303 



GLEANIJiTGS IN BEE CULTUKE. 



Nov 



I have 4 frames of Italians covered with bees on 

 both Hlfles, and they are brlnginR in pollen every day. 

 I am hoping they vvill 1111 four more Iramcn this win- 

 ter, as they seem to do very well on orango bloom. 



W. II. I'lLKlNGTON. 



Jacksonville, Fla., Oct. 10th, '77. 



Our honey season began late this spring, It being 

 about the first of July, since which in most localities 

 hereabouts it has (leen (julto favorable, although 

 rather dry of late. lam caring for over fiO colonies 

 and have them all in good healthy condition, having 

 doubliMl them since spring. I liave them in one or 

 two diflerent phices. As an av<',rage of what they 

 have done, let roe say that from hives we liave 1'2, 

 and have taken MO lbs. of honey, mostly extracted. 

 Some veiy One apiaries in Salt Lake Co., have lost 

 nearly all their bees from foid brood, which has pre- 

 vailed in this Territory to a fearful extent and dis- 

 conraged many, but not all of us, for we expect in 

 this mountainous country to make bee-keeping a 

 Buccesd. Kdwaku Stevenson. 



Salt Lake City, Utah, Sept. Ist, '77. 



TALL VKAME8, AND SHALLOW KllAMES. 



I am a bee-keeper to the amount of about 75 stands ; 

 was Very successful this summer, taking nearly 4U0O 

 lbs. of choice extracted honey. I must beg leave to 

 disagree with you in regard to the L. frame, but am dis- 

 j)osod to "knock under" If convinced lliat I am wrong, 

 and will most cordially be a convert. I have two 

 frames in my apiary this season; one is 10 and the 

 other 1.5 inches deep, and botli 12, inches wide. I run 

 our !ii)lary for extracted iioney this year— 1877— ami I 

 mott emphatically got the most, lioney Irom tlic Am. 

 frame. I Und that the (|ueen will use about the same 

 amount of emi)ty comb for depositing eggs whether 

 the frame Is shallow and wide, or tall and narrow, 

 and the tall frame-i liave more space above the brood 

 in which to store honey. In extracting 1 search lor 

 the queen, cage licr, then take every comb out of the 

 hive, lUK^ap and extract the lioney ; with proper help 

 I consume only about If) minutes, and by that time 

 the t)ees are somewhat contented. 1 have seen stocks 

 that were idle lor want of room. In half an hour busy 

 gathering honey. S. S. Fetheuolf. 



Palefctine, Ohio, Sept. (ith, 1877. 



I think we a,s!;ree exactly friond F., and the 

 roiiHon why you got the most from your Am. 

 frame, is because you did not use the shallow 

 ones, two story. Had you done so, you could 

 easily have managed to have all the brood in 

 the lower frames, and all the honey in the up- 

 per ones, moving the upper ones apart until 

 the combs were f-o thick the (jueen could not 

 use them if she would. Then, instead of hav- 

 ing your honey in the upper part of the Am. 

 frame, you would have it in the same position, 

 but in separate frames so that it could be ex- 

 tracted without meddling with the ([ueen or 

 brood at all. The outside combs of the lower 

 story can be extracted if you choose, but so 

 many have starved their bees by extracting 

 from the brood combs, I would advise no one 

 to use the extractor on the lower story. With 

 the drouth we have had this seas^on here, many 

 have found their bees ready to starve in Sept. 

 v.'here they extracted from the brood combs. 

 With combs 3 inches thick or more, for the up- 

 per story, you save half the work of uncapping 

 and extracting, save the bees a great amount 

 lit labor, have no trouble with young bees or 

 larvae, run no risk of losing the (|neeu, and you 

 can give the bees any amount of room when 

 tliey have a hive full of unsealed honey. Now 

 do you want a tall frame with the honey and 

 brood all together, or do you want a two-story 

 hive to use with the extractor V One more 

 jjoint; when you uncover a two story hive, the 

 bees, a great part of them, crowd down on the 

 brood combs, and the labor of shaking and 

 brushing is nothing like shaking bees from a 

 comb of brood. With the large upper story 



room afforded by the chaff hive, the bees can 

 all be shaken iu the top, the combs taken from 

 a former hive can be put right in, and the hive 

 need hardly be kept open 3 minutes. Still 

 farther, there is no such laborious stooping, as 

 when we go down into the brood combs. 



now TO KNOW A UIVE IS QUEENI.E88. 



The queen you sent mo came all riglit Saturday the 

 25th, also your postal of caution about there being al- 

 ready a (iileen in the hive. I was 8usi)iclous of the 

 fact and the next day after I sent my order 1 com- 

 menced searching for the ((ueen. I foithd eggs In one 

 comb but could lind no (jueen. 1 then dlvlde<l the 

 stock into two, continued the search twice everyday 

 and did not find her until your queen arrived. Then 

 1 grabbed her for ccirtaln. I introduced the new 

 ([ueen successfully. When putting her in, she wanted 

 to get out and I did not blame her so very much lor 

 objecting to the jiosition of stepmother to a family of 

 blacks. David Waedwell. 



Arlington, Ohio, Aug. 28th, 1877. 



Notwithstanding what is said in ABC 

 about being sure the hive contains no queen 

 when introducing, I presume hundreds of 

 queens have been lost this fall, from that very 

 trouble. After queens have stopped laying for 

 the season, it is very didicult indeed to find 

 them, they are so small and dark. Again, a 

 (|ueen may have been lost while taking her 

 flight; how are we going to determine, that we 

 may introduce another V The only swe plan I 

 know of, if;) to give them some brood, and see if 

 they will start cells. If the queen w there, the 

 brood will be pretty sure to incite her to lay- 

 ing; if she is not, they will start cells, and then 

 you know just what the matter is. Do not 

 risk a valuable ([ueen in any hive, until you 

 hiive seen them start queen cells. I wish you 

 all would remember this. 



CJUEEN8 reared IN SEPT. AND OCT. 



One of the (pieens was used very roughly by the 

 bees, on her introduction, and in about 15 minutes af- 

 ter, 1 found her in a cluster of bees at another hive, 

 about a rod away. I caught her again and caged her, 

 and it took me several days to get her safely intro- 

 duced, but she is laying now and all right. Some of 

 my ((ueens did not lay until tliey were 20 days old, 

 are they ns good as any ? Daniel Wkight. 



Violet, Canada, Oct. 12th, 1877. 



If a strange (jueen gets lost, you may often 

 find her by examining the entrance of the hives 

 near by. She will be found by the ball or clus- 

 ter of bees that has gathered about her. Friend 

 W., I am just now in a quandary about queens 

 that will not lay until they are iJ or 4 weeks 

 old. We have some that did not begin until a 

 full month old, but the weather has been so 

 dry, that even the old ([ucens have all stopped, 

 and we cannot make them commence again, 

 without 10 days or two weeks feeding. This is 

 nothing very unusual for the lall months, but 

 many of the young queens lay only a few eggs 

 and then stop ; others seem to keep on laying, 

 but the eggs never produce larvae. I, at ttrst, 

 feared they would prove drone hiyers, but sev- 

 eral of them under the inlluence of a steady 

 feed every day, have now nice jiatches of sealed 

 worker brood. Some have no pollen, and these 

 have reared brood promptly, when we fed them 

 on the Hour candy mentioned last month. 

 These queens that are so long in becoming fer- 

 tile, I shall preserve and properly test. My 

 opinion is, that they will prove just as good 

 as any, iu the spring. If queens reared in Sept. 

 and Oct. are not as good as others, it will be a 

 line thing to know it. 



I 



