7?8 



GLiJAisrli^GS m bee culture. 



1)eC!. 



by the wlnjrs she crawled out on to try hand. Be- 

 fore I could get free use of the other hand she drop- 

 ped off into the grass. Just as I touched her wings 

 to picli her up she took wing and flew away. I sat 

 down in front of the hive, and watched (except 

 when I was nodding, for it was soon after dinner) 

 for half an hour, but did not see her return. Two 

 days later I looked again; found no cells, lots of 

 eggs, and my dented queen. If the queen was 

 hailed in either case, I saw no sign of it. Now, were 

 those queens balled? did the bees harrass them for 

 so long, or did they voluntarily cease laying under 

 the circumstances for a few days? 



VALUABLE QUEENS. 



I had two queens laying as late as Nov. 10. One 

 of them hatched in August. She is the offspring of 

 an Italian queen hatched in June, which I have 

 reason to believe was impurely mated, although 

 she produced three - banded workers. The other 

 batched about Oct. 25, and the first platoons of brood 

 are not drone either. 



HOW LONO CAN BEES LIVE ON AIR? 



In preparing a certain colony for winter, I must 

 some way have shaken the queen out on the ground ; 

 for four days afterward, I think it was, I had oc- 

 casion to set the hive off, when I lound the queen 

 and a lot of bees clustered to one of the bricks. I 

 put her on the portico of the hive, to see how the 

 bees would receive her. Before I, In my obtuse- 

 ness, could be certain they were hostile, they gave 

 her a death-stab. Injured as she was, I caged her in 

 the hive, and brushed the benumbed bees — they 

 would not shake off — into it. Although I gave 

 them two good smokings, those that stayed at homp, 

 I suppose it was, killed off half of them. The 

 weather was cold, and but few bees had been flying 

 out. How long, I wonder, did it take those bees to 

 lose the scent? Had they been fasting all that time? 

 If so, how long can bees live without any thing to 

 eat? 



DOOLITTLE'S PLAN FOB RIPENING HONEY. 



What is Doolittle's plan for ripening comb 

 honey? Is it to let it be uncovered, or slightly 

 covered in a thin-walled honey-house? Not having 

 been a reader of Gleanings until this year, I am 

 not acquainted with all the good things that have 

 appeared in its columns. Geo. F. Robbins. 



Mechanlcsburg, O., Nov. 29, 188:$. 



Friend R., the trouble with the transfer- 

 ring was, you followed the letter of my di- 

 rections, and not the spirit. If you will look 

 again in the ABC book, I think you will 

 find I gave, as a reason for recommending 

 the time of fruit-bloom, that ihe bees were 

 then gathering honey, and would not rob. 

 ]Now, if your bees had been robbing right 

 along as" you say, and were not gathering 

 honey the day you chose, you might have 

 been sure there would have been trouble. I 

 am glad you described the trouble you had, 

 for it will be a useful lesson to others, in re- 

 gard to doing such work as that when the 

 bees are not busy. I would not advise, as a 

 rule, waiting for white clover, for the hives 

 would then be likely to contain so much 

 honey that it would be seriously in the way 

 of cutting combs, etc. — I entirely agree 

 with you, that a colony of bees are very 

 much more apt to be " bossy," and contest 

 interference, when they are l)uilt up strong ; 

 but I think I am surely right in saying that 

 bees can, as a rule, be handled without veil 



or smoke, when honey is coming in plenti- 

 fully. Where there is no honey, it would be 

 sometimes almost madness to attempt to 

 handle bees without smoke. When bees are 

 gatliering honey every day, almost every bee 

 in the hive has his body distended with hon- 

 ey — in fact, has honey glistening on the end 

 of his tongue. In this state it is a pretty 

 hard matter for them to sting, even if they 

 would, while a bee whose body is short and 

 light, looking as if he had not seen a square 

 meal of honey for a week, is pretty apt to be 

 ready to sting on short notice. Ask any old 

 bee-man near you, who handles bees, if that 

 is not his experience. In regard to transfer- 

 ring, great numbers of novices in the bus- 

 iness liave reported having transferred ac- 

 cording to the directions in the ABC book, 

 and yours was almost the tirst report of a 

 failure where they had the book before them 

 for a guide. — I do not see any thing unusual 

 in tliB fact that the queen stopped laying for 

 a day or two after being introduced to a 

 new colony. — Queens reared late in the sea- 

 snn will almost invariably lay late, and a 

 cluster of bees dnven out of their hive with 

 their bodies filled with honey will live sev- 

 eral dajs under the hive in the way you 

 state. Are you sure none of them left the 

 cluster, and gathered stores to bring in to 

 their starving companions? I have several 

 times found the queen Mith a few bees un- 

 der the bottom-board, and that is one reason 

 why I object to bottom-boards with any sort 

 of a crevice or crack underneath them. — 

 Doolittle's plan of rijiening honey is to have 

 a room so constructed as to be heated up by 

 the rays of the sun until the honey in the 

 open cells is evaporated to such a consisten- 

 cy that it Avill not run out, even when the 

 combs are overturned. In this condition it 

 will preserve its flavor, something as it does 

 when capped by the bees. 



SOUTH FLORIDA. 



BY REV. JAMES H. WHITE. 



f.HERE is a strip of land projecting from the 

 main body southward between the Atlantic 

 — ' Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico, around which 

 cluster many very remote historical assoclHtions. 

 and toward which many inquiring eyes are turned. 

 Let the reader take the map and trace the Atlantic 

 coast southward to Cape Canaveral. Here pause, 

 and remember that, from thispoint southward to the 

 Florida Keys, is the climatic paradise of the United 

 States. Nowhere else within our national domain 

 is there another region anywhere near its equal. 

 The bogus South Florida of the land speculators 

 extends so far north as to Include the regions 

 of New Smyrna, Daytona, DeLand, Sanford, Lees- 

 burg, and Brookville. All these places claim to be 

 in South Florida; but no part of the counties In 

 which these places are located are in South Florida, 

 The evident reason for this claim is, that " South 

 Florida" me.ins pine-apples, bananas, guavas, man- 

 goes, and other tropical fruit. But the real South 

 Florida lies south of the 28th parallel of latitude, 

 and is nearly tropical. By this, I mean nearly ex- 

 empt from frost. The no- frost area of the United 

 States is quite small; but what little there Is, Is 

 found in South Florida. It Is the only part of the 



