THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



585 



tain straighter combs than otherwise. 

 It is a little more costly than small 

 starters, but it more than repays 

 double in getting more and nicer 

 comb honey; and for the " fishbone " 

 part, the bee-keepers themselves are 

 to blame, by telling and writing about 

 it. 1 have sold a good many thousands 

 of pounds of comb honey, and I never 

 heard anything of " fishbone" until 

 the other day, when I sold a crate to a 

 man (who heretofore was a subscriber 

 of the American Bee Jouunal); 

 he remarked something about '• tish- 

 bony honey," when I asked him if he 

 had not read about that in a bee- 

 paper. " Well, you have got me 

 now," he replied. " I don't think 

 that I would have noticed any ' fish- 

 bone ' if I had not read about it." 

 This shows that some of our bee- 

 keepers are going to extremes, and 

 tell of it in the bee-papers, to the dis- 

 gust of themselves and the fraternity. 

 There can surely be no objections 

 made if even whole sheets of the 

 " extra thin " foundation is used in 

 the sections, but it is unwise, and 

 with no economy, to use any heavier 

 foundation that 10 or 11 square feet to 

 the pound. 



For the past 4 days my bees have 

 been very busy on fall flowers, but 

 mainly on wild buckwheat. This is 

 the first time in seventeen years that 

 I will get any wild buckwheat honey 

 to speak of. If the weather is good 

 for another week. I will probably 

 have about 2,000 lbs. of surplus from 

 it. The wheat and barley stubble- 

 fields are fairly covered with wild 

 buckwheat, on which the bees are 

 swarming all day. 



One or two of my colonies have been 

 swarming ; that is, I have had 1 or 2 

 swarms nearly every day for the past 

 10 days, until yesterday. The hives 

 are boiling over with bees. Only one 

 year heretofore, I had 2 swarms as 

 late as Aug. 23, which gathered about 

 75 pounds of honey each, that fall. 



Theilmanton,<x Minn., Sept. 2, 1887. 



Gleanings. 



Preprint Bees for Winter. 



G. M. DOOLITTLE. 



That prince among bee-keepers of 

 twenty years ago, Elisha Gallup, once 

 wrote that August and September 

 were the months in which to prepare 

 bees for winter ; and after the experi- 

 ence of last fall and winter (which 

 winter was the worst season for bees 

 ever known in this locality, they being 

 confined to their hives on the summer 

 stands for five months without flight), 

 I am ready to agree with Mr. Gallup 

 exactly. 



A year ago I commenced getting 

 the bees ready in August, finishing in 

 September, and I never had bees 

 winter as well during a severe winter 

 in all of my 18 years of experience. 

 As I am again getting ready for 

 next winter, I thought perhaps some 

 would like to know how I did it. By 

 beginning at this date to put all in 

 readiness as far as possible, I give the 

 bees a chance to get their stores for 

 winter placed just where they wish 



them, so that, by the middle of Octo- 

 ber, they are ready to go into that 

 quiescent state so conducive to the 

 best results. Working along this line, 

 I proceed as follows : 



I go to each hive, open it, and care- 

 fully remove each comb, noting the 

 amount of bees, age of queen, square 

 inches of brood, and pounds of honey. 

 The pounds of honey are found by 

 weighing a few combs of varying 

 fullness till the eye gets so trained 

 that every comb can be counted off as 

 to weight" of honey with an accuracy 

 approaching perfection, while the 

 square inches of brood is gotten by 

 measuring a few different-sized 

 patches, when it is easy to estimate it 

 afterward. The age of the queen is 

 found by looking at the last year's 

 record, if her wings are clipped ; if 

 not clipped, I know she is of the pres- 

 ent year's rearing, as the wings of all 

 my queens are clipped in fruit-bloom, 

 and the amount of bees is known by 

 observing their appearance on the 

 combs. When I go over the hives in 

 this way, I have some pieces of sec- 

 tions so that, as soon as a hive is 

 closed, I can write down all about the 

 condition of the inside. The piece of 

 section may read something like this : 

 " Aug. 20, 1887 ; 20 lbs. honey ; 4.50 sq. 

 inches brood. Bees, plenty, with good 

 Italian queen, reared in '85." 



This piece is now laid on top of the 

 honey-board or quilt to the hive, and 

 the cover put on, when two little flat 

 stones are put on the cap to tell me 

 that, inside that hive, they are short 

 of honey, but have brood to spare. 

