BEE-spoke-data/bees-v0 huggingface dataset:
The celebrated naturalist Huber first discovered that the organs of smell in the bee are located in the antennae, and he performed some interesting experiments by cutting them off and thus depriving the bees of their power to detect odors. We have recently repeated some of his experiments on workers, drones, and queens, with some modifications, and all our results confirm his position Concerning the queen, Huber says, "When one of her antennae is cut off, no change takes place in the behavior of the queen. If you cut off both antennae near the head, this mother, formerly held in such high consideration by her people, loses all her influence, and even the maternal instinct disappears. Instead of laying her eggs in the cells she drops them here and there." As is well known, a young virgin queen is normally accepted without difficulty by any colony which has been quecuellsong enough to know its queenless condition. In experimenting along this line we cut the antennae from a virgin queen about three hours old and put her on the comb of an observatory hive, and she was at once balled. This was repeated in another hive. She was then res
**SMOKE AND SMOKERS.** Wecan drive cattle and horses, and, to some extent, even pigs, with a whip; but one who undertakes to drive bees in any such way will find to his sorrow that all the rest of the animal kingdom are mild in comparison, especially as far as stubbornness and fearlessness of consequences are concerned. You may kill them by thousands; you may even burn them up with fire, but the death agonies of their comrades seem only to provoke them to new fury, and they push on to the - but with a relentlessness which we can compare to nothing better than a nest of yellow-jackets that have nude up their minds to die, and to make all the mischief they possibly can before dying It is here that the power of smoke comes in; and to one who is not conversant with its use, it seems simply astonishing to see them turn about and retreat in the most perfect dismay and fright, from the effects of a buff or two of smoke from a mere fragment of rotten wood. What could we bee-keepers do with bees attimes, were no such potent power as smoke known?
There have been various devices for getting smoke on to the bees, such as, for instance, a common tin tube having a mouthpiece at one end, and a removable cup with a vent at the other end for the issue of smoke. By blowing on the mouth-piece, smoke can in-law of Quinby, then of Mohawk, N. Y., but now of Stamford, C., introduced besemokers to the world on the principle of the original Quinby bellows smoker, but with several decided improvements. The fiee cups, at the same time, were made rather larger, and were ventilated in such a way that a continuous draft could be maintained, even when the smoker was not in use, thus preventing them from going out like the old original Quinby.
Of the two smokers the Bingham is the better--more reliable and more substantially made. While the L. C'. Root smoker is not made any more, the Bingham has a very large sale. It has recently been improved by the addition of a detachable curved snotu to prevent fire dropping, a safety device (a wire handle) by which the top can be removed for replenishing without burning the fingers,and an arrangement for burning the creosote.
Both smokers employ what is known as the hot-blast principle--that is, the blast of air from the bellows is blown _through_ the fire. This makes a heavy volume of smoke--volume enough with the proper fuel to subdue the worst kind of hybrids.
The improved Root smoker on the same principle with its new snont is very neat and substantial. The old style nozzles were somewhat top heavy, having a tendency to tip over or flop open at a most 'ine convenient time. The one here shown is not only compact in appearance, but will hold its position on top of the stove without danger of topping over, no matter how roughly used. There is no reason why the nozzle or snont bees. In principle his original smoker did not differ essentially from the Bingham and rarely if ever needed.
The hinge is a light at a point that is most convenient for lifting and shutting the cap. It works so easily that it will not be necessary to bang or pound the nozzle to open the smoker. The legs are of skeleton sheet-metal stamping, with a projecting brace which is very strong and rigid. They are riveted to the stove and bolted to the bellows-board. No matter how rough finger when the hands are full of other stuff. There are three sizes of these smokers, comprising stoves 4, 31, and 21 inches.
The object of the curved nozzle on all three of the leading hot-blast smokers is to prevent fire dropping. In the old - style smokers it was necessary in blowing smoke to tip the barrel almost upside down, or at such an angle that fire - embers would sometimes fall on the broods and the bees. The new curved nozzle permits one to use the smoker almost right side up, and yet a stream of smoke can be poured on the combs.
cold-blast smokers.
