190 



June. 1913 



American "Bee Journal 



lower value. The active apiarist con- 

 tinues to reduce his production and in- 

 crease his purchases of this article. 

 This is natural, for success is in that 



direction. 



*- 



Water in Honey. — Nectar contains 70 

 to 80 percent of water, and honey 18 to 

 25 percent. (In this country 2.5 percent 

 of water is allowed in honey; in Ger- 

 many only 22 percent.) Naturally, 

 when bees are storing, there will be 

 more water in the combs at the end of 

 a day's work than there will be the 

 next morning. So Ed. Knoke advises 

 against taking oiT honey for extracting 

 late in the day ( Bienenwirtschaftliches 

 Centralblatt, page 0), unless at a time 

 when bees have not been gathering. 

 ^ 



Alfalfa in Iowa.— "The Southwest 

 Trail," Room 736, La Salle Station, 

 Chicago, 111., publishes a May number 

 devoted entirely to the above-named 

 subject. It is very interesting. The 

 editor, V. L. Schoeffelmayer, well 

 known to us for his energy and enter- 

 prise, offers this number, for the ask- 

 ing, to any one who will send his 



address. 



^ 



Bees Need Enormous Amounts of Air. 



— In Bienen-Vater, page (il, are given 

 some very interesting figures from Dr. 

 Zander. At a temperature of 08 de- 

 grees Fahr., if we take as a standard 

 the amount of air a man needs to 

 breathe, in a given time, a number of 

 frogs weighing as much as the man 

 will need one-third as much air. 



Lizards need 43 percent as much. 



Dogs nearly 4 times as much. 



Flies 21 times as much. 



Bees 74 times as much. 



Franz Richter, who reports this, 

 figures out that a colony weighing 13 

 pounds will need, to support it one 

 hour, the enormous quantity of 17>^ 

 cubic feet of air. 



Let us figure a little farther, and sup- 

 pose this 13-pound colony to be lodged 

 in a 2-story 10-frame hive. Roughly 

 figuring, these two stories will contain 

 about 3^ cubic feet. After deducting 

 the room occupied by frames, combs 

 and bees, hardly half the room will be 

 left 'for air; but call it that, II4 cubic 

 feet. To supply the colony with 17>^ 

 cubic feet of air in an hour, the hive 

 will have to be entirely emptied and 

 filled ten times, or 240 times for each 

 day. That would mean a pretty lively 

 flow of air at the entrance, especially 

 if that entrance should be, like some, 

 less than half an inch deep. 



To get another view of the lively 

 breathing of bees, suppose a man 

 weighing loO pounds uses up as much 



air as 150 pounds of bees. Seal him up 

 in a room 25 feet long, 20 feet wide, and 

 9ji feet high, and in 24 hours he will 

 be dead from suffocation. 



Note, however, that all this is at a 

 temperature of 20 degrees centigrade, 

 or 68 Fahr. Let the temperature be 45 

 or 50 degrees, or whatever that point 

 is at which bees are almost nearly dor- 

 mant, and the likelihood is that the 

 bees can get along with less air than 



the man. 



^ 



Iowa Appropriation. — The following 

 letter from the Iowa inspector, Frank 

 C. Pellett, of Atlantic, e.xplains itself: 



Our appropriation is all right, and I 

 must get busy. I met France and Kil- 

 dow at Clinton last week to plan some 

 way of dealing with foul brood where 

 it exists on both sides of the river, as 

 it now does adjoining both States. 



Possibly no summer meeting of Iowa 

 bee-keepers w-ill be held, as they are 

 very busy, and it is hard to arrange a 

 meeting entirely by correspondence. I 

 will be glad to inform you as soon as 

 the matter is entirely disposed of. 



Because one member of the Iowa 

 association is having trouble from jeal- 

 ous persons poisoning and trapping 

 his bees, the board has decided to em- 

 ploy an attorney to give free legal ad- 

 vice to members. We have accord- 

 ingly selected Russell E. Ostrus, of Des 

 Moines, who comes of a family of bee- 

 keepers, and is in sympathy with the 

 business as well as a good lawyer. We 

 are not promising to pay expenses of 

 litigation, although the association 

 might vote to pay a part in a worthy 

 case. I will be glad if you will call 

 attention to this matter in your 

 lournal. 



