144 
GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 
DEAR NOVICE : To-day I rec’d Gleanings: I 
flnd my letter in print, in which 1 wrote you so doleful- 
lv. 1 must give you the history of the season as a 
postscript that letter. 1 send you an extract lrom 
my diary. , .. 
From the 5th to the loth of June nearly every day it 
rains, and is cold. Bees are to be fed almost daily. 
But few ol' the hives are more than half lull, say from 
live to six frames. I use frames one foot square. Not 
a single hive has one pound fresh honey except the 
feeding; eggs are laid sparingly and combs with lar- 
vie are abandoned. 
July ith — The two straw hives have swarmed. Ot 
21, 10 hives have from 11 to 12 frames well stocked 
with brood, the rest contain from 7 to 9 frames, and 3 
of them are Qucenless. Not a hive that has one pound 
of honey, and all very poor in bees. 
July nth — Extracted 325 lbs. Linden honey. 
July 21st — 125. Item— the weather is mournfully dry, 
the Linden flowers gone, lasted only about 5 days. 
July 28th— Extracted about 300 lbs., bees gathered 
from buckwheat and swamp flowers. 
Aug. 1st — Extracted 152 lbs. 
Aug. nth — 160 lbs. Bees in good condition and honey 
is brought in at a fair rate, pollen is gathered plenti- 
tifully. Whole combs are fllled; the pollen is blue, 
like moistened powder. 
Aug. Dth — Extracted nearly 300 lbs. 
Aug. 25th — The weather is very line and honey flows 
as usual although very dry. Buckwheat is nearly 
gone, all hives rear brood' splendidly. Every hive 
builds a new comb. 
Aug. 29 tli -Yesterday we had a slight rain, to-day 
all fly in full force and honey is brought in quite plen- 
tifully from swamp Snap-dragon ; all the bees that 
come in are painted white from the Snap-dragon as I 
call it. but you call it wild Touch-me-not. To-day af- 
ter mid-day extracted one wash boiler full. 
Sept. 2nd— Extracted 243 lbs. ; the combs are fllled to 
overflowing, very much impeding the Queen’s work. 
The weather is very dry. This night it rains. 
Sept. Qth — Extracted about 350 lbs., the weather is 
the same— dry and hot. Thermometer 90° in the shade. 
Sept. lQthr- Ext’d 225 lbs. 
Sept, llilh— “ 125 “ 
Sept. 11th— “ 123 “ Fives hives Queenless. 
Sept. 18th— “ 55 “ 
I have brought up the number from 23 to 40. They 
have sealed buckwheat honey, say one half; 1 have 
fed to them one barrel sugar syrup, to complete win- 
ter stores. I have extracted nearly 3000 lbs. In 1871 
by the large lire, a cedar swamp burned down, and 
this fall the swamp was one mass of flowers; The 
wild Touch-me-not and another I cannot name, 
with long cottony seed pods. The honey from the 
wim Touch-me-not was very thin; 1 set it apart in a 
large iron kettle containing 40 gallons. That honey 
is now one mass like butter and by far the sweetest, 1 
kept it for spring feeding. 
Instead of making the 4 feet hives I have altered my 
mind, and shall use my 12 frame hive. In the spring 
I shall provide for each hive two drone combs con- 
taining about 10 lbs. each, I have already a quantity 
on hand. These will be used in a flow of honey. 
You will see that this postscript is a necessary 
compendium to the whole and teaches us all that lie 
who takes care and continues to the end will be re- 
warded. During such a spring while we arc feeding 
until the 15th of June, hives only half full in full 
swarming time, and the 4th of July not a single hive 
that liacf one pound of honey, then swarming time 
gone, it was time and reasonable to draw a long deep 
sigh; yet how glorious the reward. My bees had to 
build two new combs per week and all my old combs 
have their drone combs cut out down to the worker 
combs; all are repaired with worker cells, in my 
new combs my trouble was great, they built nearly all 
drone comb. Several hives however built all worker 
cells. I cut all the drone comb, two inches from the 
top bar, strait oil' and set them in the hives that built 
the worker combs; by means of this. I have now all 
frames with worker ‘comb strait like a plank. Now 
what kind of a season have we had? was it a good 
one ? My neighbors who stick to box hives say the 
season was bad; there were no swarms and bees did 
not work in boxes; their hives are heavy ; so they are 
in the spring and fall every year. 
