1877 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTUKE. 



291 



abandon any speculation that does not pay. 

 If you want them all to go home quwtly, 

 simply make their business at your store or 

 home, an unprotltable one, and they will very 

 soon leave, I assure you. If they are at vpork 

 at your peaches, preserves, sugar bowl, can- 

 dies, baskets of sweet grapes or the like, cover 

 up the articles precisely as you would if Hies 

 were to be kept away from them. If you are 

 making preserves or cauning fruit, stop the 

 first bee from getting oft' with a load, and no 

 more will come ; if you have neglected to do 

 this, and they have already started a " land 

 office business," j'ou will have to close the 

 doors and windows until they abandon the 

 job, which will be in a couple of hours. If it 

 is hot weather, mosquito netting will do the 

 business nicely. The same fabric or some nice 

 pink tarleton, will do nicely to cover fruit or 

 confectionery in our shops and groceries. 

 This has been done in cities for years, and it 

 is worth all the expense, to have such goods 

 kept entirely from the flies in the fall of the 

 year. 



Am I asking you to take a great deal of 

 trouble ? Yes, I fear I am, and therefore, I 

 prefer that you allow me to pay all expense of 

 trouble and material. I love law and order, 

 and dislike to have anything that belongs to 

 me, trespass upon the rights of anyone ; and if 

 this matter can not be arranged pleasantly, I 

 will move both myself and bees out into the 

 country ; for where my bees are, there shall I 

 be. I dislike to do this, for it would inconve- 

 nience those in my employ very much, and our 

 town has far too few manufacturing establish- 

 ments already. Still farther, you would be 

 troubled with bees still, for others beside my- 

 self keep bees, and I have several times been 

 called when it was the common old fashioned 

 bee that was troubling. I do not blame you 

 for feeling cross when you accidentally get 

 stung, for it malies me cross too, sometimes, 

 and I can scarcely blame you for thinking that 

 it is my bees when I have so many ; but my 

 friends, ray yellow bees never sting when 

 away from home, unless they are pinched in 

 some way, and made to do so in self defense. 

 You can drive them out of your houses, just 

 as you would flies. 



I need hardly remind you, that my business 

 is, at present, bringing quite a little money 

 into our town, and that from a distance too ; 

 some of it, from across the ocean. Our boys 

 and girls are even now, clamoring for some- 

 thing to do, and can we really aflbrd to be 

 frightened out of a thrifty, and rapidly grow- 

 ing business, by a few bees? You are to be 

 judge and jury, and I will go away quietly 

 and pleasantly, without; any law or action of 

 our town council, if it is your wish. Since I 

 have become a Sunday school worker, I have 

 learned the imijortance of being good natured, 

 I iiope. A. I. Root. 



P. S. — While the weather remains so warm 

 and dry, if you see a bee loading up with any 

 of your property, you had ketter kill him be- 

 fore he gets home and brings a raft of his com- 

 rades back with him. I shall have no hard 

 feelings toward you at all, if you throw the 

 flat-iron at every bee that has the impudence 

 to so much as take a squint over your garden 



fence to see whether you are going to preserve 

 peaches to-day or not. A. I. R. 

 — ^ ■>■ -^ 



A bee: FCJNERAIi. 



/i^N Sept. Ist, I obtained from W. C. Grler In 

 (hMj)) I-iamar, (Mo.) an imiiorted Italian queen which I 

 "'^s^ proposed to introduce into what I consiuered 

 the best hive I have. On the night oi the "id, I intro- 

 duced her into the hive leaving her over night and in 

 the morning of the Sd, I found the old queen, a black 

 one, and taking her out 1 cut olT her head and threw 

 the body some l.i feet from the hive on the ground. I 

 noticed no particular commotion among the bees un- 

 til about •! o'clock in tlie afternoon when I observed a 

 procession of bees forming at the hive in a solid line 

 and moving toward the body of the deail (jueen. They 

 moved on and ajjproachiiig the body surrounded it, 

 and all with one accord as they approached the body 

 threw up their wings in a peculiar manner and made 

 every sign of grief and mourning. Alter a lime ihey 

 withdrew and returned to the hive. No further dem- 

 onstration took place. Was this the result of instinct 

 or reason y T. G. Hakvey. 



There is nothing at all unusual, in the above, 

 but friend Harvey has, I think, drawn his con- 

 clusions a little hastily. Bees do not always 

 show signs of grief at the loss of a queen, but 

 I have frequently known, even nuclei, when 

 they discovered tne queen was gone, to rush 

 out of the hive, and search all over, even to 

 crawling the distance mentioned, in search of 

 the queen. I have also known them to find 

 her body where 1 had thrown it, and in such 

 cases, those who first find her, throw up their 

 wings, and utter a call to their companions. 

 The bees from the hive often hear this call, and 

 come in a body ; they will hang round the spot 

 for a time, but after finding she is really dead, 

 they probably conclude wisely, that what "can't 

 be cured must be endured," and so they start 

 ofl' home again, and most usually in a body ; 

 as bees generally move in that way. If the 

 ground about the hives is clean, as it should 

 be, you will often see these transactions. 

 When a queen dies of old age, you will often 

 be apprised of the fact, by ttie small cluster of 

 faithful followers who hover about her body 

 where it has been carried out and dropped by 

 some less impressible worker. In swarming 

 time if the queen's wings are clipped, a line of 

 workers will almost always guide you to her, 

 if she has crawled ofl" in the grass instead of 

 back into the hive, and I once followed one, in 

 that way, half across the garden. 



BEES AND ORAPES. 



M)Y own and my neighbor's grapes are badly punc- 

 tured, and of course spoiled in consequence. 

 J Bees are found in large numbers in the vines 



and evidently enjoy their sweets. Mubt ihey be re- 

 garded as the (lepiedators ? A Subsckibek. 

 Kuoxville, Tenn., Aug. '23d, 1877. 

 Bees do, at times, get started on grapes, and 

 without a doubt puncture the fruit; yet it is 

 a tough job for them, and they can easily be 

 made to abandon it. If the grapes are ripe 

 enough for the bees, they are ripe enough to 

 pick, and should be taken out of their way. 

 They started on our grapes just one season, 

 but it was such up hill business they soon 

 abandoned it for the fall flowers. A few days 

 ago, I noticed a cluster that had been badly 

 mashed in atempting to tear it from the vine ; 

 it was covered with bees. It was promptly re- 

 moved with all the other bruised or punctured 

 grapes near, and they did not again molest 



