1878 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CTLTURE. 



161 



Bees wintered well, but it has been warm so much 

 that there has been lots of robWn^; hundreds of 

 stands have been robbed. I lost four before I could 

 atop them. Wm. L. King. 



St. Joseph, Michigan. 



TRANSFERRING OUT OF SEASON. 



I have drones from tested queens, and queens 

 ■which will hatch on the 8th instant. Do you think 

 they will become fertile? i Yes.) 



I have tnuisferred bees every month during- the 

 iast winter, and have not lost a sing-le colony. 



Some were transferi-od with their comb, and some 

 on empty eomla, and were fed with "A" suf»-ar, 



S. W. Morrison, M. D. 



Oxford, Pa., April 2nd, 1878. 



There! you tliat ask so niaiiy questions 

 about its being possible to transfer at any 

 time of the year, would better take an ex- 

 ample of your friend above. You can do it, 

 if you are careful about your work; but, if 

 you know by past experience that ,you are 

 3iot, you would better not undertake it. 



AN apology. 



To my surprise, last fall, in preparing my bees for 

 winter, I found an Italian colony near where I in- 

 troduced one of the Blakeslee queens, and am sure 

 she left the hive that I put her in, and entered this 

 one; hence my injustice to Mr. Blakeslee. The 

 other one has only one band, but the bees are good 

 workei-s. Please tell Mr. B. that I am sorry I can't 

 see him in person, and offer him every apology that 

 is due him, and that I am glad to take back every 

 ugly word I said about him ; but I would be asham- 

 ed to order a queen from him. M. L. Williams. 



Vanceburg, N. Y., March 37th, 1878. 



I am very glad to have you own up so 

 frankly, my friend, and I have given tliis a 

 place, because I fear that many others who 

 sold queens, have been just as unjustly 

 blamed as friend IBlakeslee. If you feel you 

 have done wrong, do not be ashamed to say 

 you are sorry, or to send him another order. 

 The whole matter illustrates how much need 

 there is of going slowly, when you feel like 

 fault finding. 



artificial heat and house apiaries. 

 Although I have kept qviiet for a long time, I have 

 not been idle, but have been up and down several 

 times. One year ago last fall, i started to \v1nter 5 

 good swanns; 4- ovit of doors, and one in the boys 

 bed room. I made an outlet, so thej' could go out 

 and in. as the weather would permit, and they came 

 throufih splendidly. But the four colonies out on 

 their summer stands all died with plenty of honey, 

 although 1 had them packed well with straw on the 

 sides and top. Well, my hopes were 4-5 blasted 

 surely; but now, for the one I liad left. 1 extracted 

 153 lbs. of nice honey, and started in last fall with 

 «i.r good colonies. One became queeiilcss, anrl one 

 warm day went ^'isiting one of her sisters, and for- 

 got to cninc l)afk: so their house is pretty full, and 



I have but .') colonies to day. I repaired my house 

 last summer, iiiid made a bee room over my kitchen 



II by 23 ft., something after the style of your house 

 apiary, and there 1 have kept my bees during the 

 past M'inter. I have a register so I can heat the 

 room from below, when the weather is cold, and 

 shut it when warm. Not abit of dampness has ap- 

 peared in any of the colonies, and very few of the 

 i)ces ha\e died, and they do not consume more than 

 half tlie hnnev thev would out of doors. 



Bolivar, X. Y., April 3nd, 1818. L. M, Raub. 



As friend Joiner suggests, bees seem to do 

 well all sorts of ways of late, and is it not 

 possible, that our former experiments with 

 artificial heat were failures on account of 

 the "•epidemic'' that might have been visit- 

 ing us at that time? when I tried artiticial 

 heat in the house apiary, I liad nothing over 

 the bees but a single slieet of duck, and per- 

 haps that was more the trouble than the heat 

 that I tliought killed them. 



I have a queen raised late in October; she is now 

 laying, but she produces nothing but drones ; that 

 is, they are all raised caps. If they should hatch 

 out, do you think they will do to fertilize queens? 

 If they Avill, and she continues to lay, I shall cer- 

 tainly be in good condition for some early queens. 

 If you have any information to give me about it, 

 let me have it. Tho. C. Stanly. 



Jeffersonville, Ills., Feb. 19th, 1878. 



It is generally accepted, that drones from 

 unfertilized queens are capable of fertilizing 

 queens, and are, therefore, just as good as 

 any ; but we lack definite experiments in 

 the matter, none liaving been made, if I am 

 correct, shice those of Earon Berlepsch. 

 given in the Dzierzon Theory. I would sug- 

 gest that you, friend S., and others experi- 

 ment, and give us the results. Berlepsch 

 decided they were just as good. 



feeding grape sugar during a drouth. 



Would it be profitable to feed grape sugar to bees 

 during spring, to insure breeding in our drouth of 

 June, 1st to ]5th? 



Last j'ear, there was over one week in which my 

 bees did not have any brood in any stage, or any 

 honey in the hive. This occurred in June, and I 

 would like to avoid a similar state of affairs this 

 season. J. s. Wilson. 



Grinnell, Iowa, March 39th, 1878. 



We have seen precisely the same state of 

 affairs that you describe, and there can be 

 no question, but that grape sugar would be 

 of great benefit. We, last fall, fully demon- 

 strated its utility in starting brood rearing, 

 and we have sold many tons of it for this 

 purpose. 



HOW to use a smoker. 



Please explain in Gleanings how you get smoke 

 into a hive. We find it convenient to blow down 

 much oftener than up. J. E. Dean. 



Fishkill, N. Y., April 4th, 1878. 



Well, my friend, if we want to blow smoke 

 down, we point the nozzle straight down 

 and blow; if we want to blow ''slautin'dicu- 

 lar'\ we turn tlie smoker ''slantin' dicular", 

 and so on. A smoker that has to be held 

 right side up, like a baby, I sliould find rather 

 "distressing,'' under the various trials that 

 bee folks are liable to meet. If you are afraid 

 coals may fall out of llie snlall liole that 

 forms the nozzle, you can push in a piece of 

 wire cloth; but, as these soon get clogged 

 with soot, they have generally been aban- 

 doned. To clear tlie smoker of ashes, etc., 

 that may have accumulated wliilst it has 

 been standing still, we give it a vigorous 

 puff or two before pointing it into the bee 

 liive. I, as a general tiling, carry my smoker 

 about nearly upside down. 



are stings IN.3UIUOUS. 



I sometimes think that it might be beneticial, for 

 "the brotherhood" to know how far stings are in- 

 jurious to the human system. In the A. B. J., Mr. 

 Moon writes that he has lost a limb after months of 

 lingering pain; and Mr. An<lrews replies that he 

 can heartily synipathi/.i' with Mr. Moon, as (1 quote 

 from memory) he has not had the use of his right 

 arm for months; tht.'n again, "you know how it is 

 yourxelf." For my own part, both arms have been 

 covered with boils all winter, and are now, and 

 without any appearance of release from them. I 

 get somewhat less than 2ilO(1 stings every season, for, 

 caring but little for them, 1 take little pains to 

 avoid them. My friends all jiersist in saying that 

 these numerous stings ;in' the cause of the tioils. 

 I have got so accustomed to tlie boils also, that I 

 regard them abo\it as inncli as stings. It may be, 

 or it may not be, that stings are tlie leading cause 

 or, at least, a pro^•ocati^■e of such complaints, and, 

 at the same time, it may be worth while to tind out. 



