AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



775 



19-20 of the bees in Carniola are in box- 

 hives. 



Mr. McEvoy — How is the yield of 

 honey ? 



Mr. Benton — Very g'ood, indeed. 

 There are miles and miles of buck- 

 wheat. In extracting- the honey, they 

 first put it in a sack, comb and all, and 

 then subject it to great pressure. Of 

 course, it is ■'strained" honey, and 

 contains quantities of pollen. It is ex- 

 cellent bee-food, though. It stimulates 

 brood-rearing- more rapidly than the 

 feeding- of sugar. 



Mr. Barb — If they were to save their 

 bees, would the country have too many ? 



Mr. Benton— I don't think they 

 would. They take out their weakest 

 colonies. Foul-broody colonies are al- 

 most sure to be taken out. 



Mr. McEvoy — What are their winters 

 like ? 



Mr. Benton— Very long and severe. 

 I saw the mercury once 20 degrees be- 

 low zero, and very deep snow in most 

 of the province. It is elevated from 

 one to ten thousand feet above the sea 

 level. It is quite cold in October, and 

 very cold in November, and it lasts un- 

 til March and April, with a very long, 

 cold spring following away into May. 

 The percentage of loss of bees in the 



winter is quite small, and spring 

 dwindling is a thing almost unknown. 

 The winds sometimes change very sud- 

 denly, bringing a thick fog down into 

 the valleys, and thousands of the fly- 

 ing bees are killed then, but, notwith- 

 standing that, the colonies are so pro- 

 lific that they revive very quickl)'. 

 During the buckwheat harvest the 

 same thing occurs. I have sometimes 

 seen all of the working force of a col- 

 ony wiped away in a single hour, and 

 thereby the hope of any future yield of 

 surplus honey during that harvest was 

 entirely precluded. 



(Continued next week.) 



I Contributed Articles. ^ 



Gathering Mot in Proportion to Length of Tongue. 



BY G. M. DOOLITTLE. 



DURING the spriiij!: and rarly summer of 1901 quite a little 

 was written regarding the high ijatbering qualities of 

 bees having long tongues, and many advertisements were 

 inserted in our bee-papers, holding out inducements to pur- 

 chasers, prominent among which was long tongues, as the 

 bees having such were the ones which secured the greatest 

 yields of honey ; and especially so in districts where the red 

 clover was grown bv th(' farmer for hay and pasturage for his 

 flocks. 



At that time I did not dream that I should have any 

 chanci' to know for myself of the correctness of this long- 

 tongue matter, tor nearly a score of years had elapsed since 

 red clover liloumed or gave seed in these parts, owing to a very 

 small weevil, called a "midge," working in the head of the 

 clover just before the blossoms were to open, this causing the 

 blossoms, while in the bud, to blast, so that not one bud in a 

 million came to perfection. But the past season, from some 

 cause or other, the inidge seemed to be absent, and before I 

 was hardly aware of it, my eyes beheld hundreds of acres 

 becoming red with the bloom of red clover. 



And at about the same time the weather became hot and 

 favorable for honey-secretion, so that by .June 20 we had a 

 yield of honey on, second to none that I had ever known at 

 that time of the year. In fact, the How of nectar was nearly, 

 if not quite, as great as any I had ever known from basswood 

 when at its best, except that the nectar is always thinner 

 from clover than from basswood. And this How of nectar 

 from clover continued, in varying degree, clear through the 

 basswood yield and up to August 1, thus helping greatly to 

 linish uj) and complete nearly all the partly tinished sections 

 remaining at the close of the basswood bloom. As a result, I 

 obtained (together with what was secured from buckwheat, 

 which gave only a light How) tlie largest average yield, from 

 colonies not robbed for queen-rearing, of any ever obtained 

 during the '^.i years I have kept bees, namely : an average of 

 176 pounds of section honey per colony at tlie out-apiary, and 

 ISO |)Ounds here In the home yard. 



In the homi' yard I had two colonies close to each other, 

 one being headed by a queen from my original honey-gather- 

 ing stock, and the other by a very tine-looking (lueen procured 

 by way of exchange, during 1900. from a bee-keeper in Iowa. 

