36 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



Jan. 15 



Stray Straws 



By Dr. C. C. Miller 



" Tobacco— A nauseating plant that is con- 

 sumed by but two creatures — a large green 

 worm and man. The worm doesn't know 

 any better."— Ca/vm Moon. 



Mr. Printer, did you take liberties with 

 that last Straw, p. 4, or did I write such fool- 

 ishness? Just cut out that last line but five: 

 "but we thought the bees could spread the 

 combs." 



J. B. Marshall, p. 29, I've no experience 

 with flour-introduction. Some across the 

 water report it very successful. Likely 

 bees as well as queens should be well flour- 

 ed. Yield of honey at the time may have to 

 do with it. 



To THE MAN who got up that index to 

 Gleanings: Here's my hat off to you. [The 

 entire index was prepared by our editorial 

 force. H. H. Root is responsible for the 

 whole of it except the index for editorials, 

 which was prepared by E. R. Root. — Ed.] 



T. W. Raum says that, in his part of Cana- 

 da, alsike must be thrashed in the field and 

 not in a barn, and some can not stand it to 

 thrash it even in the field. I suppose it 

 must affect the mucous membrane. Has 

 that any relation to the reported effects on 

 horses? 



Dr. R. Munson questions Prof. Bonnier's 

 experiment as to bees marked with talc for- 

 aging repeatedly on the same spot, for he 

 says bees are always cleaned off before leav- 

 ing the hive. But Europeans mark their 

 queens indelibly, and might not talc in some 

 way be applied so as not to be removable? 



Don't bother with an uncapping- machine, 

 because you can uncap with a knife as fast 

 as an extractor will take the combs, says p. 

 7o3. I don't see the logic in that. If a ma- 

 chine will work faster than the knife, is the 

 time saved of no value for some other pur- 

 pose? One could at least be reading com- 

 fortably between whiles. 



John H. Lovell, p. 9, don't be too hard 

 on writers who think bees get honey from 

 roses when it's only pollen. How many bee- 

 keepers know about it? But here's a ques- 

 tion: When bees dig into cultivated rose- 

 buds, barely opened enough to show a little 

 color, what are they after? Hard to believe 

 they are after immature pollen. 



A. I. Root, while there is a difference of 

 opinion as to whether cereals should ever be 

 eaten raw, your saying "It is all right to as- 

 sist the teeth in every way you can," p. 31, 

 may be carried further than you intended. 

 Fletcher says chew till food is creamy, and 

 you can't chew much on soups, while Terry 

 protests against sloppy foods that don't need 

 chewing. 



The bee-book "DerBienund seine Zucht" 

 has reached its 11th thousand, and its author 

 says, Deutsche Bienenzucht, 177, that no other 

 work of the world's bee-literature has ever 



reached such a gigantic success. Somehow 

 Pfarrer Gerstung has overlooked Cowan's 

 British Bee-keeper's Guide Book, with its 

 45,000. Then there's Root's A B C and X Y. 

 Z, which is not such a bad success with its' 

 116,000. 



Unusually mild weather up to Dec. 5, the 

 rest of the year fierce, averaging about 4 

 above. Yet they say the ground is very lit- 

 tle frozen. A 15-inch snow-blanket keeps it 

 warm. [It was mild weather here up to the 

 first of December; then it turned cold, and 

 continued so for practically the whole of the 

 month. It began to warm up again on Jan. 

 1 and 2, but has turned colder to-day (Jan. 

 3) . The ground has been frozen very hard 

 in this vicinity, for the freeze came before 

 the snow. How this may affect clover we 

 don't know. — Ed.] - 



Prof. H. A. Surface is good authority; 

 but his figures in Economic Zoologist are a 

 little askew for this "locality." He says 

 cellaring may save 10 to 15 pounds of feed 

 per colony; but trouble and expense of pre- 

 paring for cellar and moving may be more 

 than added cost of wintering on summer 

 stands. My bees are carried in and out with- 

 out any preparing, and the cost of moving is 

 less than 2 cents per colony. You can't get 

 10 pounds of feed for 2 cents. But in many 

 cases his figures may be all right. At any 

 rate, if I lived in Pennsylvania I suspect I 

 would winter outside. 



" The editor of Canadian Bee Journal, page 

 436, quotes at length Gleanings' editorial, 

 p. 588, and gracefully acknowledges Editor 

 Root's arguments in favor of empty cells in 

 the winter brood-nest so convincmg that he 

 gives up the battle. Such an unconditional 

 surrender was hardly necessary. I don't 

 know for a dead certainty, but here's what 

 I think: It depends on the space under 

 bottom -bars. With a half-inch space and 

 combs solid full, the bees will freeze to death; 

 with a space of two inches or more they will 

 be all right. In many cases in my cellar 

 bees fill that 2-inch space with the cluster, 

 and I don't believe the bees in that cluster 

 care whether the cells above them are full 

 or empty. [The editor of the Canadian Bee 

 Journal and ourselves were talking about 

 the winter-nest when bees were wintered 

 outdoors. Apparently you have in mind cel- 

 lar wintering. When bees are indoors it is 

 not very important whether they have a win- 

 ter-nest, such as we have described, or not; 

 but the fact that they will always make and 

 prepare such a nest, if given an opportunity 

 to do so, when wintered outdoors, seems to 

 show that nature regards it as important. 

 Space under the frames for cellar wmtering 

 might affect the proposition; but it would 

 only increase the difficulty for outdoor bees 

 unless the frames were very shallow. 



In this connection we wish to convey our 

 acknowledgments to Editor Hurley, of the 

 Canadian Bee Journal. His candor and evi- 

 dent desire to consider evidence is such that 

 his readers will always have confidence in 

 his writings. — Ed.] 



