August, 1911. 



235 



Conducted by J. L. Byer. Ml. Joy. Ontario. 



Much Nectar and No Bees, or No Nectar 

 and " Much " Bees ? 



Two conditions occasionally con- 

 front a bee-beeper that are not relished 

 overmuch, and as to which one is worse 

 I am not prepared to say. One is to 

 have abundance of nectar in the fields 

 and the colonies not in shape to take 

 advantage of it, and the other is to 

 have bushels of bees in the hives with 

 no nectar for them to gather. I have 

 had one experience with the former 

 condition, and two or three with the 

 latter, and, personally, if there is any 

 preference, I would choose the latter, 

 as somehow I do not feel as though I 

 am to blame so much as is possible 

 when the bees are not prepared to take 

 advantage of any flow of honey that 

 may come along. 



In a nutshell, I might say that this 

 season I had abundance of bees, and 

 that there was no nectar in the imme- 

 diate locality. Extreme drouth and 

 heat must be responsible, I suppose, for 

 in districts not over 30 miles from here 

 there has been a fair flow. 



As stated some timeago.the clover was 

 badly damaged in the spring, and the 

 weakened vitality of this source of nec- 

 tar may have helped to bring about the 

 failure. Anyway, there is little clover 

 honey in our section, and to make mat- 

 ters worse, farmers tell me that nearly 

 all the seeds for ne.xt year have been 

 killed. .\t two of my yards no rain has 

 fallen for over a month, although heavy 

 showers have gone all around these 

 places. At this date (July II) every- 

 thing is parched and dry, and not an 

 acre of buckwheat has been sown, so 

 far as I know. At the home yard a big 

 acreage is coming up within reach of 

 us, all of which shows how even a dis- 

 tance of a few miles may make a big 

 difTerence in a honey crop, some years. 



Blueweed or " Blue Thistle " as a Honey- 

 Plant 



I am enclosing a branch of a plant 

 that grows very plentifully in eastern 

 Ontario, and is, I believe, a source of 

 considerable nectar. The local name 

 is " blueweed," and the scientific name 

 Echium vid/fare, if I am not misin- 

 formed. Perhaps the editor of the 

 American Bee Journal can tell me more 

 about the plant, as I have been wonder- 

 ing if it is the same plant known as 

 blue thistle, from which Capt. Hether- 

 ington used to get so much honey, 

 down in Virginia. 



Last May I purchased an apiary some 

 201) miles east of here, and, from what 

 my son writes me, I am led to believe 

 that much of the honey gathered in 

 that locality comes from this blueweed, 

 so, naturally, I am curious to know 

 more about the plant. I am told that 

 it is very plentiful in some sections in 

 eastern Ontario, but this has been my 



first experience with it. Perhaps some 

 of the friends in localities where this 

 plant is well known, can tell us some- 

 thing as to its honey-yielding qualities. 

 — [Prof. Cook, in his "Bee-Keepers' 

 Guide," includes this plant in the list of 

 nectar-yielders. Prof. Walton says: 

 "It is the common borage — Borago 

 otJicinalis — and a fine honey-plant." 

 Who can tell us more about it ? — Ed.] 



A Young " Canuck " in an Out-Apiary 



This apiary in the east was not 

 bought until late in May, and my son, 

 who is only 16 years of age, went out 

 to take charge on the 29th of that 

 month. He had never been in the yard 

 with rne more than two weeks, all told, 

 and his practical experience consisted 

 only of a couple days' queen-clipping 

 and some work in theextracting-room. 

 The apiary had 220 colonies, and the 

 extracting combs were almost a nega- 

 tive quantity, consisting of less than 

 one very shallow super to each hive. 

 This meant that thousands of frames 

 had to be wired and filled with founda- 

 tion, and a great many supers had to 

 be nailed up. Some 2100 frames were 

 shipped to him in the flat, besides some 

 hundreds that were on the place that 

 had to be wired. 



The season came on early, and 

 swarming started before supers could 

 be made ready, and things were pretty 

 interesting, I think, for a lad that had 

 been going to high school steadily for 

 about 4 years, and then stepped abruptly 

 into work of such a different character. 