Should Box-Hives Be Abolished?— 



As our readers already probably know, 

 the foul brood laws of Australia pro- 

 hibit the keeping of box-hives. There 

 has been some opposition to this part 

 of the law from unprogressive bee- 

 keepers of the country, who claim that 

 the box-hive is not a detriment. Mr. 

 R. Beuhne, in an article in the .Austra- 

 lasian Bee-Keeper, strikes right to the 

 point, arguing in favor of the present 

 law. We quote him as follows : 



What good will the abolition of the 

 box-hive do ? Will it prevent disease .■" 

 So far as this State is concerned, 

 where the bo.x-hive has disappeared 

 foul brood has either completely dis- 

 appeared also or has become an insig- 

 nificant factor. 



Never mind the bee-trees. I, for one, 

 am willing to start and successfully 

 run an apiary in any suitable locality 

 and clean it of disease, too, in a few 

 years, no matter how many bee-trees 

 there are. so long as there are no box- 

 hives to re-stock the trees with swarms 

 and re-infect the wild bees by means 

 of mashed diseased combs hung up in 

 bags to drain, or thrown out for the 

 bees from several square miles of coun- 

 try. A bee-tree, if left alone, is com- 

 paratively harmless ; quite so when it 



is healthy. Even if the bees succum b 

 to disease, it is not stirred up with a 

 stick and scattered about ; and in many 

 instances mice, ants, and wax-moths 

 reduce it to debris unattractive to bees 

 before the latter find it. If some api- 

 arist's bees do find it, it will be robbed 

 out dry, and the apiarist will clean up 

 the disease in his own hives. If he 

 knows of suspicious trees he can plug 

 up the entrance, clay it over, or nail 

 wire-screen over the entrance, not to 

 mention other methods, none of which 

 he can apply to his neighbors' box- 

 hives. 



^ 



Dr. Miller on Honey Rules Glad to 



see Rauchfuss' article, page 163, but 

 sorry he condemns the rules. It seems 

 to me they are an effort in the right 

 direction, there being at least some- 

 thing definite about them. But if Frank 

 has something different that is better, 

 by all means let him give it. He might 

 also suggest rules for extracted honey. 

 Would the Colorado rules be accept- 

 able to the entire United States ? Let 

 us hear from him. 



A Successful Iowa Bee-Keeper The 



high price of good land is causing 

 many young men to look to the north- 

 west or the south for an opportunity 

 to begin life as their fathers did a half 

 century ago. There are many now 

 living in cities who look -.vith longing 

 eyes to the country, but for want of 

 capital with which to engage in farm- 

 ing, feel that they must remain in an 

 atmosphere that is uncongenial. 



Such may find something of inspira- 

 tion in the success of a well-known 

 bee-keeper of Clarinda, who began the 

 business without much capital, and as 

 a side line in the beginning. 



J. L. Strong was a carpenter and 

 builder for many years, but becoming 

 interested in bees, took up honey pro- 

 duction in a small way to furnish 

 honey for his table and profitable em- 

 ployment for his spare hours. As time 

 went on, he found more and more in- 

 terest in his bees, and began to study 

 them in earnest, with a view- of master- 

 ing the subject of honey production. 

 As his apiary increased, he determined 

 to give up his other business and de- 

 vote his entire attention to bees. His 

 friends tried to dissuade him without 

 effect, for he was already a bee-keeper 

 at heart, and nothing could prevent 

 him from becoming so in fact. 



In the beginning, he rented a house 

 and lot in the outskirts of Clarinda. 

 His bees did so well that he soon pur- 

 chased the property, something that he 

 had been unable to do in his former 

 business. Mr. Strong has prospered 

 since that time. Although there have 

 been seasons when the honey crop has 

 been short, other seasons have been 

 sufficiently abundant to make up the 

 shortage. He now has a comfortable 

 home, has added other lots to his hold- 

 ings, has built a modern extracting 

 house and bee-cellar, has an electric 

 power driven extractor to extract his 

 honey, and everything else in accord- 

 ance. 



For a long series of years his bees 

 have produced an average of 50 pounds 



