Various

“ As we have not had any rain here this spring, except one or two slight sprinklings, we are now threatened with drouth. Heavy dews and a clouded sky have saved us so far, but have kept the bees from flying a great deal. I shall not increase my stock any more till it rains, or honey becomes plenty again. From the hive that I have raising queen cells, I secured fifty in three weeks. ”

“ A neighbor says the way we follow the bees across fields and through woods, and delve into the subject and remove obstructions, it is no wonder they get honey if it be on the face of the earth—and perhaps that is so.
But, look here, my dear reader, did you understand us to say that our bees were building combs? Not at all; “nary” comb will they build, with a few exceptions, and certainly none in those old-fashioned traps called boxes. It is this way. Where there are empty combs right above the brood, they will fill them with honey; as, for instance, in the upper story of the Langstroth hive. ”

“ In the hands of the inexperienced, or of those ignorant of the first principles of success, a few failures ought not to be wondered at. But for those having a knowledge of the prerequisites for the acceptance of a stranger queen by a colony of bees, to talk of the safe introduction of unimpregnated queens, as an act of uncertainty, induces me to believe that they have either not experimented at all on this part of practical bee-culture, or else did so to little profit. ”

“ It is of vastly more importance to write on this subject and induce an extension of the market demand for honey, than to teach fertilization by one or more drones. Bee keeping is now very profitable—more so than is acknowledged in print; but men have a disposition to keep the thing to themselves. It is very often the case that a bee-keeper instructs his neighbors in the art of managing bees successfully and profitably, and as soon as these are well posted in the business, they become a source of annoyance, contempt, and jealousy to their instructors. ”

“ Bee-wintering is one of the most important points in bee-culture now, and bee-keepers could well afford to contribute towards procuring the best plan of a house.
Now, dear editor, although a passenger in the sleeping car, I am for progress. Thirteen swarms from one—say one brought up to fourteen, is a true American fact. If I had set the fourteen in four hives, with ample space for boxes, it would have been a pity for my blacks to compare results. I drummed out my old hive and first swarm, and cut three pails of honey out of them. Then I returned the bees, and the gaps are again nearly closed. ”

“ Mr. J. E. Pond likewise, though he misapprehends my intention to attack any one but sharpers, who sell for pure Italians what no one, qualified to judge, would call even a good hybrid. I know nothing of Mr. Alley only through his advertisement, and of course knew nothing of the quality of his bees. But while I know nothing of him, I do know men who sent to where it was most convenient and cheapest, and straightway they became queen-breeders, and supplied the country round, in turn, with genuine queens. ”

“ Young, unimpregnated queens can be introduced by Alley’s process, to any queenless colony. I will give a fuller report, and how to use it, this fall or winter. I consider it quite an advantage to save all natural queen cells, and hatch them out in the Nursery; and it is no disadvantage certainly to have a supply of young queens on hand, at so small an expense, to give to a natural or artificial swarm, at swarming time, even if they are not fertilized. When you can draw on your nursery for a queen, at any time at sight, it is quite an advantage ”

“ If it be true, as has been asserted time and again in the Bee Journal, that the only means the bees have of recognizing strangers, is by the sense of smell, it stands to reason that, if a stranger queen be confined in a hive long enough to acquire the scent of the hive, the bees will immediately accept her as their own, especially if they have no young queens in process of rearing. ”

“ I made a number of artificial swarms, by taking a comb of brood, honey, and bees, from six full hives and putting them together into a new hive—using empty frames to fill the vacancy made in the old hives. The swarms thus made have done well, compared with natural ones, and will be in fair condition for winter.
It continues so dry yet that we cannot look for a large yield of honey, either from buckwheat or other flowers; nor, if we could, can we expect much honey to be stored in boxes, where comb has to be built to receive it, as the nights are becoming too cool for comb-building. ”

“ I do not doubt that every man who gets a queen from Mr. Alley, or from any other man who sends the genuine breed, gets the worth of his money; but what I did mean to say, was, that if a man wishes to get the highest grade of Italians, let him get one that has been raised from the best selected stock, under the eye of an experienced apiarian, and thoroughly tested before she is used as a breeder. Then the buyer will know what he is getting, and would find his purchase cheap at twenty dollars—rather than one that was untested and raised at haphazard, at two dollars and a half. ”

