678 



AMERICAM BEE JOURNAL 



Oct. 24, 1st. 1. 



the case, it looks to me as if the simple 

 presence of the queen had something 

 to do with the disposition of the bees. 



Pres. Root — Sometimes the cause 

 sugg'ests the remedy. Sometimes bees 

 are very cross in an apiary under cer- 

 tain kinds of management. Speaking 

 about cross bees, it seemed to me that 

 the Grossest bees I ever saw were the 

 bees in southern California. It seemed 

 to me that they were trained to be 

 cross ; I could not get anywhere near 

 the apiaries without protection, and 

 sometimes if I was half a mile away 

 they would come out to meet me. I 

 fell to wondering why they were so 

 cross. The great majority of bee- 

 keepers there produce extracted honey. 

 Their hives are any old box, and they 

 leave one or two inches of space be- 

 tween the extracting and the brood 

 frames. When they separate the upper 

 story from the lower one and get ready 

 to extract they break all this comb, 

 and it irritates the bees. The bees are 

 what we would call a very good grade 

 of hybrids, and they are not naturally 

 very cross bees, but tearing the combs 

 to pieces is apt to irritate them more 

 or less. 



N. A. Kluck, of Illinois — I have had 

 a little experience with cross bees. In 

 working around them, should they get 

 cross, thoroughly smoke them and 

 then kick the hives. I whip my bees 

 when they are cross, and smoke them 

 till they don't know anything. 



W. L. Coggshall, of New York — I 

 would not give them that treatment. 

 I may kick the hives, but the bees are 

 subdued before I kick the hive. I had 

 a boy take off 80 top stories last Tues- 

 day, and after the bees were subdued — 

 you may have a wrong impression 

 about the kicking — when the bees are 

 subdued, they are just as peaceable as 

 can be, and kicking them doesn't affect 

 them ; to kick off the top story wouldn't 

 hurt anything. 



Pres. Root — I have noticed that in 

 cutting down a bee-tree, as soon as the 

 tree falls the bees are apt to be very 

 cross, but when one takes an axe and 

 begins to chop away at the tree the 

 bees seem to be demoralized. Severe 

 smoking is liable to induce robbing. 



SPRING DWINDLING AND THE REMEDY. 



" Is spring dwindling a disease ? If 

 so, what is the remedy ?" 



Dr. Miller — How manj' think it is a 

 disease ? 



Mr. Kluck — Old bees, is it not ? 



Mr. Abbott — What do you mean by 

 disease ? 



W. Z. Hutchinson, of Michigan — My 

 idea of spring dwindling is imperfect 

 wintering. They need to have good 

 food. Good food is the pivot of suc- 

 cessful wintering. If you have good 

 food and protect the bees you will not 

 have spring dwindling. I think spring 

 dwindling is the result of poor winter- 

 ing. I would not call it a disease, un- 

 less an overloading of the system from 

 confinement constitutes a disease. 



Mr. Abbott — Doesn't a cold spring 

 have something to do with it ? 



Mr. Hutchinson— I think it would 

 have something to do with it. 



Mr. Abbott — I would like to suggest 

 that spring dwindling is fretjuently 

 the result of foolish feeding. I have 

 known a great many people to kill off 

 their bees with feeding. Take the 

 average farm bee-keeper and he is just 

 as likely to cause spring dwindling by 



feeding his bees as to do them any 

 good, if he feeds them late in the fall. 

 A great many bees are provoked to fly 

 out in the spring by foolish feeding, 

 when, if they were left alone, and not 

 fed at all, would not break the cluster, 

 and the result is they wear themselves 

 out before it is time for the queen to 

 lay any eggs. Some people wonder 

 why it is, and say they followed the 

 bee-books, but the man who isn't in- 

 tending to use brains in connection 

 with bee-books would be better oft' 

 without them, especially when it comes 

 to feeding. Farmers come to me and 

 say, '■ I thought my bees were a little 

 short, and I fixed them up some syrup 

 and put it under the hive, and I have 

 been feeding them for a long time," 

 when the mercury was standing down 

 below freezing all the time, and a man 

 who feeds bees when the mercury is in 

 that condition is simply producing 

 spring dwindling ; and if you should 

 define disease as an abnormal condi- 

 tion, I should say it was a disease. 



Pres. Root — As I understand Mr. 

 Abbott, feeding in the spring has a 

 tendency to cause the bees to fly out, 

 and they become chilled and do not 

 get back. 



Mr. Abbott— Not only that, but the 

 over-activity of the bee exhausts its 

 vitality. 



Mr. Hutchinson — I thought it was the 

 result of imperfect wintering. 



Mr. Abbott — I don't believe it. 