All the foregoing are of the hot-blast type - that is, the blast is forced through the fuel. Cold-blast smokers are constructed somewhat on the principle of an ejector; that is, air is conducted directly from the bellows by means of a tube, to a point inside of the fire-box, _ahead_ of the fire, not through it; the result is a blast of cold air charged with smoke. In other words, the blast of air that is forced through the nozzle sucks with it the smoke just back of it, from the burning fuel. This principle was invented almost simultaneously in 1879 by J. G. Corey, of Santa Paula, Cal., and Norman Clark, of Sterling, Ill., each without the knowledge of the other. Of the two smokers, the Clark has the better construction.
In later years Mr. F. Danzenbaker adopted a combination of both hot and cold blast
For a large volume of dense smoke, the hot-blast smokers are far superior. There was a time when the cold-blast bid fair to too rapidly. In the Clark we prefer a kind of stringy sawdust packed solid that comes from the hand-holes made in making hives. Mr. Ilingham recommends sound hard wood for his smoker. Dr. Miller and some others prefer turning-lathe hard-wood shavings, or, if these are not available, planer shavings. In certain localities peat can be obtained very cheaply, and it makes an excellent fuel. Some use old rags: others old discarded live-quilts that are covered with propolisids. These last make a very pungent subluing smoke. In some parts of the South, dry pine needles are used. One's locality as well as notions will decide what fuel to use.
W. L. Cogshall, one of the most extensive bee-keepers in the world, uses a special fuel made out of old phosphate-sacks rolled around a half-inch stick, tied at regular intervals, and then chopped into convenient lengths with a sharp ax: The rolls should,
But we doubt if this last feature is an improvement after all. Cold-blusts are used principally by bee-keepers having few colonies, the more extensive ones finding the hot-blast preferable.
One must work the bellows of a cold-blast almost constantly in order to get a smoke dense enough to subdue bees. Even then the force is too strong; while a hot-blast furnishes a gentle whiff of strong smoke that will conquer.
It will be unnecessary to give directions for using these hot or cold blast smokers, as printed directions accompany all smokers sent out by each manufacturer; yet it may be well to allude to the different kinds of fuel that have been used. Rotten wood is good, and accessible to all, but it burns out of course, be of the right diameter and length to fit inside the smoker used. The stacking must not be rolled too tightly nor made too snug a fit, or else it will choke the draft and put out the smoker. The reader is, therefore, recommended to make a few experimental rolls before he makes up a lot for a season's use.
To facilitate lighting with a match, one end of the roll is diped half an inch into a solution of saltpeter, and allowed to dry. If a little red lead be sprinkled in the solution it will be very easy to tell which end of the roll is for lighting.
\(\Delta\) quantity of old sucking, says Mr. Coggshall, will be sufficient for one season's use, and the fuel gives a lasting smoke without sparks.
He further says that he can rule it would take too much time to hunt up the grossy waste in this way. A piece could be found here and there, but generally not enough to be of any great use. A supply can be obtained at a printing establishment to last a whole season; and we always advise its use, therefore, when it can be obtained. It gives a strong, pungent smoke ; does not make a hot fire; is easily lighted; will not go out, even though the smoker be left standing for four or five hours at a time.
If you use the fuel that suits you best you are using the best fuel in your locality. Like many another important question, "locality" has a bearing in the case.
A good smoker should last a number of seasons, but it will very quickly euse to be a good implement if it is not well taken care of.
One of the most common abuses of a smoker is to leave it out in the rain. We have seen many smokers left out in all kinds of weather; and it is needless to say that the bellows leather soon becomes hard, and cracks, and the fire-box gets rusty. A good many bee-keepers keep their smokers in an empty hive and thus avoid the danger of a costly fire. If the whole hive should burn, the loss would not be so very great.
A better plan than this would be to build a small smoker-house similar to the one shown. This need not be over five or six feet high. There is a substantial shelf as shown, on which smokers, hive-tools, vells, etc., may be kept." It is a good plan to provide a piece of heavy sheet iron about half an inch above the shelf for the smokers to stand on, so that there will be no danger of setting fire to any thing. The fuel is kept below this shelf. There is room enough usually to hold a supply for a whole season; and when it is kept in this way it is always dry and ready for use. We have such small buildings at all our outyards, and consider them almost indispensable.
