 

 Saturday cut down a large quantity of grass, and on 

 Sunday desired the slave to go out and take care of 

 it. The slave remonstrated, on the ground that he 

 was pious, and considered it wrong to work on the 

 Sabbath. The master then said to him, '"Doesn't 

 the Bible teach you that, if an ox or an ass fall into 

 a pit on the Sabbath, it is right to help it out? " 



"Yes," the slave, "but it doesn't say nuflfin' about 

 diggin' a hole Saturday arternoon for the ox to tum- 

 ble into." 



If we take this view, and do all we can on Satur- 

 day by dividing, or something of the kind to prevent 

 swarming on Sunday, or if we do the best we can 

 any way, and a swarm does issue on the Sabbath, I 

 think we should be blamed by our heavenly Father 



if we did not take such steps as were necessary to 

 save it. 



PREVENTING THE FASTENING OF FRAMES IN UPPER 



TO those'in lower story. 

 As an experiment in a two-story hive, working 

 both stories with regular brood-frames, I took a 

 piece of enamel cloth, twice as large as the top of 

 hive, folded it so as to leave the enamel on the out- 

 side of both sides, and placed it over the frames, 

 leaving a space about 1)4 inches wide the whole 

 [ length of the hive, for the bees to crawl through. 

 j I then put on the upper story filled with brood- 

 ! frames of fdn. The bees immediately occupied the 

 ; upper story, and worked in it as readily as they did 

 I in other hives where they had no obstruction what- 

 i ever between the frames. They filled the frames 

 with honey at once; the queen did not go into the 

 upper story at all, and I got a fine yield of extracted 

 honey without any sticking of frames together at 

 all. This was a single trial, but it worked so satis- 

 factorily that I shall try it next season on a larger 

 scale. 



preparing bees for shipment. 

 I have met with good success in moving bees in 

 the hottest weather, when prepared as follows: I 

 j first securely fasten the frames so they can not 

 move in any direction, and then nail a sheet of wire 

 cloth over the bottom of the hive. For the top, I 

 make a rim i;4 in. wide, similar to the rim of a Sim- 

 plicity cover. Fasten it on top of the hive, and cov- 

 er it with wire cloth. The bottom-board and cover, 

 1 fasten above and below the hive, with 8 strips of 

 i>i-inch stuff about 4 inches longer than the hive is 

 deep, by nailing one of these strips to each corner 

 of the hive, and nailing bottom and cover to the 

 ends. By this means I give ample ventilation from 

 below, and plenty of breathing-space above; at the 

 same time, I secure the wire cloth from any possible 

 chance of injury; and as but one package is made, a 

 considerable saving in express charges is made also. 

 While I do not consider the plan given by friend 

 Carroll, on page 440, to be safe, owing to the lack of 

 breathing-space above, I am satisfied that the plan I 

 give is as safe as any that can be devised, when we 

 wish to send the whole hive economically with the 

 bees. I have shipped a large colony on ten frames, 

 each containing three or more pounds of honey, 200 

 miles in July, in a Simplicity hive, with the loss of 

 hardly a bee. 



close-topped sections. 

 I have become convinced that close-topped sec- 

 tions, or close tops to broad frames for sections, are 

 a positive detriment, unless some convenient plan 

 when they are used can be adopted for giving venti- 

 lation. My bees have no shade, except such as I can 

 give them by some artificial means, and I find that 

 the colonies storing comb honey would loaf outside 

 the hive, while those that were storing in brood- 

 frames in upper story kept busily about their work. 

 Thinking lack of ventilation, and fear of melting 

 down combs, was the cause of the loafing, I removed 

 a brood-frame and spread the others out so they 

 spaced evenly. In a few moments a decided change 

 took place, and I then reduced the width of tops of 

 brood-frames, and after that I had very little trou- 

 ble of the kind. " One swallow does not make a 

 summer," I know; but the hint was just as good as 

 a kick to me; and hereafter I shall go in for open 

 tops to frames and sections. 



DO BEES remove EGGS FROM ONE HIVE TO ANOTHER? 



Since the arrival of Aug. Gleanings I put a frame 



