GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Jan. 



AlSTRAI^IA. 



HT is !i loiij;- time sinc!C I wrdte you, and I am sorry 

 to say that I have no {rood news to send yon. 

 I The whole conntry is parohcd up by a drouth, 



and when it will end, God onlj' knows. Thousands 

 have already been i-uined by it. Cattle and .s/iccp are 

 dyinjr in hundreds of thousands. It is a sight to trav- 

 el through this eountry at this present moment ; 

 liardly a blade of grass is to be seen ; and the water 

 hnles'fillod with dead and dying- cattle. I am one of 

 the suffering ones, and unless it breaks up very sho'.t- 

 ly. T see nothing but ruin for me and mj' family. 

 " What puzzks me more than all the rest, is where 

 the bees me getting honey from. 1 have never had 

 more honey from my bees than I have had during 

 the drought. So yovi see friend Notice that bees are 

 to be depended upon, when many other things fail. I 

 am sorry that I have not more of them. They beat 

 cattle keeping In every way that I know of ; in fact 

 they have supported my cattle to a considerable ex- 

 tent. By the way, 1 must tell you that I have received 

 a colon j" of bees from San Francisco, California. They 

 sold for pure Italians, but when they arrived at my 

 place I found the bees to be hybrids and bad ones at 

 that. Not one bee in five had a single band on it, and 

 the price paid for them was §^00,00. So you see, after 

 waiting for 6 years, I am doomed to disappointment 

 at last. J. Carkoll. Bee-Master. 



Queensland, Australia. Oct. 15th, 18T7. 



I fear friend Carroll you are too hasty in 

 deciding in regard to the Italians. After so 

 long a voyage, the bees could not well look 

 other than poorly, but after some young 

 brood is hatched out, I think you will hnd 

 them quite different. It seems that our Cal- 

 ifornia friends are far better off than you, af- 

 ter all. We sincerely sympathize with you 

 botli, in your severe trials with the drouth, 

 and hope ere this, you are rejoicing in plenty 

 of rain. 



BOX KITE DEPARTMENT. 



fT is some time since we have found any- 

 body who would advocate, much less sus- 

 — ' tain, this department. Otu" friend Peters 

 of Council Bend. Ark., has given up, if we 

 are not mistaken, and as friend Heddon has 

 at last "owned up" on Italian bees, we pre- 

 sume he has also on box hives. We have 

 been waiting patiently for over a year, for 

 his lirst installment of articles from practic- 

 al experience with box hives and black bees, 

 but as they don't come, I know of no better 

 way than to take the task of keeping up tlie 

 clei)artnient. on my own shoulders, with the 

 occasioi.al lift tliat I may chance to get from 

 some kind friend Avho wiU sym]iathize with 

 me. Will you })lease, dear friends, collect 

 and send me all the good rejiorts you can 

 possibly collect from box hives. We can 

 have no Blasted Hopes here, for nobody ex- 

 l)ects anything, and therefore no one is ever 

 disappointed. Here is one letter, already. 

 J^isten : 



You say in Gleanings, that you will send one sec- 

 tion box for .5 cents which you will ])lease find en- 

 closed, as T wish to see one and would like to ha\'e 

 you g<'t me up something that I can use on top of my 

 box hives as they are so much less trouble than the 

 frame hive. I have used the frame hive for many 

 years, but T have very poor health and a large stock 

 of bees and can take care of them with less trouble 

 than the frame hive. I do not see why the section 

 boxes ('" f' j<nies cannot lie used on square hives as 

 well iis ::ny,and as you lia\e e\fi'.\ tliiiii;- pi-eparcd for 

 it, I think you might get me upsoiiu'tliing that would 

 be all 1 ight. I m-ike a business of selling bees quite 

 lai-gely. Now dr)n't get cut of patience in reading 

 this long letter for you must expect such when \<iu 

 are doing business with so many people. 



Sidney Dkake. 



Birmingham, Mich., Dee. 0th, '77. 



Why, friend Drake, your letter was not 

 nearly long enough. To be sure we will help, 

 but I don't believe I shall try to make box 

 hives, any more, for after I told how to make 

 really good ones in Vol IV, and offered to 

 make them for .50c. each, hives that could be 

 taken apart too, we never sold but two, and 

 nobody ever made any inquiries about them 

 either. But, I will tell you how you can get 

 just the nicest kind of lioney in the little one 

 lb. sections, from box hives and even black 

 bees. Why they do say the gold medal hon- 

 ey was made by black bees ; it may be that 

 it came off box hives too ; but my friend, 

 we will not try for the medal, for then you 

 know we might have our Hopes "Blasted" 

 after all. 



Fig. 3. 



L_V-i: Vuli TIIUEE SECTION BOXES WITH 

 SEPARATOR. 



Box hives are generally tall, something like 

 the American hive, and as they do not pre- 

 sent the surface for boxes over the brood 

 combs that the Langstroth and other shal- 

 low frames do, we can not expect large 

 yields of honey from them, unless we use 

 side storing boxes as well as those on top. 

 It would be rather more of a task to prepare 

 box hives for side storing, than to make 

 movable frames-outright ; and therefore we. 

 shall have to content ourselves with honey 

 oidy from the tops of the hives, or honey in 

 "caps," as many of the prices current still 

 persist in terming all comb honey. I do not 

 know how we can have a one lb. section in 

 any better shajje than our regular size 4^x11- 

 x2, and to accommodate the greater part of 

 the box hives, we will arrange them on the 

 top of the hive. 3 long, and 7 wide ; this Avill 

 make 21 boxes in a single tier. If the colony 

 is strong, we may give them a double tier, 

 making 42 in all, and this is about as mucii 

 as any box hive may be expected to furnish, 

 unless the owner will take the trouble to re- 

 move the sections singly, as fast as they are 

 tilled, as Doolittle and Betsinger do. If you 

 wish to get the best price for your lioney, 

 you must use the separators, and I do not 

 know of anything that we can substitute 

 l)roHtal)ly in the place of tin. Thin wood 

 has been' tried, and it will answer generally, 

 but the bees are much more apt to build bits 

 of cond) fast to it, than to the tin, thus start- 

 ing the lioney to running wlien they are sep- 

 arated ; besides, the Avood occupies so much 

 more precious room in the center of the sur- 

 plus space, that I fear it would be really 

 more expensive, in the end. 



