1910 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



447 



it, that there is no fighting nor crowding, 

 and the bees are too busy to attack any one. 

 I frequently walk right through the thick- 

 est of them without veil or protection of any 

 kind, and am hardly ever molested by a 

 single bee. It is the "crowding and fighting 

 that makes them ill-tempered. 



As the day draws near its close, the mul- 

 titude of bees decreases, and by sundown 

 every thing is quiet again, and that is all 

 there is to the cleaning process. As soon as 

 the last bees have left I cover up and make 

 every thing bee-tight as it was before. Un- 

 der no consideration would I leave any 

 combs exposed after dark, for that is the 

 time when the wax-moth gets in its deadly 

 work. Being late in the season, the danger 

 from that source may not be very serious; 

 but I would rather err on the safe side. 

 Adhering rigidly to this precaution I never 

 have any trouble with worms in my ex- 

 tracting-combs nor in section honey either. 

 To fumigate is almost an unknown term to 

 me. I have had no occasion for its practical 

 application in twenty years or more. 



we can employ to supply our light colonies 

 with their necessary winter and spring 

 stores. 

 La Salle, N. Y. 



greiner's plan for cleaning out ex- 

 tracting-comb8 at the end of the 



SEASON. 



Taking every thing into consideration, 

 the plan I outlined above is undoubtedly 

 the simplest and most practical in use. 

 But it has this drawback: All honey thus 

 fed back to the bees is distributed in a pro- 

 miscuous way. All have not only an even 

 chance, but the strong colonies that need it 

 the least get the most, while some that may 

 really need feeding get very little. How- 

 ever, to counteract this difficulty we have a 

 way out. It is an easy matter to reserve at 

 our last extracting a few dozen, or as many 

 as we may need, of extra-heavy combs of 

 honey, and use them to supply the needy 

 ones. This is by far the easiest, most com- 

 plete, and least labor-requiring method that 



THE HONEY-FLOW IN HOLLAND. 



Some Observations on it for the Last |,Few 

 Years, 



BY HENRI MEYER. 



In our bee-calendar the years 1906, '07, 

 and '08 are booked as bad honey-years. 

 The worst of the three was 1907 — a year of 

 very little sunshine, of heavy rains, thun- 

 der and hail storms. In August, 1907, the 

 minimum temperature went down to freez- 

 ing for several nights. On the best days 

 the maximum temperature scored 50 to 56° 

 Fahrenheit. During the whole month on 

 which our last hope for a satisfactory heath 

 crop was fixed we suffered from cold, rainy, 

 and windy weather. Practically we did not 

 see the sun for weeks. On the heath we 

 lost millions of bees. Many bee-keepers 

 who do not look after their colonies before 

 the end of the heath season found more 

 than half of them dead and the rest starv- 

 ing. 



On a heath six kilometers from Arnhem 

 I discovered a range of old straw skeps, the 

 property of a bee-keeper residing at Tiel, 

 some forty miles from there, in which not a 

 single bee was living. The poor man's 

 whole possession lay in a state of putrefac- 

 tion on the bottom. 



The end of the season was fit to make the 

 most patient bee-keeper rebellious. When 

 the heath had faded we got splendid weath- 

 er. September and October brought us the 

 long-desired warmth. In the last days of 

 the latter month we noted a temperature of 

 70° F. in the shade. But it was all in vain. 

 The mild weather in the late fall could not 

 undo the evil done by the February tem- 

 perature of August. In some parts of our 

 country the bees gathered some nectar and 

 pollen from the "herick," a sort of wild- 

 rape seed (a very troublesome weed) pro- 

 ducing a dark-colored honey which is said 

 to be a dangerous winter food. 



Thanks to the splendid fall weather, we 

 succeeded in ieeding up the weakened colo- 

 nies with sugar syrup to a reasonable 

 weight. Nevertheless a severe and irregu- 

 lar winter with intermittent periods of 

 strong frost and abnormally soft tempera- 

 tures caused heavy winter losses. This was 

 especially the case where the winter food 

 consisted of a syrup from white-beet sugar. 

 A neighbor bee-keeper who fed his 30 win- 

 ter colonies with 300 lbs. of beet sugar lost 

 them all, notwithstanding the winter pro- 

 vision was capped and the condition of the 

 winter seats in the thick-walled Graven- 

 horst straw hives left nothing to be desired. 

 It seems that the chemicals used to purify 

 the beet sugar must be poisonous to bees. 



After this bad winter we got a most prom- 

 ising spring; and with good hope for better 



