2S2 



July, 1913 



American V^e Jonrnal 



of eacli colony in the apiary at this 

 time, yon can nearly tell what the bees 

 will do with the approaching honey- 

 flow, and what colonies will do the 

 best, by the amount of bees and brood. 



A large well-filled brood-nest now 

 means a good harvest, but a nest with 

 a small amount of brood scattered in it 

 and not a great army of workers will 

 mean a slim harvest. The queens in 

 such colonies had better be looked up 

 or their records e.xamined, and good 

 judgment used as to whether you 

 should keep them or supply such colo- 

 nies with young vigorous queens of 

 your own rearing or purchased from 

 some good breeder. A good queen at 

 this season of thi; year with some nec- 

 tar and plenty of pollen coming in, will 

 not allow her brood-nest to become 

 very much reduced even after a long 

 egg-laying period, hut a queen that is 

 laying scatteringly over her nest is 

 most apt to be on the decline. 



Very often a good queen will almost 

 cease laying at the close of the first 

 honey-flow, but she will soon start 

 again as she did in the spring. 



With these suggestions you can 

 easily tell about what you have in the 

 way of queens. At this season of the 

 year don't take too closely from your 

 bees, even if there is little coming in. 

 See that each brood-nest has the usual 

 amount of honey around it, and if it 

 has not, supply it. If short of honey 

 the colony may economize too much 

 and not rear enough young bees. With 

 plenty of stores present they would 

 rear a great amount of bees. 



It is best to leave them a few un- 

 finished combs in the first super for 

 encouragement or as a starter. The 

 best bee-keeper I ever had the pleasure 

 to visit produced e.xtracted honey, and 

 during the season kept two or three 

 frames of honey in each super. I asked 

 him why he did this, and he stated that 

 if he removed it all at the close of the 

 first flow he would not get any more, 

 but if he left a little, he would always 

 get a little surplus during a long sea- 

 son, when there was not much nectar 

 for bees to find. All empty supers 

 should be cleaned and kept ready for 

 the next flow. 



Conducted by J. L. BvEK. Mt. Joy. Ontario. 



Conditions Not Very Favorable 



In the June issue of the American 

 Bee Journal I mentioned the fact that 

 the season was abnormally early, and 

 that we feared a frost might come and 

 hurt the early fruit bloom. The frosts 

 came, not heavy enough to damage 

 the blossoms; but the last four weeks 

 the weather has been so cool that the 

 season is now no earlier than usual. 

 With no rain and cool weather, growth 

 has been slow, and the prospects for 

 clover are not so good as when I sent 

 the notes for June. Bees gathered just 

 enough in most localities to keep 

 brood-rearing going nicely, but the 

 cool nights caused the bees to crowd 

 the brood-nest, vvith the result that 

 there has been early swarming even 

 if practically no nectar has been com- 

 ing in. 



During early willow and soft maple 

 bloom, the weather was very favorable, 

 and in localities where these trees 

 abound, the bees received a tremendous 

 impetus, and are much stronger than 

 where there are practically none of 

 these trees. In two of my apiaries we 

 have very little early spring feed, and 

 in both of these yards the bees are be- 

 hind all the others. 



I am not satisfied with the plan, and 

 would gladly do differently if I had 

 some simple plan of requeening and 

 being sure that most of the young 

 queens would be all right. Of course 

 some will say. " Rear your own queens." 

 This is good advice, yet I do not find 

 the time for this work when the re- 

 queening should be done. I would 

 gladly buy all my queens — indeed. I 

 have been doing it for a few years, but 

 for some reason that I cannot under- 

 stand, such a small percentage of these 

 queens last over six months, that I am 

 discouraged. 



Whether it is because I have bought 

 more, lately, and pay more attention 

 to these losses than 1 did formerly is a 

 question, but I think that a higher per- 

 centage are superseded than was form- 



erly the case. It is discouraging to go 

 to the trouble of hunting out a lot of 

 queens in August, have others intro- 

 duced safely and wintered well, and 

 find 75 percent playing out between 

 April 1 and June 1, the colonies with 

 these queens being a total loss so far 

 as surplus for the season is concerned. 

 This is my experience just at present. 

 While I cannot understand the matter 

 at all, it convinces me that there is 

 something to learn yet in rearing 

 queens in a commercial way. 



The claim of the queen-breeders is 

 that the mails injure the queens. As 

 to that I cannot say, but this I do 

 know, that a large consignment of 

 queens in nuclei were shipped out by 

 one of our best known breeders, and 

 in less than a year every queen was 

 superseded. This does not happen 

 with queens reared naturally in our 

 own yards, and I believed that, in the 

 methods used by queen-breeders, 

 something is yet lacking to bring these 

 methods to perfection. I would be 

 willing to give a premium above regu- 

 lar prices if assured that the queens 

 would average, say T.j percent of them, 

 at least 18 months of good service 

 after date of shipping. 



We hear much these days about im- 

 proving the honey-bee, and one point 

 rarely touched upon is the need of a 

 strain that will supersede their queens 

 in such a way that the colony will not 

 be weakened at the time this process is 

 going on. At each yard I have no- 

 ticed some colonies that rarely swarm 

 and yet always attend to this, no mat- 

 ter at what time in the summer, in such 

 a way that the crop is not affected. The 

 majority of colonies hold an old queen 

 until she is about played out. and the 

 colony is so weak that they are no 

 good for the rest of the season. Others 

 will supersede before the queen is so 

 far played out, and (June 9) I have just 

 found two such colonies, the old queen 

 still on the combs and the young queen 

 starting to lay, the colony so populous 

 that they are in the super even with no 

 honey coming. Another matter worth 

 noticing is that supersfdure, under 

 conditions like these, nearly always re- 

 sults in a splendid queen, while I gen- 

 erally get a poor queen when super- 

 sedure is delayed until the queen is 

 entirely played out and the colony 

 weak. 



Contributed 



Articles^ 



Superseding 



On page 2ui; of the June issue, I note 

 that Dr. Miller allows his bees to do 

 their own superseding, and while there 

 is a certain amount of comfort as ex- 

 pressed in the old saying, that "misery 

 loves company," in le.irning that so 

 well known a bee-keeper as Dr. Miller 

 docs as I have been doing in this mat- 

 ter, nevertheless I frankly confess that 



What I Know of Bee-Smokers 



BY G I. GRF.INKK. 



AMONG the list of apiary tools the 

 bee-smoker is unquestionably 

 one of the most needed by the 

 bee-keeper. I am not well enough 

 posted to give a correct history 

 of its development. I mean to tell only 

 what I /cnoic; and will confine myself 

 to the experience of recent years. 



I used the cold-blast Clark smoker 

 many years ago; then the hinged-top 



Cornell smokerwith itscrooked jointed 

 nozzle, and in later years the Root 

 smoker with its flexible hinge and one- 

 piece nozzle. These latter features are 

 an improvement, but they do not con- 

 vert the undesirable tool into one that 

 can be used with any kind of comfort. 

 Until about three or four years ago 

 the hinge-top smoker was a constant 

 source of annoyance to me, and I 

 would still have to be satisfied with it 

 if I had not come into the possession 

 of a so-called Telescope smoker. It 

 was an accident that brought its in- 



