293 



CLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Dec. 



THIItTEEar GOO» COLO^IE*. AXD 450 



FOl AJBS or HO.XEV r«OM 0-\E, 



IX «»^E SEASOX. 



FULL PAnilCrLAKS. 



i-OUR postal is at baud, and in re])ly I would saj- 

 that the hive when it came here had lost a good 1 

 '^^ many bees, as one corner of the wire cloth had | 

 got loose : but the queen and about a gallon of bees ■ 

 were all O K. On the lourteenth dav of Feb. they 

 commenced to gather pollen, and brood rearing went 

 on nobly from that lime. I fed them SS pounds of cof- 

 fee A. sugar in syrup, and divided ihem in MAy. In 

 June and July I had seven swarms to come oll'^one 

 going to the limber. In July it became necessary for 

 nie to move them to a new locality, as I had to leave 

 the house I was in and take one some three hundred 

 yards from where I was living, so I divided them all, 

 making 10 colonies of them, placed them where they 

 were to stay, and placed boxes on the old stands to 

 catch the stragglers— putting them with the weakest 

 ones early in the morning. I do not thiak I lost one 

 •pint of bees in the move, and how the5' di I work. 



About the first of August I got a card of eggs from 

 Iriecd McMains: it was 50 hours on the road, and 

 raised IG fine cells and 2 workers. 



On July 7th ext. 25 lbs. honev, 



'* " 1« '' «>5 



" " 19 " 55 



•" " 30 " 65 " 



Aug. Sth " 70 " 



Sept. Sth " 30 " 



" " 15 '• UO '• 



450 For display at Fair. 



1 have 5 hives of 16 frames ; the balance, 10 frames, 

 are full of nice straight combs, and I think they have 

 all of 400 fts. of honey in the hives, sealed for winter. 



I can coimt 125 stocks of bees in this valley, all in 

 "l>ox hives, and they have not averaged 5 lbs. of honey 

 to the hive. They say this has not been a good year 

 for bees ; I have not seen a pound of honey for sale, 

 except the honey I sold, and some fancy jars from C. 

 O. Perrine. of Chicago ; they sell for So cents. I have 

 sold all of mine at 20 cents per pound, and it went 

 like hot cakes. 



Friend Xovice, I am a tinker, and not much on the 

 write, but I can follow you in all your tin parapher- 

 nalia pertaining to apiculture. Jas. S. Makkle. 



C'hanutPi iCan., Oct. 2,1 



^. S. I send you the diploma taken at the Fair here 

 for your extractor and my honey. J. S. M. 



HOME MADE IMPLEMEXTS, ETC. 



MAXY thanks to you for your article on Italiani- 

 zing, in June No. It was worth many dollars 

 ' to me. I first tried one caged queen cell. In 

 six houi-s after it was hatched I removed the old queen 

 and liberated her on a fi-ame of hatching bees. The next 

 day I foimd her dead in front of the hive. I then made 

 nuclei in one side of the hives and succeeded in getting 3 

 laying queens out of 9 hatched; the other six were 

 caught by musquito hawks (dragon flies) in their first 

 flight. The5e pests have been around my apiary in 

 swarms for a month past, but I think they will dis- 

 appear soon. Some days, as many as four or five 

 hundred would be in sight at one time. They come 

 in the gi-eatest numbers when drones are flying, and 

 between sunset and dark. 



As you have done so much towards reducing the 

 price of apiarian articles, and getting them within the 

 reach of all, I will try to describe three home made 

 ones that I am using. Take a lobster, salmon, or fruit 

 can and solder a piece of perforated tin over the open 



end vvith melted resin and beeswax. Then cut a half 

 inch hole through the perforated tin, and All the liole 

 with a piece of spocgc, and you have a feeder that 

 costs only a cent or two. 



WAX EXTRACTOK. 



Take a square o gallon coal oil can, cut it in two, so 

 thf.t it will make a pan about 1 inches deep to hold 

 the water. Then from another can cut out the top and 

 bottom, and set this in the top cf the first to confine 

 the steam. Make a shallow pan to catch the wax, by 

 turning up the four sides of a square i)iece of tin. 

 Solder a little tube into the last to rnn the wax out; 

 then make a frame of wooden strips, with thin cttton 

 tacked on the bott jm and sides, to hold the comb. 



Enclosed you will find a sketch of the scales I use 

 in weighing hives. A pair of them can be found he»e 

 on almost every plantation, and can be bought at the 

 price of old iron. One side of the bar weighs 220 

 pounds, and the other 85. If the little knobs arc worn 

 round where the pendants rest on them, they should 

 be filed to a sharp edge. 



Why do bees reverse nature's law by making the 

 current of air go in through ventilators above, and 

 out through the entrance': I noticed this on very 

 warm days, and the thermometer stood ten degrees 

 higher at the entrance than at the ventilators eight 

 inches above. 



I saw an article in some bee journal saying that- 

 bees gathered a poisonous honey from the jameston 

 weed, which 1 find is a mistake. It is now in bloom 

 here, and furnishes some pollen, but the cup is so 

 deep and narrow that they cannot reach the honey 

 which is secreted in large quantities. 



As bees have been gathering very little honey here 

 in the past two weeks, I concluded to have them build 

 some combs from molasses ; but the experiment was a 

 failure. They would not use it, although they take 

 sugar house syrup very readily, which is our cane 

 juice boiled down to the right consistency containing 

 both molasses and sugar. J. D Bedell. 



Franklin, St. Mary's P.irish, La., Aug, 14, "C. 



We have never uoticed the phenomena men- 

 tioned, because we have no ventilation except 

 at entrance, perhaps. Our bees send a stream 

 of air out at one side of entrance and in at the 

 other. We rather think the case you mention 

 was an exceptional one. Our readers will get 

 a clearer idea of the wax extractor b^' examin- 

 ing the diagram on page 44, Vol. II of Glean- 

 ings. 



^ ■»■ m - 



NOTES FROM OtK EXCHANGES. 



AMERICA>^ BEE JOUIiXAL. 

 ^iiACK Frost has already tinted the maples and 

 qWJ elms with r?d and yellow; even our gorgeous 

 fall flowers, golden rod and the asters are fast 

 fading. These sharp mornings with now and then a 

 chilling breeze remind us of the colder times we may 

 soon expect and for which provision must now be 

 made. Among other things we must not forget our 

 little pets— the bees. They have labored unceasingly 

 whenever they could find anything to do, and have 

 given us a generous supply of delicious nectar with 

 which to gi-ace the tea-table and tempt the palate, 

 aad in gratitude we should see that they are made as 

 comfortable as possible during the dreary months of 

 winter. Aside from this, it will not pay to neglect 

 them, and it will pay to take good care of them. 



The yield of honey from buckwheat this year has 

 been quite good in most portions of the State, and as 

 a little has been added from the late wild flowers the 



