2-50 



GLEANIKGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Aug. 



and a pitcher of milk, is all the medicine I 

 need, and, as onr friend suggests, it is not at 

 all bad to take. 



I do not know why the bees swarmed out, 

 l)ut if I could have "examined the hive, per- 

 liaps a reason mi'Jrht be assigned. You cer- 

 tainlv have a claim to be called an experi- 

 enced hand at transferring. If yoiu- Italians 

 are crosser than your blacks. I should be 

 much inclined to call them liybrids. even if 

 tJie workers are 3 banded, and you did pur- 

 cliase the queen of me. They may, liowev- 

 er, be cross Italians ; for bees, both blacks 

 and Italians, vary much in disposition. 



HATCHIIVG QrKENS I NDER A SITTING 



HKN. GETTING THKM FEK- 



TILIXED %V1TH01'T IN- 



TKO»UCING, ETC. 



BY OUR ORIGINAL TEXAN CORRESPONDENT. 



MERE we come. I have a queenless stock of 

 bees which I found in a bee tree a few days 

 , ag-o. and in hiving them, some of us big foot- 

 ed folks killed the queen— stepped on her. So en- 

 closed And $1.90, for which please send, by return 

 mail, a dollar queen and 1 lb. of fdn. to put her on, 

 with the biff swarm of black bees, just to give the 

 fdn. a trial in the brood chamber. Now, friend 

 Knot, I have been taking Gi.eaninos nearly a year, 

 and "nary a word" can 1 find in any of them, telling 

 a man how to raise his own queens. Some of your 

 subscribers said the way to produce a good lot of 

 queen cells was to hang a frame of brood in a queen- 

 less hive, &c. This we can do, but to let them stay 

 there don't make us any queens; and if we put this 

 frame of cells where there is a queen, the queen or 

 bees would tear them all down. After a hive 

 swarms lean go there and get queen cells as soon 

 as they are sealed over, and hatch them most any 

 where, in a nucleus, or put them in a sufficient cage 

 and hatch them under a sitting hen. Very well, but 

 then comes the bigest trouble of all; how do I get 

 them fertilized? and where will I keep them until 

 they are ready to meet the drone? This is the puzzle 

 with me; my miclei won't keep them when they 

 have a queen, and if I take them out in the back 

 yard, at about .5 days old, when drones are flying 

 plenty, and turn therii out, they won't fly out and get 

 fertilized and then return to the cage again. In a 

 few minutes after I liberate her, I flnd her at the 

 entrance of some hive with a hall of bees round her, 

 killing her. Now, my friend, I am away down here 

 in Texas, and have no neighboring bee-keeper to as- 

 sist me, and I have 38 hives. I would like to Italian- 

 ize, and it is a big expense to buy all my queens 

 when I could get an imported one and raise my own 

 queens. E. J. Atchley. 

 Lancaster, Dallas Co., Texas. 



Artificial swarming, in the A B C, will 

 tell you how to raise queens, friend F., and 

 in the July number of last year I gave you 

 quite a lengthy article on queen rearing, 

 with illustrations. If you have really 

 liatched queens under a sitting lien, you de- 

 serve a medal for original experiment. It 

 seems you have gone still further, and 

 pushed boldly into tlie unexplored region of 

 attempting to have queens take their flight 

 and meet the drones, without being intro- 

 duced to a colony. T have often thought of 

 this, but hardly dared risk losing queens in 

 that way. You will have to get some kind 

 of a little hive for them, and a piece of comb 

 containing unsealed brood, or neither the 

 queen nor bees will be likely to return after 

 their flight. Our neighbor, Shaw, has suc- 

 ceeded in getting queens fertilized in little 

 hives tliat could almost be put in one's over- 

 coat pocket, but he had so much trouble 

 with swarming out and robbing that lie has 

 abandoned them. It has just now occurred 



to me that if we had a locality so far away 

 from other bees that there would be no dan- 

 ger from robbing, we might, by carrying a 

 hive full of drones, get queens of the right 

 age fertilized in a very snort time. and. i)os- 

 sibly, by simply letting them out of the 

 queen cages, one at a time. I once hatched 

 a lot of queens in wire cages, in a hive, and 

 let them out one at a time when eight days 

 old. When they came back showing marks 

 of fertilization, tliey were caught and caged 

 before they had tinie to get into the hive. 

 The plan succeeded, but we sometimes had 

 to wait a couple of hours before they came 

 back, and many of them had to fly several 

 times before they were successful. I think 

 queens will, eventually, be fertilized in some 

 such way, without being introduced to a col- 

 ony or niicleus at all. Who will work out 

 the problem? Queens could be raised ready 

 to be fertilized for 2oc. or less, without any 

 trouble; but the great expense is in keeping a 

 colony or nucleus justonimrpose to get them 

 to laying. A queen that is kept caged until 

 eight days cannot be introduced by any 

 means that I know of, and even if she could, 

 it is about as much work to introduce queens 

 as it is to raise them. Is it possible to get 

 them fertilized, without introducing them 

 to hivesV If our hive contained nothing but 

 drones, there could be no d-anger in letting 

 the queens right out; and, it may be, not 

 even if we let out a half dozen at once. I 

 think they would all go back into the hive 

 with the drones. 



^►-♦ O 1 



HEE KILLER. 



Tj? SEND you a cage, with an insect that I found 

 M with a bee this morning. How he kills the bee 

 T^j I can't tell; but when he has once accomplish- 

 ed that, he holds to something with one foot in a 

 swinging position, and holds the bee with his other 

 foot. In an instnnt he can drive his bill plumb up 

 into a bee, seemingly up into his honev sack, and 

 suck the honey. It is not easily scared, as you cnn 

 handle the cage roughly, and ho does not let go the 

 bee. If he arrives alive, give him a bee and see his 

 actions. T. B. Pabkeb. 



Goldsboro, N. C, July 13th, 1878. 



The insect spoken of above was received 

 dead. It is undoitbtedly the •'bee-killer," 

 or Asilus ^lissouriensts, described by Prof. 

 A. J. Cook in his "Manual of the Apiary,'' 

 page 267, of Sd edition. Here is an engrav- 

 ing made from the specimen we received. 



It is found only in 

 the southern part of 

 our country. Prof. 

 Cook describes it as a 

 two winged fly, strong, 

 and very quick on the 

 wing, which captures 

 the bee, and feeds on its fluids. 



JOINEK. 



s^KIEND NOVICE :— I received the smoker in 

 if*] good order and am well pleased with it. 

 ^ fuel for smoker.s. 



After trying several kinds of fuel, I give the 

 preference" to cotton rags, as making the most 

 smoke and least heat, and being easiest got, when 

 paper rags are but 3 cts. per pound. A half p<iund 

 will burnall day. 



small, brood nest for comb honey. 

 I am in the section honey business, have got on 

 2000 sections, and the beesare working in most of 



