206 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Aug. 



SOME QUESTIONS FROM liOUISIANA. 



WilLL yon please answer a Southern subscriber 

 a few qucbtions ? Will it pay to introduce 

 ^ _ the Italian bee where jou are surrounded by 

 wol>d8 full of black bees ? 



You can raise just as much honey, in our 

 opinion, as if the black bees were not there, 

 but you can not rear queens for sale, with 

 much probability of having them purely fer- 

 tilized, for the first few years. To be on the 

 safe side, get an imported queen, and rear all 

 your queens from her brood; this can be done 

 with very little trouble. Your hybrids will 

 all be excellent workers, and as they produce 

 pure drones, you will very soon have many 

 pure queens. Even the bees in the woods, 

 will soon become Italianized, as is the case 

 with nearly all of them in our vicinity now. 

 All you have to do, is to keep rearing all your 

 queens from pure stock, and nothing else, and 

 you can secure large crops of honey at once ; 

 perhaps even larger than if there were no 

 blacks in the neighborhood. 



What causes bitter honey in the spring, the princi- 

 ple source of lioney being red maple, black gum, clo- 

 ver, all the principle fruits, &c.? Is the honey from 

 the yellow jasmine poisonous ? 



Honey from fruit bloom is sometimes slight- 

 ly bitter ; we have thought it might be from 

 the peach, but may be mistaken. It will all 

 be used for brood rearing, and will do no 

 harm. We have never heard of any poisonous 

 honey except that from the laurel, and know 

 nothing of the jasmine. 



My bees will persist in swarming, and in spite of 

 every precaution I continue to lose them ; I tried 

 clipping tlie queen's wings, and two out of three were 

 superseded. Does this occur often ? 



You can easily stop swarming, by dividing 

 your stocks until they are too weak, or by ta- 

 king away their honey with the extractor. 

 Clipping the queens, has no eflect on swarm- 

 ing, more than to prevent them from going ofi", 

 and when they once swarm out, if giving them 

 more room will not satisfy them, you will 

 have to divide or let them swarm, or they will 

 surely supersede their queens. 



IIow far can a queen be sent by mail safely, and is 

 it necessary to have workers in the cage witli her ? 



Queens are sent safely to California by 

 mail, and we think will very soon be sent 

 across the ocean. It may not be necessary, 

 but we think it better to have workers in the 

 cage with them, say ten or a dozen ; if too 

 many be put in, they require so much food, 

 they may be in danger of starving. 



I have a large tin can 24x24 inches, I wish to use it 

 for an extractor ; could you make the inside and gear- 

 ing for the L. frame to rest in it, in same position as 

 in the hive, and the whole to fit tliis can ? and 

 what would be the cost ? 



Many have asked about putting inside work 

 into cans or casks for a home-made extractor. 

 It can be done, but we think seldom profita- 

 bly. You rarely get a convenient machine 

 and the expense is very often more than to 

 buj'' a complete machine outright. The cans 

 we make only cost you from |2.50 to $4.00, 

 and they are so light, that the expense of 

 shipping is but little more than for the in- 

 side work alone. 



This has been a very good season for lioney I be- 

 lieve, but I did not tafec advantage of it for tlie want 

 of experience in the management of bees. I com- 

 menced this season with 5 strong colonies, increased 



to 8 by dividing. I concluded I would run the old 

 hives for box honey, but they took tiie swarming fe- 

 ver and would swarm after nearly filling the boxes 

 with comb and honey. The most I have obtained 

 from one liive was in section boxes of land 2 lbs. 

 each, nearly 30 lbs. in all, besides 3 solid frames of 

 sealed lioney that I did not remove from the hive. 

 This was a young colony that was made in the spring 

 by dividing. 



The people of this country take but little interest in 

 bees. Some few have them in box hives and log gums 

 large enough for two or three swarms, consequently 

 the worms clean them out every year or two, anil 

 they get but little honey. Some go to the woods for a 

 supply ol honey, finding plenty of bee trees in the 

 cypress sloughs or brakes. The trees in the swamp 

 generally contain from one to six gallons of honey, 

 sometimes dark but of fine flavor; where the bees ob- 

 tain it I do not know, for the swamp is overflowed 

 in the spring of the year when the flowers are in 

 bloom elsewhere. After the water falls, the Buffalo 

 weeds, and wild sensitive plants spring up and give 

 plenty of flowers but these are the only flowers I 

 have ever seen in the over-flowed district. We 

 have no basswood, or poplar, and but little clover ia 

 this section of country. Now, Mr. Editor, you may 

 put me in your "Blasted" column if you will, but "1 

 have some hopes yet. Wilmek Gibson. 



Warsaw, Franklin Parish, La., June 19th. '77. 



PATENT RIGHT CIRCULARS, NON- 

 SWARMERS, &o. 



MERE is another of those "pesky varmints" the 

 patent right men. Please show him up. 

 . . S. IJ. Richardson, Beebe, Ark., July 1, '77, 



The circular referred to is of the general 

 tenor, claiming for their patent hive that it ex- 

 cels all others wherever tried, of course. My 

 friends is it not a little singular that so many 

 hives should be better than any of the rest ? 

 Why not advertise them as being "very good." 

 and forbear speaking dispargingly of others? 

 This circular hardly deserves classing with 

 humbugs and sv?indles, although it does give 

 one an idea that all grooved section boxes are 

 patented, and that they can not be purchased 

 except at about four times the regular price. 

 The most objectionable feature of it i^ the fol- 

 lowing : 



No swarms lost by absconding to the woods. As all 

 apiarians are aware, thousands of swarms are annu- 

 ally lost by deserting their hives (after hiving). We 

 are happy to inform all interested that we have per- 

 fected an invention which entirely prevents this in 

 every instance, thereby saving the price of the hive. 

 This is done by a simple regulator which can be ad- 

 justed by a child. It confines the queen to the hive, 

 allowing the workers to pa5S and re-pass at their 

 pleasure. It will be seen that the duty of the apiari- 

 an is to hive the swarm, properly adjust the regulator 

 and go about his business, without any anxiety in re- 

 gard to it. Should you be called away and swarms 

 are expected ihey may be confined to their hive in 

 the same manner. The queen being unable to escape 

 with the swarm, of course they will return to her. 



In the above facts we hope to have made it plain to 

 you, that the labor, vexation and anxiety of losing 

 swarms is unnecessary, by using our improved en- 

 trance and regulator which gives you complete con- 

 trol of the swarm, conllninn' the queen to the hive, at 

 the same time not interfering with the labor of the 

 bees in the hottest weather (for the entire front is 

 open, an advantage claimed over all other hives). 

 Its passage may be entirely closed or adjusted to a 

 single bee passage, to preveiit robbing, &c., &c. 



Ever since Mr. Laugstroth mentioned this 

 idea in his book, it has been a favorite theme 

 for patent hive men, and in spite of his testi- 

 mony and that of others that it was a failure, 

 they still make it a pretense for obtaining 

 money from the too credulous. Even if a de- 

 vice were obtained that would exclude the 

 queen and permit the workers to pass freely, 

 it would result in the loss of the queen, for 

 she will be very soon killed, if confined to the 

 hive when the bees are determined on swarm- 