Another common abuse of the smoker is to allow creosote to collect at the top until the cap will not fit down over the fire-box. In a new smoker with the flexible hinge there is not apt to be so much trouble in this
Figure 3: A smoker house for smokers, tools, vells, and fuel. The fuel is kept in the lower part under the shelf.
way, but at the same time it is well to spend about ten seconds once a week or so with a screw-driver in cleaning off this accumulation. We have seen smokers with caps or nozzles so filled with creosote that they would not fit down over the fire-box at all, and of course leaked smoke very badly or else had to be bounded on the top with a stick. It takes but little time to remove the greater part of the creosote so that the parts will fit. Most smokers are made with the caps a trifle large; and while they leak
rule bee-smokers are handled pretty roughly. It does not take long to learn to use reasonable care in handling a smoker, whereby it will last enough longer to pay.
When a fuel is used in which there is a good deal of pitch it is sometimes difficult to raise the cap or nozzle after the fire is out and the metal has become cold. We have known of instances where the cap had been battered almost out of shape after being stuck down solid. It is always best where such fuel is used to raise the cap when putting the smoker away. If it is left open there will be no sticking.
Figure 5.How to hold the smoker when raising the cap. Congress the bolvers in order to give the fingers a firmer hold.
Figure 6.Two c.r.v. distance of a flow \(pprox 1\) to be back of the bolvers. The smoker is a ways at hand at a second's notice.
## Smoke and smokers.
The grate will usually keep clean; but in some cases it might get stopped up, then insert the point of a file into one of the holes and lift it out as shown in Fig. 4. It can then be very easily cleaned and replaced.
how to use a smoker.
Perhaps the majority of bee-keepers understand using a smoker without any special instructions, but we believe that, as a rule, too much smoke is used. It is best to use just as much smoke as is necessary and not any more. A beginner so often stupefes the bees that they become practically demoradized.
It is needless to say that this is a very bad plan. Very often colony after colony can be opened, especially when the bees are working, without the use of smoke; but at the same time it is well to have a smoker near at hand.
It is not considered good practice to smoke bees out of comb-honey supers, as they are frightened at the smell of smoke, and, in their desire to save honey, unequal some of the cells and thus spoil the appearance of what might otherwise be fancyhoney.
In looking for a queen, use little or no smoke, as it is very easy to set the bees running all over the combs, making it next to impossible to locate the queen. At such times the frames should be handled slowly and carefully, the bee-keeper doing nothing to disturb or excite the bees.
Fig. 5 shows the most natural way of holding the smoker when the cap is open d. A better hold is secured with the left hand if the bellows is compressed as shown. Take hold of the coiled-wire handle with the right hand and it will be seen that the cap can be raised very easily without the least danger of burning the fingers. A coiled-wire handle remains cool, no matter how hot the fire is.
Figure 7.Carrying a smoker with the little finger when the hands are full.
Figure 9.Working the bellows of the smoker while holding between the knees manipulating frames.
## Societies of Bee-Keeppers
See \(\,\) and the \(\,\) of the valley. Unless there is a following of the blossom, the honey-yield is sure to be abundant; for, being in the woods with good roots, the flow is not checked by ordinary drounds, nor do the ruins wash out the honey from the pendant, cup-shaped flowers. Often have we regaled ourselves, while \(\,\) riding along the road, by breaking a bunch of the blossoms, shaking out the honey in the hand, and licking up the delicious nectar. It bears no fruit; but each flower, as it dries up, produces a brown seed-pad about the size of a large grain of wheat, which separates, when ripe, into five parts, and permits the very fine seed to fall to the earth.
