212 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Sept. 



HOAV JDOOLITTLE AVORKS WITH THli 



siicrio:N BOXES. 



^OVICE asks the question, page 1S7. how to avoid 

 having so many partly lilled boxes, and so few 

 lull ones. Perhaps we can answer in no bettei* 

 way than by giving our ])lan of operation with them. 

 Oil page l.jj, Vol. II, we told you when, in our opin- 

 ion, boxes should be put ou. When putting on boxes, 

 (if we have them) we put in the centre case, two or 

 three boxes (according as the case holds, we use some 

 two and some three box cases), which are nearly full 

 of comb, such as Novice will have next year. As the 

 Lees commence work first in these boxes nearly lilled 

 ■with comb, they are ready to come off first. Tliey 

 Will generally be well sealed by the time those on 

 each side of them are two-thirds full. As soon as 

 sealed, take out, and put empty boxes (rtith startero in 

 always) in their places. Now by doing this, it will be 

 seen that there never comes a time when the whole 

 set is all scaled at once, as we used to get with the 

 large boxes when we had such hard work to get them 

 into a second set of boxes to work once more. In a 

 few days more there will be from C to 10 of those that 

 were near the centre ones which you took out, 

 ready to take ou* also ; and now is the time if you 

 have side boxes, to raise them to the top and put the 

 empty ones in their places ; and so on, having them 

 build comb at the sides and store the honey at the top. 

 Every apiarian knows, or should know, what his re- 

 dources for honey are, and how long, as a rule, tliey 

 last. Now, about a week before your harvest of white 

 honey will come to a close, when you take out full 

 sections at the top and raise those from the sides up, 

 instead of putting in boxes at the sides, have your 

 board that keys the side boxes, tight up to the brood 

 chamber, thereby throwing all your force of bees into 

 the top boxes ; or if only top boxes are being used 

 shove all your partly lilled boxes into the centre, put- 

 ting the empty ones on the outside. Thus you will see 

 that at the fore part of the honey harvest we get them 

 at work in as many boxes as we can, and at the latter 

 part we strive to make tliem finish all they have com- 

 menced work in. In this way, we have but few boxes 

 that are part white and part dark honey or but partly 

 filled, at tlie end of the season. It is not very com- 

 forting to ah apiarian's feelings to have the harvest of 

 white honey come to a close with from 20 to 40 sec- 

 tions to each hive, nearly full but none full enough to 

 come off, and to be obliged to have them finished off 

 with buckwheat, which decreases the price by one- 

 half. Also, in this way we get the larger part of oar 

 dark or second quality of honey stored in the brood 

 chamber for the bees to winter on ; for as the nights 

 grov/ cool the queen ceases to keep up her brood and 

 so the combs are filled with the dark honey which in 

 our experience proves just as good. 



John F. Laflerty asks on page 154, "Why do bees in 

 good solid box hives winter better than in frame 

 hives ?" We deny that such is the case. AVhen we 

 first commenced to keep bees we could count within a 

 radius of two miles, 150 or more stocks of bees in such 

 hives. All went well till the winter of '71 and '7-2, 

 when they commenced dying ofi". They have de- 

 creased till at the present time scarcely one remains. 

 And this is a general rule all over the country, here 

 in York State, while there are plenty of frame hives 

 with bees in. As long ago as we can remember, fath- 

 er had a box hive that lived through the winter when 

 all the rest would die, and the reason was soon ascer- 

 tained. It had a Di inch hole near the top for an en- 

 trance, that being the only entrance they had. In 

 other words they bad upward ventilation. Other 



hives were fixed the same way, and the mortality de- 

 creased by one-half. 



We would like to know of Mr. Porter, page 183, if he 

 is sure the swarm he took the Hi lbs. of honey from, 

 had no queen ? Did he examine the combs after he 

 put the boxes od, to see ? Queens get into stocks in 

 mysterious ways sometimes. For instance : we found 

 a stock that had a good laying queen a day or two 

 previous, qneenless ; and upon opening a queenlcss 

 stock some 40 feet distant, we found tlie identical 

 queen filling the combs with eggs. We can give no 

 satisfactory reason, for she had to pass three or lour 

 other stocks to get to this hive. With us, bees will 

 not build comb in boxes while qneenless ; and to tell 

 when a stoi;k has a laying <iueen, all that is necessary 

 during the honey harvest, is to look in tlie boxes. 



If our friends Savage and ICellogg will notice, they 

 will sec it is impossible for the bees to get honey out 

 of the pumpkin or sijuash without getting liberally 

 covered with the yellow dust Irom them. We alwaj's 

 regret when we see Ihem commence to work on these 

 plants, for tliey soil the nice white comb so soon. It 

 is only when honey is scarce that they work on them 

 of any account with us. If any one has seen bees 

 pack the dust from these fiowers in tlieir pollen bas- 

 kets, tliey have seen more than wc have, and pollen 

 must be thus packed to be used by the bees. 



G. M. DooLiTTLE, Borodino, N. Y. 



There is somethiug stvauge about queen's 

 getting into colonies unexpectedly. Several 

 years ago we had a queen that was nearly 

 black, and entirely wingless. She suddenly 

 disappeared, and was fjund some time after- 

 wai'd in an adjoining colony. The curious 

 part of Ihis was that this dark queen produced 

 very tinely marked Italians and had changed 

 the colony in which she was found. AVe sup- 

 posed then, it was done while extracting. In 

 handling combs, the queen sometimes drops 

 oft", or they may swarm at times unnoticed, 

 and if the queen is unable to fly, she would be 

 very likely to get into another colony. We 

 presume queen rearers have' many times been 

 unjustly blamed iu consequence of such mis- 

 baps. 



— ^^♦♦^ m — 



Some of our friends, we fear are a little thoughtless in 

 their requests. We have been asked to label pieces of old 

 silver, "seeds '', that the P. II. might send them at a low 

 rate of postage ; cases of section boxes, ''glass", that the 

 express men might handle them more carefully, and 

 goods going to Canada, "samples", that they might pass 

 the custom house at a less duty, etc. ; of late, we have 

 several times been desired to ship goods to certain parties 

 without attaching any card or label that might indicate 

 where they came from, that the person who made the 

 sale, might obtain a higher i)rice for the goods than was 

 given on our price lists. Now we are willing and anxious 

 to accommodate, but should be very sorry if friendship, 

 money, or anything else, would be a sufficient argument 

 to induce us to deceive even the express or mail depart- 

 ment, or to kee]) a fellow being in ignorance of the real 

 value given on printed price lists, of goods he may want. 

 Every one interested in b.ee-culture is entitled to all the 

 information that we can give him, and we should be far 

 from doing as we would be done by, did we by omission, 

 or commis.sion deprive him of this. Dear friends it is 

 much the better way to have every thing plain and open in 

 business matters, even at the exi)ense of having to work 

 for nothing occasionally ; if .>ou can feel you have helped 

 somebody else, it will all come right some time. We en- 

 deavor, as far as we can to allow a small commission, to 

 those who take orders for us, and we will tr^ to pay you 

 for your time and postage, if nothing more. We prefer to 

 pay for all work that is done for us, or for Gleauings. 