 For instance, if the stone is at the 

 front right-hand corner, it says, 

 " short ot honey ;" if at the left back 

 corner, it says, " brood to spare ;" if 

 at the right back corner, it says, 

 " honey to spare ;" and if at the left 

 front corner, it says, " short of bees 

 and brood ;" while, if all is as I wish 

 it for winter, a stone is placed in the 

 center of the cover. In this way I 

 make these little stones tell me, at a 

 glance over the apiary, just what each 

 hive contains, so that it is now but a 

 few minutes' work to go over the yard 

 and equalize all so that each is in a 

 similar condition for winter, when the 

 little stones are taken off and slipped 

 under the bottom-board of the hive, 

 where they belong when not in use. 



If any are still short of stores (25 

 lbs. is what I allow each colony) after 

 equalizing, I feed to make up the de- 

 ficiency, generally using honey, as I 

 prefer it to sugar stores after repeated 

 trials. 



As I write this out. It looks like a 

 long, tedious job, and some will doubt- 

 less say that, rather than go through 

 all this operation, they will simply 

 lift the hives as heretofore, and 

 " guess " that all have enough to 

 carry them through. But to handle 

 three or four hives is to become an 

 expert ; and it the readers will only 

 try it, they will soon find that, after a 

 little, they can count off honey, brood 

 and bees, as fast as they can handle 

 frames, which, together with the sat- 

 isfaction of knoioing just what each 

 hive contains, will never allow them 

 to go back to the " lifting-guessing " 

 plan again. 



UNITING NUCLEI — NEW PLAN. 



Then I have also learned a new plan 

 of uniting nuclei or queen-rearing 

 colonies for winter, so that they can 

 be ready early, instead of being only 

 poorly fixed at best when left till 

 October, as they usually are. It is as 

 follows : 



The latter part of August, select 

 the strongest ones from the lot, or as 

 many as you desire to winter, and 

 then go to the other nuclei and 

 take all but a little brood away, 

 dividing the brood among those se- 

 lected for winter. In doing this I 

 take all the bees along (less the queen) 

 that adhere to their frames. These 

 frames of bees and brood are placed 

 right in the selected hives, and so far 

 I have not had a single bee or queen 

 killed. The bees hatching from this 

 brood are the ones which go through 

 the winter, and I like uniting in the 

 brood form much better than in the 

 bee form. The bees left in the now 

 small nuclei are used up, and mostly 

 die of old age by the time I am 

 through queen-rearing for the season. 



Borodino.© N. Y. 



FOP tne American Bee Joonud. 



Bone Aslies anil Tartaric kli 



JESSE OREN, M. D. 



I will be thankful to Prof. N. W. 

 McLain, should he be pleased to give 

 his reason, through the American 

 Bee Journal, for mixing bone-flour 

 with the rve flour," as a stimulant in 

 brood-rearing. What is there in bone 

 ashes that should give it precedent 

 over other substitutes? Who is the 

 author of the discovery, and when 

 was it made? What induced the trial? 

 I cannot go and see Mr. McLain, and 

 interrogate him on the matter, and 

 hence request him to surmise the rest 

 of this possible article, and give an- 

 swers accordingly. 



Again, I am at a loss to know why 

 it is that tartaric acid is mixed with 

 honey when preparing feed for winter 

 use. Many ot our best bee-keepers do 

 it, and doubtless many of them have 

 reasons to give. I am at a loss to give 

 theoretical reasons for this practice. 

 Honey may sour, and might require an 

 alkaline to neutralize the acid, etc. 

 It will not be satisfactory to say that 

 bees live through the winter when 

 their feed is so adulterated, since that 

 argument would prove too much and 

 could not be maintained. We are so 

 apt to copy success, and cry out, 

 " after which, on account of which." 

 All the M. D.'s understand this well. 

 Men live after all sorts of treatment. 

 So do bees. 



I feel like calling on Mr. Heddon to 

 go to the bottom of the acid treatment, 

 and so put steps under my teet while 

 I am trying to climb the ladder. I 

 will accept theory— the " r, )i.en 

 theory " — if no demonstrated fac.s ex- 

 ist for this sour-honey winter feed. 



Laporte City,ot Iowa. 



[Will Messrs. McLain and Heddon 

 kindly reply to the above article?— 

 Ed.] 