It is entirely distinct from the black-gum and sour-gum, or pepperidge, with which it has been unwittingly classed by some writers on honey-plants, much to the injury of sourwood. The former are boney- producers to a small extent, but are not worthy to be compared with sourwood, which, we are convinced after living where basswood, poplar, clover, backwheat, goldenrod, persmmion, and aster abound, has not its superior among the honey-producing plants of America, either in the amount of yield, or in its beautiful appearance. Busswood is more important, only because of its widely extended growth. We write this article, to call attention more directly to this tree as a honey-producer. Recenters are familiar with other from which abound where those who have written our books on bee culture reside, yet few are aware of the merits of sourwood, outside of the regions where it is found.
We are not familiar with the extent of its growth, but know this much: It abounds in the native forest from Southern Pennsylvania into Georgia and Mississippi. It seems to be more abundant along the whole mountainous tract of country on both sides of the Alleghenes and the Blue Ridge, reaching, in places, even as far as the tide-water on one side, and to Central Tennessee on the other. In many sections where poplar abounds and much buckwheat is raised, sourwood is considered _the honey-plant_, and yields the largest amount of surplus honey. It seems to flourish best on high, dry soil, and often abounds on poor woodland ridges, which can be purchased at a nominal price; though the forests along the rivers, in rich cultivated soil, are often beautifully checkered with the white blossoms in July. Being a forest tree, it is tall and generally spare of branches along the trunk, except when it grows in the edges of fields, where it yields the greatest amount of honey. The trunk preserves its uniformity of size for some distance up from the ground. The wood is white, with straight grain, which splits nicely. It is brittle and quite fine-grained, and is used for posts by cabinet-makers.
The flowers (see engrunying) are produced on spikes five or six inches long, which hang in clusters on the ends of branches. Many of these flower-bearing spikes are thrown out from one central spike, and are all strung with white, bell-shaped flowers, rich in honey. The flower is undway in size and appearance between the whorleberry blossom and the \(\,\) of the valley. Unless there is a failure of the blossom, the honey-yield is sure to be abundant; for, being in the woods with good roots, the flow is not checked by ordinary drounds, nor do the ruins wash out the honey from the pendant, cup-shaped flowers. Often have we regaled ourselves, while \(\,\) riding along the road, by breaking a bunch of the blossoms, shaking out the honey in the hand, and licking up the delicious nectar. It bears no fruit; but each flower, as it dries up, produces a brown seed-pad about the size of a large grain of wheat, which separates, when ripe, into five parts, and permits the very fine seed to fall to the earth.
## Spacing Franks
In nature we find combs variously spaced from \(1\!\!1,1\!\!1\), \(1\!\!1\), and sometimes up to two inches from center to center. Dzierzon, one of the very first to conceive the idea of a movable comb, gave \(1\!\!1\) as the right distance until Wyrechtmade accurate measurements on straw hives having straight combs built in them. Out of 49 measurements, the average distance was scant 11 inches. Baron von lierlepsch, by 40 other measurements, verified this result. In the United States, prominent api-arists have found the distance of natural-built combs averaged 14 inches from center to center. It has been observed, that, in the center of the brood-nest, the combs are spaced more closely than those on the outside, the latter ranging anywhere from 18 to 2 inches to centers.
It has been urged that we follow nature in the spacing of brood-frames. But it seems a very poor guide, inasmuch as we find such a diversity of measurements. The bee-keeper should adopt that spacing which will give him the best results--the most brood and surplus honey. Quite a number of bee-keepers are using 11 spacing for their frames. The reason for this is, principally, because they happened to _start_ with this spacing. But those who have given special attention to the matter, trying _both_ spacings, agree almost uniformly that the right distance is 15, or, if any thing, a tritle scant, and some use quite successfully 11-inch spacing. Many, indeed,who had fixed-distance frames adapted for 11 inches, have gone to the enormous expense of changing over to 11. The advantages of this latter spacing are so evident that very few deny that better results can be obtained with it. brood comb is found to be, on an average, \(
rac{1}{2}\) inch thick; capped brood, one inch thick. On 11 spacing, this will allow 1 inch between uncapped comb and 1 between capped brood combs.
