324 



GLEA^^LN'GS IN BEE CULTUEE. 



Oct. 



HO\*^ A BOY :tianages things i> the 



APIABY. 



SAM doinor verr well with my bees, this season. 

 I hare increased from 10 to ~, and have taken 

 450 lbs. of honey. Our harvest does not begin 

 till heart's-ease blooms in August. 



When I wish to clip a queen's wing^. I put her in- 

 to my mouth, and cover her with saliva, then peel 

 up one wins' with the scissors, and off it comes, the 

 queen not being able to crawl very f.ist. One swarm 

 that had a clipped queen came" out, and tried to 

 leave, 9 times in 2 weeks: it seemed to make no dif- 

 ference whether the hive I gave them was full or 

 empty; they are quiet now, thovigh. 



I have just put the last of the metal comers which 

 I got of you, '2 years ago. into use. and have had to 

 make a few wooden frames. While at work on these 

 I made a discovery: viz., a new style of comb gnide. 



NOVEL PLAX OF MAKING COMB GrXDE. 



I raise the saw table so that the saw does not cut 

 quite half way through the top bar boards, saw one 

 side, turn the board over endwise and saw the other, 

 then, with my knife, I split (iff the bar at a. leaving- ', 

 the little strip on t^e underside of the top bar; final- • 

 ly cut off this strip at the ends, so that the end bars ' 

 ■will come up snug, and that the frame may hang 

 true on the rabbet. My saw makes a wide cut. so 

 that I get a nice guide, and it is easily and quickly 

 done. 



I use natural comb starters in my section boxes, i 

 and put them in as follows. I cut the comb in thin : 

 strips, put the boxes on a warm cnok stove top 

 down, lay in the comb, leave it until the lower edge 

 ct the comb shows signs of melting-, then set it off 

 to » cool. By keeping a number on the stove. I can 

 put in starters as fast as I can set them on and off, 

 and have no hot "irons" to g-et cool all the while. 



I took the queen and a few bees from a strong 

 colony; they raised queen cells, hatched a queen, : 

 and swarmed. They were hived, but, for some rea- 

 son, they went back to the hive they came from. At ' 

 Troon. I took one comb that had a queen cell on it 

 from their hive, put it in a new hive, shook most of 

 the bees into it. and in about an hour they swarmed. 

 I dug out the queen cell and returned them. I cut 

 open the cell, and the queen rushed cut and flew off, 

 being the first queen that I ever saw, that could fly 

 as soon as hatched. Lloyd Z. Jones. " 



Galva, Ills., July 32nd, 18TS. 



Some of our readei-s will remember friend 

 LJoyd. as the cue who made his buzz saw by 

 emitting it out of a hand saw. and wlio pre- 

 vented queens from sque-aling by daubing 

 their wings with honey, etc. He has groAvn 

 older now. but still his' remarks savor of that ■ 

 same boyish originality'. When he paid us 

 a visit in "76. his father and brothers thought 

 h.e had better be itiising corn than fussing 

 with his bees. Xow. friend L.. we exi>ect 

 \'ou to demonstrate that honey is as useful 

 as com. but be sure you do not forget that it 

 takes hard work to raise either. Your top 

 bar. I think, will answer very well, and is 

 vfvy ingenious, as is also your plan of put- , 

 ting in natural comb starters. Boys are 

 very apt to waste too much time in experi- 

 menting with new things, and to neglect 

 important duties. Strive to do everything 

 well and thoroughly, even if you are' but a 

 boy. 



SOTTE INTERESTING FAtTS CONCERN- 

 ING THE HISTORY OF APICfTl-TrRE. 