Second postscript -My two straw hives were far 
ahead in the spring, but from July to Oct. they work- 
ed by far the slowest. One weighs (51 lbs., the other 
4i ; the hives are small. I finish by saying, “a glorious 
hand shaking, and a thank you.” 
Joseph Duffelkh, Wequiock, Wis. Nov. 3rd, 1874. 
Stock browse on the Rocky Mountain bee plant, 
and I think it would make good fodder. J like the 
Deu 
plan of a uniform standard size for frames. 1 have 
six sizes of frames in my apiary and lind it very incon- 
venient , but as I am a ‘learner and experimenting, i 
can bear it for a while. My bees have done well since 
summer set in, have extracted 200 lbs. and taken m 
lbs. comb, from (5 colonies and have increased from 7 
weak colonies the 15th of May, to 17 now on hand. 
Some Italians, some Hybrids and some common. 
They are now laying in some, but what they get it 
from I do not know as we have had till yesterday a 
very warm and dry time. 
Success to Gleanings, which I highly prize, and a 
good time for all bee raisers. 
Aiineu J. Pope, Indianapolis. Ind. Sept. 24th, 1874 
I wish to ask the following favor of you; which is 
that you try at least to have three young Queens fer- 
tilized in your hot house. I am even more positive 
than ever that it can be done, and that I have done it. 
In the first place see that you have ho old bees in your 
nucleus, insert drone brood in it so that it will hatch 
a little before and just about the time the Queen 
hatches, in short, have no bees in the nucleus that 
have ever flown outside of the hot house. If you pa> 
as much attention to this as you do to your other af- 
fairs and don’t succeed, J will pay all the expense ot' 
the experiment. A. N. Du a veil 
Upper Alton, 111. Nov. 0th, 1874. 
Bless your heart friend Draper; to be sure 
we shall try the experiment. One colony has 
attempted to build Queen cells already, but as 
we had no drones, we were obliged to unite 
them. We are going to push them along aud 
as soon as drones are capped over we will have 
some Queens. We have no fears but that they 
will rear Queens, but to get these Queens to 
lay worker eggs — that is the point. In regard 
to pay; all the pay we expect or want, is the 
75c at the beginning of each year and we’ll 
foot all expenses of experiments whether they 
are failures or successes. If the latter we shall 
be very glad to know that we have been useful. 
I have just written to J. Carroll, Australia, that J 
would endeavor to send him a Queen with a small col- 
ony of bees next spring. 
Fall pasturage has been good. Bees quit gathering 
only the other day, last week. Have plenty of drones 
ainl bees do not appear hostile to them even in hives 
having young Queens. Frank BENTON. 
Edgetleld Junction, Tenn. Nov. 4th, 1874. 
FRIEND NOVICE:— For the benefit of those read- 
ers of Gleanings who doubt the practicability of the 
Bid well method ot wintering, or the veracity of Mr. 
B’s statements, please say that he has already pul 
hiB bees in hot beds for the winter. When the weath- 
er admits of It, the bees are allowed to fly abroad as 
in summer. Wo think it advisable to construct the 
hot beds so as to admit of ventilation without remo- 
ving the glass. 
One point more. While glass directly in front ol the 
bees, as in your “Glass House ” may not destroy its 
utility. ‘Still we must think it like a pane of glass In 
the side of a bee hive, more ornamental than useful- 
more convenient than desirable. Please try a simple 
shallow “liot-bed” with glass over the bees only , be- 
fore pronouncing this method a failure. 
Hkubeut A. Buuci-i, South Haven, Mich. Nov. 9tn 
We are happy to say our glass house isn’t a. 
failure by any means, and if we conveyed tin 
idea that the glass stood perpendicularly, it 
was our mistake. The sash is about Oh.xlo, 
and the lower edge is about 2 Lj feet from the 
ground and the upper or north, perhaps 
the whole room is 14x24 now, with only the 
amount of glass named, and yet it gets too 
warm on a very clear day. Instead of straw 
for the ground underneath, we prefer saw-dust 
When the air is cold outside, the bees get 
against the glass but little. Our objection to 
a simple hot-bed is that, we can’t go inside 
and whenever our bees are where we can’t gel 
at ’em, we arc “in a peck of trouble.” 
