Sept. 26, 1901. 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL, 



613 



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Contributed Articles. 



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The Honey Market and Crop in California. 



BY GEO. \V. BROrBKCK. 



WE bee-keepers of Southern California have been 

 forced to confront conditions in the marketing of 

 our product this year that we have never been 

 obliged to face before ; and I firmly believe that if the 

 majority of our bee-keepers were patrons of our leading 

 bee-papers, this state of things could not exist. 



Every season we are informed from outside sources (and 

 sometimes within), that Southern California will have an 

 enormous crop of honey, and it matters not whether the 

 conditions are favorable or not (last year as an illustration), 

 with the consequent result prices are established before the 

 honey is ready for the market and the amount produced is 

 unknown. This year has not been an exception in this 

 respect to the past, but that which has lent additional inter- 

 est and more than all else to depress the market, has been 

 the action of some within our own ranks. The object, of 

 course, is self-evident, for the circulation of the rumor of a 

 large crop has a depressing influence upon the bee-keeper 

 who is forced to sell, and when the middleman quotes a 

 well-known bee-keeper as authority, it lends force to the 

 statement ; and as the former has no means at hand to 

 know of the vast quantity of honey that has been shipped 

 to the United States from Cuba, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico, 

 (this information is supplied by the buyer or go-between), 

 knowing not whether it is true or false as to state of 

 market, etc., he quietly submits and sells for the price 

 offered. 



We all know beyond question, that at the beginning of 

 this season we had less than one-half of the bees to pro- 

 duce a crop with than four years ago. and yet the state- 

 ment has gone forth that we produced as much, and more, 

 than we did four years ago. I know beyond question that 

 we have many honest buyers, and I know of bee-keepers 

 who have been aiding these men in a legetimate way, but 

 when men from our own ranks circulate statements with 

 the express view of depressing the market, and thereby 

 affording them a profit, I think it is time the California 

 bee-keepers were warned against their practices, and it is 

 this which prompts this article. 



While I am not disposed to pose as authority in regard 

 to this year's crop, information from some of our leading 

 bee-keepers, and other sources, indicates that we have pro- 

 duced about 150 car-loads of honey, all told. Over half of 

 this has been marketed. Comb honey has been produced 

 in limited quantities, due to unfavorable conditions, and 

 this has nearly all been disposed of. The remainder of 

 our product is in the hands of men who can hold it indefi- 

 nitely. Los Angeles, Calif., Sept. 7. 



How Do Bees Manage to Sur\ive tlie Winter ? 



BY " \^ OBSKKVEK." 



BEES survive the winter by packing themselves in clus- 

 ters between combs of waxen cells filled with honey. 

 The low temperature a cluster of bees so situated can 

 resist and still keep alive is really marvelous, and is only 

 paralleled, in the other extreme, by the degree of heat a 

 bacillus spore can withstand without losing its vitality. 



Water, if kept from circulating, is as bad a conductor 

 of heat as eider-down (see " Encyclopedia Britannica," 

 ninth edition) ; and honey, for the same reason, contained 

 in wax cells 1-5 inch in diameter and 'z inch deep, must be 

 an exceedingly bad conductor. We can, therefore, presume 

 that although some heat must be lost, the loss through the 

 combs may be reckoned as nil. The cluster loses heat 

 around the outer circle, at the periphery ; the circumference 

 is the radiating and cooling area. 



Now, if we take a cluster of bees, say 10 inches in diam- 

 eter and '2 inch thick — about the distance between the 

 combs — we find that the cluster would be very nearly 40 

 cubic inches in volume, and the radiating or cooling area 

 would be 15'. superficial square inches; three cubic inches 

 of bees, therefore, only expose to the cold a little over one 



square inch of surface. If we take a cluster 5 inches in 

 diameter we find the volume to be 10 cubic inches, and the 

 radiating surface or area 7^ square inches ; and, if we take 

 a cluster 4 inches in diameter, the volume would be 6'4 

 cubic inches and the cooling area 6'^ square inches. The 

 10-inch cluster has, therefore, three times the advantage of 

 the 4-inch cluster, and, in proportion to volume, three times 

 more heat will be required to keep up the temperature of 

 the smaller cluster. 



