476 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



Aug. 1 



Stray Straws 



By Dr. C. C. Miller, Marengo, 111. 



Best clover flow I ever knew till 

 drouth cut it short July 10. Will rain start 

 it up again? If not, there will be about 

 two-thirds of a full crop. 



S. Farrington, does not your plan of 

 preventing after-swarms by enclosing brood 

 without any bees, p. 466, cause the death of 

 the unsealed brood? You are wasting time 

 to cut out queen-cells. The bees would see 

 to that. 



Le Rucher Belge, 52, copies a clii)ping 

 saying that a hive-ventilator has been in- 

 vented which saves the bees from fanning 

 at the entrance, allowing them to go to the 

 fields, increasing thus very much the har- 

 vest! 



Dr. Carton, L' Ajnculteur, 134, says the 

 common notion that the food of the wax- 

 worm is chiefly nitrogenous is all wrong. 

 It is chiefly wax, perhaps altogether in some 

 cases, as when working on sections. Metal- 

 nikolT's researches have shown that in the 

 body of the bee-moth larva, especially in its 

 blood, there is contained in abundance a 

 very active ferment capable of digesting all 

 waxy bodies. 



Dr. Bonney, after your page or more of 

 proof that a non-swarming race is impos- 

 sible, is it not a fact that some bees swarm 

 twice as much as others? The Dadants don't 

 average one swarm from ten colonies. Now, 

 if the kind of bees, or the size of hive, or 

 any thing else can make so much difference 

 as that, I believe continued effort may make 

 still more dilTerence, and I believe in going 

 after that still greater difference, even if it 

 breaks your law all to flinders. 



R. PiNCOT reports, L'Apiculteur, 195, that 

 he had a swarm weighing 6 kilos (13^ lbs.) , 

 which left in the hive 94,220 cells filled with 

 brood and eggs. So the queen, in the pre- 

 ceding 21 days, had laid an average of 4486 

 eggs a day. If she kept that up for twice as 

 long, and if each bee lived 6 weeks, that 

 would make 188,412 bees in the colony! [It 

 has generally been stated in our text-books 

 that a queen was able to lay as many as 

 3000 eggs a day. Possibly we had better re- 

 vise the statement, and say that she may 

 lay nearly 5000.— Ed.] 



"Explain how he (Stewart) is square up 

 against Alexander," p. 440. Certainly. Mr. 

 Stewart gets the bees to clean out the eo/»6s, 

 and Mr. Alexander was very vehement that 

 the bees should not clean out a comb affect- 

 ed by American foul brood. He says, 

 Gleanings, 1907, page 166, "I don't think 

 that, up to the present time, there has ever 

 been a comb that was affected by American 

 foul brood cured of that disease. . . The 

 reason why American foul brood has never 

 been cleaned out of a comb is because a lar- 

 va that died from that disease is so much 



like glue that the bees can not remove it in 

 its soft state; and before it dries down. . . 

 becomes a part of the comb itself, where it 

 can not be . . . removed by the bees." 

 [It is true that there is an apparent conflict 

 between Stewart and Alexander; but you 

 will notice that Stewart brings out the point 

 that the colonies must be very .strong in or- 

 der to clean out foul brood — that an o7'di- 

 nary stock will not do it. He makes these 

 colonies still stronger by stocking up over 

 some of the combs already affected. When 

 the good brood hatches out, a large portion 

 of young bees is soon available. Alexander, 

 on the other hand, apparently referred to 

 ordinary colonies; and we all know that an 

 ordinary colony will not remove the dead 

 matter from the combs of American foul 

 brood. 



In this connection, perhaps it might be 

 well to state that, if an extra-powerful colo- 

 ny removes the dead matter of American 

 foul brood from the infected combs, so that 

 said combs will allow good brood to be rear- 

 ed in them, there is quite a possibility, and 

 even a probability, that, in a few years after, 

 foul brood will develop again. — Ed.] 



G. C. Greiner, p. 446, thinks the B. Tay- 

 lor plan of getting unfinished sections clean- 

 ed out by the bees much better than the 

 Miller plan. Each is best in its own place. 

 I always use the Taylor plan when I can; 

 that is, when I have enough bait sections to 

 be cleaned out at one time. I spread the 

 supers of sections over the shop cellar, and 

 when all ready I open the cellar door for the 

 bees. That's better thaia to have them out- 

 doors, as a shower can do no harm. But if 

 only a dozen supers are to be cleaned out by 

 a large apiary the Taylor plan will chew the 

 sections into little bits, and the Miller plan 

 is away ahead. I do not find that the small 

 passages excite the bees to stinging quite 

 as much as the Taylor plan. [Now that 

 European and American foul brood are 

 spreading so rapidly over the country, it 

 may be questioned whether it is wise to let 

 all the bees in an apiary rob out a stack of 

 wet combs from extracting or partly filled 

 sections in this wholesale and indiscriminate 

 way. If there were disease in one or more 

 of the hives, nothing could spread it more 

 effectually throughout the entire yard and 

 other small apiaries in the vicinity than this 

 wholesale robbing-out scheme. 



For the benefit of beginners, foul brood or 

 no foul brood, we ought to say that this 

 scheme of cleaning up supers makes bees 

 very cross for the time being: In a yard lo- 

 cated near a common highway, or a line 

 fence where stock is feeding or horses are 

 working, it would be very risky to practice 

 this clean-out plan. No one should attempt 

 it except expert bee-keepers who know what 

 they are doing and the possible conse- 

 quences. Dr. ]NIiller has been having Euro- 

 pean foul brood, and he probably will not 

 take any chance of spreading what little dis- 

 ease he may have in his yard by having his 

 supers robbed out either by the Taylor plan 

 or by his own. — Ed.] 



