1877 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



233 



TIave never before heard of the snowberry 

 for honey. We think the Italians will prove 

 themselves equal to anything in the line of 

 moths. If moths trouble your strong colo- 

 nies they are certainly different from the com- 

 mon, moth. Allow enough honey to remain 

 for winter, by all means; but we seldom find 

 a colony that has worked in the upper story, 

 without enough below. 



DEEP x^n s'HAri.ow fihaiTies awd 



SO.nKTmiVG ABOUT THK TRANS- 

 POSITION or QUKKN IiARV^. 



lilTH the flies, and Lumberman's book you sent 

 me, I can just make my Barnes' Saw "get up 



and dusi.'' I filed out one-half the teeth of 



bofh my savs, the rip and cut off, and made a rip out 

 of the cut off saw to >, and I can saw both faster and 

 easier with them ; did yon pver try the experiment ? 

 if so, how did they cut ? The hives I have heretofore 

 used exclusively, were on the Adair plan, with frame 

 10 Inches deert and 12 wide in,-iido measurement. It 

 did well, and I could jjet more surplus honey than any 

 bee-keeper in this part of the country, although there 

 are many j?ot>d ones here. I then made 8 or 10 hives, 

 only 8 inches deep, and same width as the others. 

 Thevdid better; I averaged over It) per cent more 

 per colony than from the others. I thsn tried the 8 

 inch hive with caps of same depth as the main hive, 

 and run them for honey at both top and sides; they 

 did just as well, but I can not say they did better. I 

 soon learned that with a cap (upper story) I could use 

 a hive of onlv one- half the length I had been using, 

 viz., 4 feet, which is not an inch too long for an exclu- 

 sive side storer. I am now trying them only (i inches 

 deep; they did well last year, but I could not give 

 them as fair a tost as I would like to have done. I 

 was so well satisfied with them that I had intended to 

 make th^m all ocly 6 inches deep. My reason lor ma- 

 king them so is, on account of the surplus honey. 

 Honey cases should not be over 6 inches deep, and 5 

 would be better. I don't want a hive in which I can't 

 set my empty sections at the side, and then let them 

 fill them out in the upper story, which I want just the 

 same size as the lower. But since you have told us 

 liow to make those "wee bit o'" sections so easily and 

 cheaplv, I am maiiiag a few in my 8 inch frames, and 

 if they are not toj small for the bees to build and 

 store "rapldlv in, I may make all my new hives 8 inch 

 instead of 6. I suppose you think a frame 0.^12 or 

 8x1-2 inside is entirely too small, but I have tried long- 

 er ones several times, and tlie short frame In this 

 countrv has given the best satisfaction every time. 



I notice on page 48, Vol. IV of Gleanings, that Mr. 

 L irch gives hii process of "grafting queen cells," 

 which he thought was something "'new." I have 

 ))racticed that process at differonc times lor 16 years, 

 in July, (thnk it was July) 18i)l, I got an Italian 

 •jiieen i'rom Mr. Lxngstroth, which I think was the 

 first Italian queen west of the Mississippi river. I 

 <-.'>mmenceil immediately to raise queens from her, 

 b It the old fogies socn raised a howl, "It can't be did. 

 You must have a queen egg for a queen, a drone egg 

 lor a drone, and a worker egg for a worker." Deter- 

 mined not, t-> be ballled in that style I set my wits to 

 Work; Inafiv days I got the grafting idea in my 

 head; I told my brother about it, and he thought It 

 would woiu. Wt! unqueened a colony of blacks 

 which started 6 queen cells. We then with a green 

 ai»ple twig, cut do.vn like a tooth pick, having a 

 curved end, lifted out the black royal larvie. took 

 small larvai from the centre of a cjmb where Italian 

 worcers were coming out, inserted them In the roval 

 cradle, and bahold out came 5 nicrs large yellow 

 •jneens. Oh but what a joke that was on the old fo- 

 gies, about tiieir queen eggs. It ju3t "dried 'cm 

 clean np." 



No .V this occurred near South English, Iowa, at 

 my brother Samuel Flory's, with whom 1 was then 

 living. In the summer of IStJl. I have kept bees in the 

 movable frame over 20 years. I was perhaps about 10 

 years old at that time. It was ray pet hobby then, 

 and is still. 