The relation of volume to cooling area may be shown 

 thus : It would take the bees contained in four clusters of 

 4 inches in diameter to make one cluster 8 inches in diam- 

 eter, and the cooling surface of the 8-iuch cluster would be 

 one-half of the cooling area of the total of the separate 4- 

 inch clusters. The bees, therefore, in the larger cluster 

 would require only one-half the heat to keep up their liv- 

 ing temperature that they would in the smaller clusters. 



If we take a cluster one inch in diameter the volume 

 would be the half of .7854, say four-tenths of a cubic inch, 

 and the cooling area the half of 3.1416, say 1'4 square 

 inches ; the cooling area is, therefore, proportionally four 

 times greater than in the 4 inch cluster, and is too large to 

 allow of much fall in temperature with safety to the bees. 

 So small a cluster could not exist in winter, except at the 

 equator or near to it. 



The individual bee is very sensitive to cold, but we 

 must remember that a cubic inch exposes 6 square inches 

 of radiating surface, and that the volume decreases or 

 increases as the cube, and the surface as the square. A bee 

 in mass or volume is less than the sixty-fourth of a cubic 

 inch, and its radiating, cooling, or heating surface is more 

 than one-third of a square inch. Assuming the sixty- 

 fourth of a cubic inch to be a cube, its sftrface would be 

 three-eighths of a square inch. This cube would therefore 

 expose a radiating surface proportionally twenty-four 

 times greater than the 4-inch cluster. The single bee, 

 when incorporated in the 10-inch cluster, must be afforded 

 over sixty times more protection from cold than it would 

 possess outside the cluster. 



The space between the combs is important. We will 

 consider the distance between the combs in reference to the 

 cooling area, and at the same time the supply of food, as 

 these are closely related. The 10-inch cluster, between 

 combs '+ inch apart, is surrounded by 80 cubic inches of 

 honey supposing the cells to be full — and as a cubic inch 

 of honey weighs .05 of a pound there are 4 pounds of honey 

 within reach of the cluster for the bees to feed upon. We 

 will now suppose the combs to be one inch instead of '; 

 inch apart : the bees clustering close would occupy 7 inches 

 instead of 10 inches— the volume is not changed, it remains 

 40 cubic inches. The cooling area, however, has been 

 increased to 22 superficial inches, and the honey within the 

 immediate reach of the cluster has been reduced to 2 

 pounds ; in place of 2 cubic inches of honey to the cubic inch 

 of bees, we have only one cubic inch of honey to the cubic 

 inch of bees. The food supply has been diminished SO per- 

 cent, and the cooling area of the cluster increased 40 per- 

 cent. The bees must therefore consume 40 percent more 

 honey to keep up their temperature ; and this increase of 

 consumption and decrease of supply would necessitate 

 their change of quarters in search of food in one-fourth the 

 time required had they remained at the 'i-inch distance. 

 It must be understood, in reference to increasing the cool- 

 ing area and the correlative consumption of food, that the 

 capacity of the bees to keep up temperature by feeding is 

 limited, and in a badly proportioned cluster, i.e., a cluster 

 radiating more heat than the bees can generate, the bees 

 will die with an abundance of stores around them. 



When the depth of the combs allows the bees to locate 

 their stores above the brood-cells, they always lengthen the 

 store-cells so as to leave only '4 inch space between the 

 combs. Let us see what the bees gain by diminishing the 

 distance. Taking the 4-inch cluster between combs ■> inch 

 apart, it would have to extend itself to nearly 5^+ inches to 

 remain the same in volume at the '4 inch distance. The 

 cooling area would now, from diminishing the distance, be 

 reduced 30 percent, and the honey within the immediate 

 reach of the bees would be increased, from 2 cubic inches 

 to the cubic inch of bees, to 5 cubic inches to the cubic inch 

 of bees— that is, 150 percent. 



From the facts here stated I think it is evident that the 

 size of the cluster and the depth of the combs are really the 

 essential requisites for wintering, and that, as a general 

 rule, the size of the cluster and depth of combs must 

 increase with the degrees of latitude. As the combs 

 increase in size, they must, of course, be diminished in 

 number, and if the construction of the hives should not 