been before told it in the fourth Geoi-gic. Then 

 HiTBEB. the blind Swiss, made himself hives of 

 glass, and putting h's wife and his servant Berxens 

 to watch his wir.ged colonies, chronicled their ob- 

 servations in his famous letters to Bonnet. He 

 was the very Gilbert White of apiculture; but he 

 yet left it. as we have said, in the "metarhysical 

 stage." To Hfbeh mainlv it is thnt we owe the 

 comprehensive word "instinct." Why do bees pro- 

 tect their queen V- instinct. How do they find their 

 way back to their hive? — ^instinct. Why do they 

 make their cells in a hexigon. with a base so per- 

 fectly constructed that, as Konig and Maraldi 

 have shown, an engineer to devise it would have 

 needed a profound acouaint.inee with the most diffi- 

 cult and rec' ndite pnrts of the calculus?— instinct 

 again. Why do they entomb all offensive matter in 

 pn 'pi •lis? Why do they ventilate their hive by fan- 

 ning it with their wings? Why do they show "a 

 community of wants and desires and a mutual intel- 

 lig-ence and sympathy, which le»id to the constant in- 

 terchange of good offices, and which, by introducinp 

 a systematic division of labor amidst a unity of 

 design, leads to the execution of public works on a 

 scale of astonishing- nii^.gnilude?" Instinct. Hrr.EE 

 and the old naturalists tell us apain. Nor is it too 

 mi:ch to say that until the more or less meaningless 

 idea of "instinct" was laid aside, and it became reo 

 ognized that the intelliffence of bees i*. like that of 

 man, and, indeed, of all other living thing-s, the re- 

 sult of habit and accumulated experience, the true 

 nature of the hive cc mmunity was hardlv under- 

 stood. Sir John Lubrock, following in the lines laid 

 down by Mr. Wallace, has by a long series of exper- 

 iments sufliciently shown us that bees learn exactly 

 as children learn, and that their "instinct," like our 

 own human reason, is the ultimate product of ac- 

 cumulated memories. And what of this? the prac- 

 tical bee keeper will perhaps ask. What need we 

 do more for our bees than provide them with com- 

 fortable and well ventilated hives, give them In 

 summer abundant store of thyme and clover, and. 

 if possible, heather; comfort them with syrup and 

 treacle in winter, and generally treat them tenderly? 

 The answer is simple. A bee has more than in- 

 stinct; it is intelligent, and can learn ; and the bet- 

 ter we treat our bees, the better we house them, the 

 more trouble we spend on their education — if we 

 may so term it^the greater in the long run will be 

 our reward. Fanciful as it may seem, we yet can, 

 although by slow degrees, it is true, cducnte bees as 

 we have already educated dogs. Virgil. » true 

 countryman at heart, was fond of hounfls, and knew 

 their habits. What would he have said— we need 

 only ask ourselves — of a pointer brok^^n to the g-un? 

 Ill the same way, it is hardly possible to doubt that 

 the two thousand years more or less which have 

 elapsed since the" iienning of the Georgics have 

 made bees more intelligent and more civilized than 

 were their remote ancestors, when the "celestial 

 boon of honey air-fUstilled" was first sung. 

 ■%> — > t ^^ 



ANOTHER OF THE ABC CtASS. 



^f^E clip the following from the London 

 "*'' (England) Standard. July i'9th. "78. 



For more than one thousand seven hundred years, 

 no one told the world more about bees than had 



^^HE bee cage came to hand, and '^contrnts nrrttd." 

 'q^ I knew no more what to do with it than a 

 ?^=» baboon with a music box; no directions. I fed 

 the bees on honey, and waited the next mail; — no 

 directions. I opened the door of a hive (Barnes') 

 and placed the cage on the top of the lower frames, 

 and waited one night and part of two days; still no 

 directions. I opened the door again and moved the 

 slide of the cage so thnt the bees could come out. 

 One did so, find was immediately seized by the na- 

 tives, but he freed himself and went back into the 

 cage. Fearing the queen might escape. I closed the 

 hive, and left them to the uncovenanted mercies of 

 the colony. Then came your card and paper. It 

 was night, and next (this) morning, I found V cai^ 

 casses stark and stiff on the alighting board; others 

 may have fallen off in the thick, high grass. I saw 

 no queen— never could see her, or else did not know 

 her frt)m the others. This morning, I took cverj" 

 frame out of the hive, but saw no queen or eggs; I 

 did not know how to look. The sash or frame in- 

 troduced before sending for the queen, I examined 

 carefully. There were several queen cells, but 

 they were black, and seemed to be old: I could not 

 see anything in them. The examination was made 

 with some trepidation, for bees glory in stinging 

 me. yiiu\ have I a queen or not? There was one 

 dead bee in the cage,'and that was not she. 



You say you owe me a dime, and I send you an- 

 other, for Which send me something that may be 