On page 7.5, present Vol., instead of 3300 lbs. from 28 

 old colonies and 30 swarms, it should re id 53 >0. Only 

 a mistake of a ton. J. F, Florv. 



Modesto, Cal., June 2fJth, 1877. 



We are very well aware that a saw with 

 coarse teeth will cut Lister, but it does not do 

 as smooth work. For hive work, wc prefer ' 



the fine teeth, even at the expense of working 

 more slowly. We are well aware of the ad- 

 vantages of the shallow frame, but when all 

 things are taken into consideration, is not the 

 L. frame just about right? 



So it seems there were several discoverers of 

 the (act that larvic could be substituted in 

 queen cells. If we only made a mistake of a 

 ton in your honey report, we certainly did well. 



^^ — ^^m. 



BEES T5IAT ^VON'T OFT OUT OF THE 

 BOXES, &.C. 



^E can select stocks with almost any pe- 

 culiarity, good or bad, in a large apia- 

 ry. Listen : 



I have about 70 hives, part Italian and a part hy- 

 brid. Among them is one particularly cross colony 

 of rather light colored hyi^rids; I can "hardly do any- 

 thing with it. Yesterday evening 1 took finished liox- 

 es from several hives and laid them near the en- 

 trances o( the hives to which they belonged. In an 

 hour or so the bees had all leit the boxes except 

 those belon:?ing to the ahove mentioned hive, and I 

 took them in. The bees belonging to that hive were 

 running angrily all over the boxes which belonged to 

 them, when I went out at 11 o'clock, and I got up at 

 4 o'clock in the morning and lound them at the same 

 amusement. At b )th these times the oees in the hive 

 were quite excited and at the slightest noise would 

 rush angrily out of it. I finally threw a sheet over 

 the hive and took the boxes, bees and all. Into the bee 

 house, where in a few hours tbev collected on the 

 windows. I shuuld have stated that it was a very 

 cool night. Would you advise hunting up the queen 

 and replacing bar with an Italian ? 



[ think the sealing of the comb honey stored by the 

 dark bees is whiter than that stored by Ita.ians; nev- 

 ertheless I am Italianizing my apiary, as I like to 

 han<lle the Italians much better. I think also that 

 my hybrids work rather better than Italians, but ani 

 far from certain on that point. 



I find that fdn. must be used cautiously In extreme 

 hot weather, as the weight ot the bees clustering on 

 it before the cells were built out tore it In two on sev- 

 eral occasions last month. By putting one frame of 

 fdn. between two of comb, I have done better. I have 

 noticed that whenever I have cut comb which was 

 built on tdn. I could see the yellow core and apparent- 

 ly thPi bees had not thinned it out very much. How- 

 ever I could not get along without it, as we can get 

 beautilullv strai^rht combs and all worker cells, and I 

 have repeatedly seen eggs In it belore it was half 

 built out. 



I think I will go in for sections another season. 

 Extracted honev is low and I don't like honey In 

 small boxes as the yellow bees don't seem to like 

 them. Don't your bees ever fasten the combs to the 

 tin separators i'' Do you leave any holes in the sepa- 

 ra.tor8 for the bees to pass across from one frame to 

 another X 



Honey has been good this season. From 23 hives I 

 have novv two barrels ol extracted honey, about 150 

 two lb. boxes, and my bees number 70 stocks. 



John Dicicinson. 



Milwaukee, Wis., Aug. 3d, 1877. 



We have discovered that there are excep- 

 tional stocks that will not leave their honey, 

 even if left out over night. We, in such cases, 

 do much as you did, carry the honey into the 

 hoaey house and place it before a door with a 

 window in it; as fast as they collect on the 

 windows in considerable numbers, we open 

 the door and let them out. Very soon every 

 bee is off', without much trouble. I would 

 hardly think of replacing a queen for such a 

 fault, if the bees were otherwise satisfactory. 



Our bees do not attach any comb to the sep- 

 arators with the small thick section boxes we 

 use. In attempting to use natural comb for 

 starters, we have had some such trouble, but 

 none with the fdn. starters. As the bees pass 

 both uader and over every separator, there is 

 certainly no occasion for holes in them. 