 However, he seemed to weather the 

 gale all right, and it was only when he 

 was confronted with the task of hiving 

 swarrns all day to the exclusion of get- 

 ting time to prepare supers that he con- 

 sented to have help sent out to him. A 

 man was sent to help him, and as near 

 as I can tell at this distance away, he 

 seems to have enjoyed the work all 

 right, and by fall will surely know if he 

 still " wants to keep bees," as was his 

 plaint when he wanted to quit going to 

 school. 



These details are simply given by 

 way of encouragement to some other 

 youngster that may be enamored with 

 the idea that bee-keeping is his voca- 

 tion for life. The point I wish to make 

 is this: My son was anxious to go at 

 the work he has been engaged in this 

 summer, and as a result he has not 

 grown homesick or tired of the work, 

 notwithstanding the fact that many 

 days he had to be moving lively from 

 early morning until late in the evening. 

 Had he been sent out under compul- 

 sion, and forced to work at something 

 that was distasteful to him, what a dif- 

 ference there would have been. 



As one goes through life he can not 

 help but observe how many misfits 

 there are in this world, and I often 

 think of that little book, " What to Do, 

 and How to Be Happy While Doing 



It." Truly, if all people could only 

 know the work they were cut out for, 

 a lot of misery and dissatisfaction 

 would be avoided. 



I forgot to say that at the yard in 

 question the queens were not clipped. 

 The bees are all of the black persua- 

 sion, and the combs had not been hau- 

 led very much, and as a result it was 

 impossible to think .of getting the 

 queens clipped with the limited time at 

 our disposal. 



Hiving a lot of swarms must have 

 been a revelation to my son, as at home 

 we have had little swarming and the 

 queens have always been clipped. A 

 bushel basket on the end of a long pole 

 was used under the direction of the 

 gentleman the bees were bought of. 

 This device, while similar to the one 

 used by Mr. Chapman, of Michigan, 

 was not borrowed from that bee-keeper, 

 however, as it has been a fixture in the 

 apiary for some years. As the trees in 

 the apiary are all quite low, there seems 

 to have been no trouble in getting the 

 swarms hived, even if 20 did come out 

 in one day ! 



I might add right here that if all goes 

 well the entire apiary will be requeened 

 with Italian stock shortly, so I hope 

 that another year the swarming will be 

 ciit out almost entirely. Of course, we 

 will have drawn combs another season, 

 and that in itself will help a whole lot, 

 as all know that with nothing but comb 

 foundation to put in supers, it is a dif- 

 ferent problem from that of piling up 

 supers of drawn combs as they may be 

 needed. 



After speaking of my preference for 

 Carniolans some may wonder at my 

 declared intention of requeening with 

 Italian stock. I would just say in ex- 

 planation that the locality is threatened 

 with European foul brood, and the best 

 authorities who have had experience 

 with this disease, tell me this step is 

 the safest one for me to take. I hope 

 the Carniolans have this resisting trait 

 to that disease to the same extent as 

 have the Italians, but as nearly as I can 

 decide, this is to be proven yet. In the 

 meantime, I have thought it best to go 

 with the crowd in this matter, and, 

 anyway, I feel that it will be a big im- 

 provement on the present stock in the 

 apiary. 



Rearing Queens from Eggs vs. Larvae 



Josepli Gray, of California, writing 

 in the Canadian Bee Journal, claims 

 that the common practise of rearing 

 queens from worker-larvse has the ef- 

 fect of "getting inferior stock," and 

 says that the proper and natural way is 

 to rear from the eggs instead. He is 

 the apiarist in charge of an establish- 

 ment devoted to queen-rearing, and he 

 claims that he practises that system en- 

 tirely, if I am correct. 



While I would not like to say that 

 all (|ueens reared from larv;e are not 

 what they should be, yet experience 

 taught me that many of them are in 

 that class. Whether the change advo- 

 cated by Mr. Gray would bring about a 

 decided improvement, I am not pre- 

 pared to say, but it certainly does look 

 as if his plan is closer to Nature, as bees 

 usually, if not always, use eggs for rear- 

 ing their queens, and only resort to the 



