June 



THE POMOLOGIST. 



79 



Water the Bees. 



There is no insect more fond of water 

 than tlic honey-bee. In fact, water is be- 

 lieved to be absohitoly indispensable to the 

 successful operations of the hive. Water 

 should at all times be near the bee stand' 

 where it will be easily accessible, and at the 

 same time not to endanger the lives of the 

 bees by drowning, as in open trouths, pails, 

 or tubs. Take cither of the ve.ssels men- 

 tioned, fill up with water, and cover with a 

 piece of coarse canvass, such as comes 

 around bales of sheeting, and you have a 

 most perfect watering place for bees. The 

 canvass should be made to rest upon the 

 surface of the water. The water oozes up 

 through the canvass, upon which the bees 

 may light without danger of being cbowtied, 

 as in open vessels. 



For the Western Pomologist. 



Do Bees Injure Fruit Blossoms? 



The question is often asked, " Do you 

 really think that bees in any manner injure 

 the fruit by sipping the nectar or gathering 

 the pollen from the blossoms ?" 



In the first place I will say, that I think 

 that this idea of bees injuring blossoms of 

 any kind originated with ignorant and su- 

 perstitious people ; and to illustrate, I must 

 tell a story. I once lived near a lady of the 

 above class, who in the spring was C(mtinu- 

 ally complaining that Gallup's bees were 

 carrying away all her fruit blossoms, and 

 that she should raise no fruit in consequence 

 thereof But as it turned out, she raised an 

 abundant crop in spite of the bees. It is 

 but four or five years, since the inhabitants 

 of Wenliam, MassachuSL-tts, decided that 

 there must be no more bees kept within the 

 town limits on account of their destroying 

 the fruit blossoms. Any one would have 

 supposed that the days of Salem witchcrafr 

 would have cured succeeding generations of 

 the old Bay State of such ignorance and 

 superstition, but it appears that it did not. 



The facts of the ease are-— that instead of 

 the bees injuring the fruit blossom or crop 

 in any case whatever, they are an absolute 

 assistance. So much so, that in the immedi- 

 ate vicinity of an apiary in some seasons, 

 there will be an abundance of fruit, where- 

 as in localities where no bees were kept 

 there was comparatively little. Bees are a 

 great assistance in fertilizing blossoms that 

 otherwise (or left to nature) would not 

 become fertilized, and the clover or buck- 

 wheat patch that produces the most honey 



produces the most seed invariably. The 

 honey in the blossom, it not taken out by 

 bees and other insects, would be dried up by 

 the sun or washed away with rain, conse- 

 quently would be a dead loss; but if we have 

 bees to gather it, it is so much gain, not 

 only to the owner of the bees, but to the 

 fruit grower and the farmer. I would not 

 accuse any one of ignorance or superstition, 

 but wiU say this much. Any one who 

 accuses bees of injuring fruit blossoms has 

 not carefully investigated the subject. The 

 old lady seeing the bees at work on her fruit 

 blossoms supposed that they were carrying 

 away the blosssoms entire, and so reported 

 without making any examination whatever. 

 The pomologist should certainly keep a few 

 swarms of bees for the purpose of their as- 

 sistance in the fertalization of the fruit 

 blossoms at times when nature is at fault on 

 account of a peculiar state of the weather. — 

 E. Oallup, Orchard, Iowa. 



Ventil.^ting Honey Caps. — A corres- 

 pondent of the American Bee Journal, be- 

 lieves that the caps of bee hives should be 

 sufficiently ventilated to relievo them from 

 a confined and melting heat, when the bees 

 are storing honey in them in hot weather, 

 and to carry off all dampness in cold weath- 

 er ; while at some other times, little or no 

 ventilation. It is necessary, therefore, to 

 have some method by which ventilation can 

 be easily regulated. Id the absence of a 

 better plan, the followiiig will be simple and 

 eflectual. 