“ We have no wish to discourage inventors, for they certainly are entitled to full reward for any improvements or discoveries they give the world. But we think it is clearly true that the great mass of inventors—especially those whose inventions relate to “little things,” or articles in common use—place too high an estimate on the value of their patent right, often holding it, waiting for better offers from manufacturers or purchasers of “territory,” until some one patents a better device for the same purpose, when the first becomes useless or nearly so. ”

“ I have raised some queens by letting the nucleus have brood to start queen cells from; but they have been slow coming to maturity; and after they have laid a few eggs, they are sometimes discarded and a young queen raised from the brood. The trouble seems to be that where queen cells are started by a small cluster of bees, they do not feed the grubs plentifully enough, and when the queen hatches out not a particle of royal jelly is found in the cell. Whereas, when a strong colony raises a queen, the cell will contain a large quantity of jelly after the young queen emerges. ”

“ When I depended on box honey, the hive was crowded with honey before the bees would work in boxes.
As it took two pounds per month in winter to support a colony of bees, at this rate the twelve ounces of honey required to rear a thousand drones would keep a thousand workers four and a half months. I believe drones usually live about two months. So when Novice shaves off the heads of drone brood sealed over, he has already lost two-thirds of what it would cost to let them live; and the presence of drones might perhaps prevent the raising of more drone brood. ”

“ In No. 11 of the Bienenzeitung for 1870, the Baron of Berlepsch urges bee-keepers to make diligent observations, to ascertain the origin of honey dew. I have for many years given special attention to the subject, as it is one of great interest, not only to bee-keepers, but also to pomologists. My observations fully corroborate the remark of the Baron, that honey dew occurs, in most cases, independently as a vegetable excretion, and only occasionally as the product of aphides. ”

“ These I have used in making new swarms. I have five colonies here, which still interest me greatly, although there are not many dollars and cents, as income, in the enterprise, and I take all the profits in honey for my table. So you see I am not a very formidable rival in the trade.
But, in common with the brotherhood, “bee on the brain,” is a chronic complaint with me, and I never shall recover from it; and every man who talks bees, or writes bees, or raises queen bees for $2.50, or any other price, has traits that make me regard him as a brother. ”

“ I am, also, further convinced that much attention must be paid to the age of the young queen, and to the state of the weather, in order to secure fertilization in confinement. In fact, we must approach as near as possible to the natural state of the circumstances that govern the mating of queens and drones. I may say, in addition, that it is evident some queens will mate earlier than others, if not hindered by bad weather. ”

“ Or, will some one say the old queen was present. Well, if she was, why did the bees build about one-third drone comb? Will some one give us a similar case—such as a newly hived large swarm starting queen cells at once, while they have a queen. I am almost positively certain that they had no queen; yet there is much about the case that bothers or puzzles me. A good job for Gallup!
On the 27th of July, I removed a queen from a strong nucleus, to send her off. The nucleus hive was 12 × 12 × 18 inches, with three frames and partition board. ”

“ The way we sling the honey out is a caution. We have obtained six hundred and twenty-five (625) pounds of extracted honey, and six hundred and fifty (650) pounds of box honey from eight colonies of bees, and have increased them to twenty-two; and all the hives are full of honey now—the result of scientific bee-culture.
Old fogy bee-keepers begin to open their eyes, and think that bee-keeping is not all mere luck. The light begins to shine, and bee-keeping is advancing.
The Italian bees are more and more approved, and taking the place of the black bees ”

“ Editor, we really think that the more bees there are kept, the more honey plants will grow; for every blossom is most surely fertilized, and the result must be more and better seed.
For the first four years that we kept bees, we never found the hives to gain in weight after the first of August; and then we had only from four or five to twenty stocks. Sixty-five colonies is certainly nothing like overstocking, and we have no fear that one hundred would be in any danger if well taken care of. ”