The following paragraph is taken from an article published in _Gleunings in Bee Culture_, page 673, Vol. XVIII., written by Mr. Julius Hoffman, and it applies right here exactly:
If, for instance, we space the results from center to center so as to measure 11 instead of 12 inches, then we have an empty space of 11 inch between two combs of brood instead of 12, as it ought to be; and it will certainly require more bees to fill and keep warm a \(
rac{1}{2}\) than a 1 space. In a f-inch space, the breeding faces from two combs facing each other will join with their bucks, and so close up the space between the two brood-combs; if this store is widened, however, to 91, the bees can not do this, and more bees will be required to keep up the needed brood temperature. What a drawback this would be in cool spring weather, when our colonies are still weak in numbers yet breeding most desirable, can readily be understood.
Where wider spacing is adopted, there is apt to be more honey stored in the combs, and less of worker (but more drone brood). Close spacing, on the contrary (11), tends to encourage the rearing of more worker brood, the exclusion of drone brood, and the storage of less honey below. This is exactly as we wish. We said there is 11 inch between the uncapped brood. The bees need a little more room in bucking in and out of the cells for the purpose of feeding the larvae than they do after these cells are capped over into sealed brood. Sealed brood, requiring less attention from the bees, and less heat from the cluster, is spaced 11 apart, and this is ample. For further hints on this subject, see Frames,Self-sFacing; Hive-darking, also Hive.
**SPANISH NEEDLE.** This plant yields immense quantities of honey along the low bottom-grounds of the Mississippi and Illinois Rivers. The following from Gleannings, p. 162, Vol. XVI., is from the Hon. J. M. Hambaugh, and tells all about the plant, and the immense quantities of honey that are often produced by it.
Something over a year ago 1 wrote a letter for Gleannings, claiming that the honey gathered from this plant is superior to that produced from other fall flowers, and that it should rank among the very best grades, and command the same price in the markets as clover and linden money. My peculiar location has, fortunately, placed me in a position to understand pretty thoroughly the nature of this plant, and the quality of the honey it produces. Located at the root of the bulfs of the Illinois River, there is a broad spanse of low marshy lands to the cast and south, from three to five miles in width. These lands are subject to overflows from the river once a year, which usually take place in early spring. This renders a large portion of the soil until for filling purposes; and the consequence is, the Spanish needle has secured a permanent foothole, almost to the exclusion of nearly all other plants. Early in September the begin to open their beautiful petals, and in a short time whole districts are aglow, and their dazzling brillancy reminds one of burnished sheets of gold. It is now, should the weather prove favorable, that the bws level in their glory, and the honey comes _piling in_ and the beauty about this kind of honey is, it needs but like the "belling down," and the bees no sooner fill their cells than it is cured and ready to seal. This is one great advantage, and saves the bees lots of linden, making the storage of honey more uphol, I had one colony of bees that stored 638 (bes, of 11) or in six days; another one, 80 (hus, in nine days, while 63 producing colonies net net 2.2 (hus, in ten days--an average of 47 (hus, to the colony. Though not quite as clear as clover or linden, the honey has a golden hue, an exquisite throw, and a very fine body, weighing fully 12 (hus, to the gallou, and, as previously stated, I can not see why it should not rank on the market in grade and price with clover and linden honey.
So far as my market is concerned, there is no honey so universally liked by the consumers as my "golden coreopsis;" in fact, not one word of complaint has ever come back to me from this honey, gave one. A neighbor caused buying it11 and when asked for a reason, he stated, "My children out it up too fast." I am now running a pedalling-wagon, and my salesman states he can sell more honey going over territory he has previously earnsated than to hunt up new routes. This certainly speaks well for this kind of honey. I have sold over 4-40 lbs. In my home market this season, and the demand seems to be on the increase; and I believe if aiparists will locate their bees so as to get the benefit of these large areas of corceposis they will not only confer a boson on their fellow-man but reap a financial reward for themselves. Another word in favor of coroposis honey! It is less inclined to granulate; and at this date there is but little sign of granulation, while my two barrels of linden honey is as hard as New Orleans sugar.
J. M. Hambaqr.
Spring, Brown Co., Ill., Jan. 21, 1889.