Mr. Hutchinson — Mr. McEvoy, in 

 Canada, has very good success in win- 

 tering his bees, and he crowds them 

 down on five or six combs of solid 

 honey, and does that so that they can 

 not breed towards spring, and if those 

 combs are not full of honey he feeds 

 them till they are full, and will not 

 take any more food. He feeds that in 

 the fall. 



Dr. Miller — I confess, to begin with, 

 that I do not know what is the cause 

 of spring dwindling. It is a matter 

 of exceeding consequence sometimes to 

 all of us, and I would like very much if 

 we could get at what is the cause of it. 

 In the first place, I think we all would 

 be very likely to agree that it is not a 

 disease. It is a condition. Not such 

 a condition as would be called a dis- 

 ease, however, and the facts that have 

 been started are all in the line with the 

 observation of any one who takes 

 pains to make any observation about 

 it at all. It would be worth something 

 to us if we could get down to find out 

 what is the condition that is produced. 

 Now, it may be true, for instance, that 

 food of a certain kind brings about 

 that condition, but what is that condi- 

 tion ? Will feeding and making them 

 fly out at inopportune times make 

 spring dwindling ? and is that all 

 there is of spring dwindling ? Is it 

 simply the fact that a number of bees 

 have flown out and become lost ? That 

 is not spring dwindling according to 

 my observation. It is something more 

 than that. I don't know that I know 

 what that condition is, but I will say 

 this much about it, that when you find 

 spring dwindling I think you will 

 almost always fina that the number of 

 bees present in the hive compared with 

 the amount of brood is always small. 

 Now, I would like to know, as a matter 

 of fact, whether the observation of my 

 friends here agrees with that. Is that 

 the common thing? It has appeared 

 to me to be the case that, whenever I 



had a case of spring dwindling, there 

 were too few bees in the hive to take 

 care of the brood that was there. Now, 

 if that is a common thing, I would like 

 to know it. 



H. L. Case, of New York — A few 

 years ago, in the latter part of April 

 and forepart of May, I lost 80 colonies 

 of bees by what I called spring dwind- 

 ling. The fall before my bees gath- 

 ered a large quantity of honey-dew, 

 and the winter was a severe one ; it 

 kept them in the hives perhaps four 

 months without giving them a flight. 

 Now, I believe the reason I had spring 

 dwindling that winter, or that spring, 

 was on account of improper food, and 

 the conditions were improper for their 

 prosperity ; if they had had one or two 

 good flights in the autumn, so that 

 they could fly right out on a warm day, 

 and have a good flight, I think it would 

 have been better. I saved only 20 

 small colonies, and after the first good 

 day that we had when the bees could 

 fly out I didn't lose any more bees to 

 speak of. Now, I agree with Mr. 

 Hutchinson, that improper feeding and 

 the conditions through winter, confin- 

 ing them to their hive and they con- 

 suming too much food, made them lazy, 

 and they could not get out to relieve 

 themselves, and the result was that I 

 lost the 80 colonies. 



Pres. Root — It is very evident that 

 there are a good many causes that in- 

 duce spring dwindling. 



Mr. Kluck — Would the gentleman 

 state the time when the bees gathered 

 that honey-dew ? 



Mr. Case — It was the forepart of 

 September. I went bee-hunting at the 

 time. I spend some time in the fall 

 hunting wild bees, and there was so 

 much honey-dew on the forest leaves 

 in my section that they would not pay 

 any attention to honey. I could not 

 get a bee to return to the box, and you 

 could go into the forest and it would 

 seem as if there was a swarm of bees, 

 and they filled the hives full, from 25 

 to 30 pounds of that honey-dew in the 

 course of, as I remember, five or six 

 days, and they sealed it nicely, but I 

 couldn't do much, and let it go, with 

 the results that I have stated. 



Pres. Root — How many have had 

 experience with spring dwindling ? 



Dr. Miller — Now I wish, Mr. Presi- 

 dent, you would ask how many have 

 had cases of spring dwindling in which 

 little or no brood was present in the 

 hive. 



Pres. Root — If I understand the Doc- 

 tor, he finds a condition which we 

 sometimes find in our apiary along in 

 March, when the bees evidently see 

 that their numbers are small, and that 

 they must have some brood to keep up 

 the animal heat, and the queen lays a 

 little more than they can take care of, 

 and they spread out too much and die 

 on the outside edges. I have seen the 

 bees so spread out on the batch of 

 brood that they would all die. 



Dr. Miller — Further than that. I have 

 had a number of cases where there 

 were too few bees, and they have tried 

 to cover the brood, and have appar- 

 ently had a consultation and decided it 

 was too much for them, and then all 

 swarmed out. 



J. S. Callbreath, of New York— I had 

 a colony very strong with bees. I sent 

 for a good queen and introduced her 

 the next spring. I happened to be 

 there so that I could watch, and I 