“ We really think a few more just now would be worth a dollar apiece to us. A little feeding given just right will induce comb building, but we think not so as to pay.
The one stock that we weighed all through the season has now given us three hundred and thirty (330) pounds; and had it not been for replacing their queen, they would have done much better. Their new queen is nearly a black one, and so, also, are her workers; and, by the way, Mr. Editor, here lies a trouble. In slicing the heads off of all our drone brood this summer, we increased our yield of honey, which was all right. ”

“ Injure a single bee in the hive, and the whole colony is instantly exasperated. Cause the honey to run out without injury to any of the bees, and the effect is somewhat different. Tear the comb containing sealed brood, and the bees are at once enraged. And for what purpose? For self-preservation as a colony, in caring for the offspring. Why do they gather honey? For self-preservation and perpetuation of the species. ”

“ Every once living thing that has become extinct as a species upon this earth, failed from some unknown cause, to comply with this grand fundamental principle—self-preservation and perpetuation of species.
Querist next says—“Again, is it not a fact that the self-preservation of the matured bees, is far stronger than the love of offspring? Witness, for instance, the destruction of drones during a dearth in the honey harvest?” I do not know whether I understand him here. When I say, honey harvest, I mean a time when there is plenty of honey to be found by the bees in flowers, honey dews, &c. ”

“ Although my advanced age and infirmities moderate my ambition in the new business of bee-keeping, and so limit my experiments that I have never tried to increase my stock by artificial swarming, I have no doubt but the greatest success in the business can only be secured by the use of non-swarming hives and artificial swarming. ”

“ It is true that the workers do destroy the unhatched drone brood in time of dearth. But why do they do it? It is in strict obedience and conformity to this alleged first law of nature.
Does Querist not know why his bees are so slow about entering their honey boxes, for the purpose of building combs? It is simply this grand fundamental principle that prompts. It is only because there are supernumerary bees in the hive that a portion of the workers leave the brood and enter the out of-the-way receptacle. The temperature required to produce brood is 70° to 80° Fahrenheit ”

“ Last spring I had a first-rate honey slinger made by a brother bee-keeper in this city, and commenced the season with twenty colonies—fourteen of which were Italians or hybrid. As the bees commenced storing honey very early, my expectations were quite flattering, though I did not obtain as much honey as I anticipated. Several mistakes which I happened to make, account for this, in part; but my honey-harvest is respectable still. Here is a statement of it:
As beeswax sells at the same price here that honey does, we may count it with the rest, and thus we have 1,757 lbs. ”

“ On the 6th of June two very large swarms got together. I divided and equalised them, and thinking each had a queen, I left them and went to other work. One of the queen’s wings being cropped, I had put her on the cluster before the other swarm issued—the two stands sat about a rod apart. About an hour after this one of the stands became restless, the bees flying out and in, but neither going back to the old stand, nor to the one I had just separated them from; nor settling, either, except on the tops of the weeds and grass, two rods below the two stands, and under the limb they had swarmed on. ”

“ The only plant we have ever cultivated for bees is the Alsike clover, of which we have about half an acre, sown last spring on the snow, and which has bloomed quite profusely for the last six weeks, but is now nearly gone. We think our bees kept at least one sentinel to the square foot of it, to watch for the honey as it collected. ”

“ I have learned, moreover, that by most of the methods employed the queens and drones become so excited, that, without fostering the disposition for mating (the purpose for which they are confined) they worry themselves to death in a very short time. To remedy this, I have made cages on the same plan of my Queen Nursery cages, but larger every way, with the covered way at one end converted into an ante-chamber for the introduction of the drones at the proper season, without disturbing either the workers or the queen in the queen’s parlor. ”

“ As to the bees coming down to the ground, that is often the case. When a swarm issues, the bees are so full of honey that it is difficult for them to fly, and they often light to rest. I have often had swarms to settle in three or four places, though they had but one queen, remain for ten or fifteen minutes, and then all join the cluster with the queen. ”

“ Every one sticks more or less to his native language, and prefers reading newspapers printed in that language, because he understands it best. The second reason or cause is jealousy. It is a fact well known to every bee-keeper away from large cities, that the sale of honey is very slow in small cities and towns ”