1910 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



387 



complete neglect paid to the sections rest- 

 ing over wood instead of the combs. Clear- 

 ly, then, the only logical method is to con- 

 tract from the top, without reducing the 

 supering surface of the brood-nest. 



With a hive in which the brood-chamber 

 is horizontally divisible, having two or more 

 sets of shallow frames, contracting to the de- 

 sired capacity necessitates only the removal 

 of one of the hive divisions. There is little 

 labor and complication connected with this 

 method, and the extreme shallowness of the 

 remaining hive division will seldom fail to 

 throw at once the entire working force of 

 bees into the surjjlus boxes. In this respect 

 all brood-chambers consisting of but a sin- 

 gle tier of frames are, to say the least, fun- 

 damentally deficient. 



Severe contraction may, at the end of the 

 season, result in small and inadequate col- 

 onies, and the course usually pursued is to 

 enlarge again the brood-nest in sufhcient 

 time for the bees to build up for winter. 

 Again, contraction is occasionally employed 

 as a means of preventing or decreasing the 

 production of brood when the workers would 

 come to unseasonable maturity, thus be- 

 coming consumers. If colonies are greatly 

 weakened at the end of the season through 

 excessive contraction they can be united. 



When desirable, either because of its 

 cheapness or owing to ils superiority as a 

 winter food, contraction can be so managed 

 as to leave the bees practically destitute of 

 stores in the fall, and sugar substituted. 



Ft. Smith, Ark. 



THE EFFECT OF ODOR AND COLOR ON 

 BEES. 



How Insects have Altered the Flowers; Highly 

 Flavored Honey Comes from the Strong-scent- 

 ed Flowers; Bees do Not Prefer any One Col- 

 or, though they are Attracted More by Dark 

 Shades. 



BY PH. J. BALDENSPERGER. 



[One of the most interesting features of Glean- 

 iJfGS during the "SO's consisted of the contributions 

 of Mr. Baldensperger to its columns: but since 1893 

 he seems to have disappeared till now. In fact, the 

 writer had almost forgotten him when he noticed a 

 reference to him in Mr. Walker's article on page 

 383. By a strange coincidence, I was reading that 

 reference to Mr. B. in that article when the junior 

 editor brought me the manuscript of the following 

 letter, asking me if I could tell what " Ph." stood 

 for or if I could read it at all. The manuscript re- 

 minded me of the face of a long-lost friend or of a 

 forgotten passage of music in a symphony. 



Mr. Baldensperger seems to have lost none of hi.s 

 former interest in bees, nor of his ability to infuse 

 others with that interest. He was one of a German 

 family that went to Syria about 1860, and there he 

 became interested in bees, as he here intimates. 



About the last news we received from there was 

 that Mr. B.'s brother was drowned at JafTa while 

 bathing in the Mediterranean Sea. About 18 years 

 ago Mr. Baldensperger went to Nice, France, where 

 he has remained in retirement so far as we could 

 learn. The painstaking care peculiar to the Ger- 

 mans permeates all of Mr. Baldensperger's writ- 

 ings, and renders them not only worth reading but 

 worthy of study.— Stenog.] 



All progress in nature has been accom- 

 plished by the meeting of two distinct indi- 

 vidualities — time and place, transporter and 



receiver. They all work together in har- 

 mony. One individual displays all in his 

 power in attracting the attention of the 

 other, and progress is the result. 



By this law the innumerable plants ex- 

 tant have developed into what they are 

 now. Insects have been the great agents 

 for this development; and without them 

 flowers and plants would have remained 

 stationary with little or no perfume, de- 

 priving man of the manifold joys of mod- 

 ern horticulture. Insects, forced by the ne- 

 cessity of [ireserving their kind and enlarg- 

 ing their field of investigation, were the 

 first horticulturists, and for centuries pre- 

 pared the way and indicated the most deli- 

 cate operations necessary to obtain new 

 varieties. 



Flowers attract insects by color and by 

 perfume, and in return they fertilize plants 

 and unconsciously cultivate flowers for their 

 own use the next season. By these visits 

 flowers have altered their form and hue 

 in the course of centuries. It is they, too, 

 that have given us the divers forms of fruit, 

 and how is man thanking them in return? 

 By the basest ingratitude — some, at least; 

 for, be it said to their praise, many fruit- 

 producers now protect bees; others persecute 

 the bees and insects, which are charged 

 with all depredations in the orchards with- 

 out investigation. 



It has been stated that P]urope has about 

 4200 different plants, 420 of which are em- 

 ployed for commercial uses. 



Only oOOO are said to have flowers, and 

 these are classed as follows according to 

 colors and perfumes: 

 1124 have white flowers with 1S7 odorous. 



951 " yellow " " 77 perfumed. 



823 " red " " 84 



594 " blue " " 34 



.308 " violet " " 13 



Happily for bee-keeping in general, as 

 well as for humanity at large, these flowers 

 neither blossom all at once nor do they grow 

 in the same place; moreover, they are not 

 equally distributed over the continent. 



For us bee-keepers the most interesting 

 are such flowers as produce honey and pol- 

 len in due season; and I can speak about 

 only such flowers as have come under my 

 observation in the Alpine region which I 

 have more particularly studied in the last 

 eighteen years. 



I here give such flow^ers as are more pro- 

 fusely distributed, neglecting the minor 

 ones as being too tedious to follow in the 

 scope of an article. I give the principal 

 colors, as there are many hues between vio- 

 let, lilac, and blue or rose, and classify them 

 by numbers, beginning with the least rep- 

 resented, and writing in italics the names 

 of such as are more apt to produce pollen. 

 We have only one representative of the red 

 color; three lilac, three violet, eight blue, 

 nine rose-color, ten yellow, fourteen green- 

 ish-white, and fifteen white ones. 



The greenish-white and white ones have 

 very often such a small difference that I can 

 fairly say half of our Alpine honey-plants 