For ventilators bore four holes of one inch 

 each in diameter, in the sides of the cap ' 

 cover these holes or ventilators on the innep 

 side with wire cloth ; and on the <mtside put 

 on the ventilating button, made as follows' 

 Take a strip of board, three inches long, one 

 inch and a half wide, and five-si.xteenths of 

 an inch thick ; make the ends oval, and cut 

 away half the thickness of the strip or but- 

 ton clear across its width, and to the length 

 of one inch and a quarter. In the center of 

 the button bore a hole to receive a light, one 

 inch screw, to hold it in place, and around 

 which it revolves. To mount it, turn the 

 halved side of the button towards the cap, 

 and lay it horizontally and centrally below 

 the ventilator, so that the upper edge of the 

 former will come flush with the lower edge 

 of the latter; drive in your screw, which 

 should be very firm in the cap and somewhat 

 loose in the button. Now turn up the 

 halved end of the button over the ventilator, 

 which will then be somewhat darkened, yet 

 admit air freely, and be measurably protected 

 against driving storms. With the other end 

 of the button, tlic air can be entirely shut 

 off, or regul.ited at will. 



I have for many years used the device 

 above described on some of my hives, with 

 entire satisfaction. 



Loss OP Bees. — A correspondent of the 

 Ohio Farmer writes : I have lost one thou- 

 sand dollars' worth of bees this winter, on 

 account of having them fly out to disgorge 

 themselves. All of the fall bees died in old 

 stocks, so what few remain are weak. Some 

 of our bee men have lost all of their bees, 

 some have one left who kept thirty or forty 

 hives; we have the blues over our bees, but 

 I for one will try to get agoing if nothing 

 happens. I lost seventy-five Italian colonies. 

 I have kept bees forty-eight years and never 

 lost the same worth in all my life before. 



The use of woolen gloves when operating 

 among bees is objectionable, as everything 

 that is rough or hairy has an extremely 

 irritating influence on bees. 



Bleaching Beeswajc. 



A correspondent of the Department of 

 Agriculture, writing from New York, gives 

 a convenient and simple process for bleach- 

 ing beeswax : 



"The yellow wax is first melted in a 

 kettle, and then is dipped out into a long tin 

 vessel that will hold two or three gallons, 

 and which has a row of small holes about 

 the diameter of a knitting needle in the 

 bottom. This vessel is fixed over a cj'linder 

 of wood two feet in length and fifteen inches 

 in diameter, which is made to revolve like a 

 grindstone in one end of a trough of water 

 two and one-half feet in width, ten to fifteen 

 feet in length, and one foot in depth. As 

 the melted wax falls in small streams on 

 this wet revolving cylinder it flattens out 

 into a thin ribbon and float ofl" toward the 

 other end of the trough of water. It is then 

 dipped out with a skimmer, {that may be 

 made of osier twigs,) .spread on a table with 

 a top made of small willow rods covered 

 with a clean white cloth, and then exposed 

 in this way to the sun until bleached. 



Bee Miller— How to destroy it. 



Much may be done in spring to extermi- 

 nate the millers for the season from your 

 colonies. The worms are in the hives ; the 

 eggs having been deposited there by the 

 parent miller the fall before, they are kept 

 alive by the animal heat of the colonj'. 

 Early in the spring these worms, having 

 done all the harm they personally can among 

 the combs, being gnawed out hy the bees, 

 drop to the bottom board, and "cast about " 

 for a place to weave their cocoon, from 

 which they will emerge millers; and if 

 females, capable of depositing, as it is esti- 

 mated, forty thousand eggs each. As every 

 one of these eggs may, uiider favorable cir- 

 cumstances, become a worm, and as there 

 are four generations of them in a single 

 season, it is easy to see why they so easily 

 take possession of weak cobmies. 



A jierfect remedy is found if the bee-keeper 

 can destroj' every worm about his hive in 

 the spring. This is not Lard to do, if ever3' 

 morning the hives are visited and the bottom 

 board examined. There the worm will be 

 found, and can easily be killed. If n<it 

 found, as the day grows warm it will crawl 

 into some crevice and "four generations of 

 forty thousand each may be provided for !" 

 If this is done for a few mornings when the 

 bees commence to work and "clean house" 

 in the spring, there will be no millers hatch 

 about your own hives. Careless bee-keepers 

 in the neighborhood may allow some to 

 comcto oou, but the miller does not fly far 

 from 'the place where it hatches. — Ex. 