 These colonies were as nearly alike as to outward appearances 

 in early spring as two peas, but as the season advanced the 

 brood in the colony having the Iowa queen outstripped that 

 from the other by thousands of cells, till I began to think I 

 had a prize in this new queen : but when the season closed I 

 found that I had from the colony headed by tlie queen of my 

 rearing, 2f) 1 completed one-pound sections, 21 partly filled, 

 anil 4-J pounds in the brood-chamber : while th<' colony having 

 the Iowa ipieen gave only -11 poorly lilled sections, none partly 

 lilled, and had only 12 pounds in tiie hive October 1, so that 

 they had to be fed 18 pounds for wintering. 



Remembering that I hail seen somewhere in the bee-pa- 

 pers that if we would be fair in testing this long-tongue mat- 

 ter, bees from the colony giving the poorest yield of linney 

 -should be sent as well as those from the one giving the great' 

 est yield, I bethought myself to send a dozen of these bees. 



(from each colony) to Prof. Gillette, of the Colorado Agricul- 

 tural College, as he had asked for bees to measure, through 

 the columns of the American Bee Journal, and I accordingly 

 did so. When Mr. Gillette reported he gave as the average of 

 '• Lot 1 ■' (from ray queen) 2.5.4 ; and Of -'Lot 2" (from the 

 Iowa queen) 25.6, the same being in hundredths of an inch. 

 So it will be seen that the colony giving less than one-sixth 

 the yield of the other, really had the longest tongues. 



Both colonies were managed as nearly alike as could pos- 

 sibly be done, up to about the first of .July, when the Iowa bees 

 began to swarm, and kept it up more or less, all through ten 

 days of the best part of the harvest. They were not suscepti- 

 ble to the management of the apiarist as were the others, but 

 with the honey harvest they went to an excess in breeding, 

 and used up the honey which they gathered in breeding a 

 superfluous number of workers which took to swarming rather 

 than to honey-gathering, and thus the season was frittered 

 away to little advantage to the apiarist. 



My observation has been the same this year as in years 

 past, that the bee which is the most susceptible to the man- 

 agement of the apiarist, so that a maximum amount of bees 

 can be brought on the stage of action, with little, if any, desire 

 to swarm, just at the commencement of the honey harvest, 

 with as few bees at all other times as is consistent with this 

 object, is the bee which rolls up the honey to the account of 

 the apiarist every time. 



But I hear some one saying that the length of the tongues 

 of these bees varied only two-tenths of a hundredth of an inch, 

 anyway. This is right, and from considerable correspondence 

 of late I am led to believe that Italian bees from various parts 

 of the country, and from colonies that gather little or much 

 honey, all have tongues of practically the same length. Had 

 the tongues of Italian bees from colonies giving the poorest 

 yields of honey been measured on the start, instead of offering 

 prizes for the longest tongues which gathered the most honey, 

 more real facts would have come to light, with less of public 

 deception. 



It is always well to go a little slow until assured of the 

 ground upon which we stand, lest some one may. be deceived by 

 statements which are made prematurely; the same being pre- 

 mature through our not having investigated till we have got- 

 ten at the bottom facts in the case. 



Oiiondaoo Co., X. Y. 



A Short Report- Selling Honey too Cheaply, Etc. 



UV MUS. L. IIAKIUSOX. 



OUR honey is all taken off, and put away nicely (Oct. 2S), 

 and I estimate that there is a supply for two families, 

 from our apiary of 40 colonies. Our apiary, prior to this 

 decade of poor seasons, numbered 125 colonies, but the losses 

 each succeeding winter were more than the summer's increase ; 

 and this is the condition of apiaries generally in this part of 

 the State. 



A grocer who advertises largely announced lately thai he 

 had some fine honey of this year's production, which he was 

 selling at 15 cents per pound. Honey was worth 20 cents, 

 but he had a chance to buy 2.")0 pounds cheap, and his cus- 

 tomers should have the benefit of it. 



When there is a short crop of corn or potatoes, the price 

 goes up, and why should not honey? No tine comb honey 

 should be sold for less 'than 20 or 26 cents per pound at re- 

 tail. There has lieen a steady decrease in the number of colo- 

 nies, and a less secretion of nectar than formerly. 



I think thiit there are more sources for honey In the city. 



per acre, than in the country. At almost every home a few 



' flowers are cultivated ; lawns are sprinkled frequently with a 



