1910 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



(Jlo 



Bee-keeping Among The 

 Rockies 



Py ^VESI.EY Foster, Boulder, Colo. 



The rosin (or wax) weed, as some call it, 

 is very profuse this year, and is furnishing 

 a good quantity of fall honey. In average 

 years we dislike to see it bloom at all, for 

 the honey is yellow, and strong in fiavor, 

 spoiling the flavor and color of our alfalfa 

 honey. But this year, when we are hoping 

 that the bees will get honey enough to win- 

 ter, we are glad to see almost any kind of 

 honey gathered by the bees. Some of our 

 older bee-men aver that the honey from the 

 rosin weed will candy while the bee is on 

 the way from the flower to the hive: but the 

 story is generally supposed to be taken with 

 a grain of salt. Rosin-weed honey will can- 

 dy almost as soon as stored in the cells, 

 some years; this year, though, it does not 

 seem to be giving us so much trouble. 



-^ 



COST OF HOXEY PRODUCTIOX. 



Mr. Pollock, page 552, Sept. 1, is not far 

 off in his figures on the cost of honey pro- 

 duction; but I think a good bee-keeper 

 should be able to care for more than 200 col- 

 onies without hiring extra help except dur- 

 ing the busy season. I know a number who 

 have from 500 to 700 colonies, and hire a 

 man during the summer if the crop warrants 

 it. In these cases the cost of help is not 

 over two or three hundred dollars. Perhaps 

 the main reason so many bee-men can not 

 care for more bees is because they lack a 

 good system of manipulation. I think the 

 only solution of the question is to keep more 

 bees and get more for our honey by improv- 

 ing its quality and stimulating the use of 

 honey among those who rarely eat it. 



MOrXTAINS AND CLIMATE. 



The cold shoulders of the Rockies push 

 up into the sky from two to three miles, and 

 the warm moisture-laden winds from the 

 Pacific striking these granite walls form 

 clouds which give up their moisture in the 

 form of rain or snow. The irrigated valleys 

 of the West nearly all lie close to the moun- 

 tains, and it is often cloudy or partially so. 

 Two or three times each summer the clouds 

 envelop the mountains, pulling down the 

 veil almost to the base of the foothills, the 

 edge of the clouds forming a straight line 

 along the slope of the mountains for miles. 

 The weather turns cool — so cool, in fact, 

 that heavy clothing is comfortable in July. 

 These clouds may hang down close for sev- 

 eral days; and when they do lift there is 

 quite probably snow on the high peaks of 

 the range. These days are not relished by 

 the bee-keeper, for the bees can do nothing, 

 and it is several days after the sun has again 

 appeared before honey comes in good quan- 

 tities. The honey crop of 1909 was cut in 



half or more by a week of this cloudy weath- 

 er coming in the first part of August. 



We can count on a cool spell by August 

 20, almost every year. The warm nights so 

 necessary to secretion of nectar are at an 

 end when this cold wave strikes us. The 

 days take on a crispness which forces the 

 fact home that fall is here; the alfalfa still 

 blooms, but the bees do not work much on 

 it. The sweet clover and rosin weed are vis- 

 ited much by the bees up into October; but 

 new wax does not show up in the hives, and 

 all the honey seems to find a place in comb 

 that was built in the earlier part of the sea- 

 son when the summer was at its height. 

 This August cold wave is usually so pro- 

 nounced that we are more comfortable with 

 a fire in the grate; but in a few days the 

 weather warms up somewhat, though the 

 crispness remains. 



This season has treated us to a more radi- 

 cal change by giving us a change in temper- 

 ature from 95 to freezing in one night. Dur- 

 ing the whole season we have been having 

 extremes. In March, when sno\\y, slushy 

 weather is our accustomed portion, we were 

 having fruit-bloom; then a little later, when 

 we generally get a whiff of summer breezes, 

 we woke up on May 22 to find four inches 

 of snow — not a very long period from snow 

 the last of May to freezing weather, August 

 22; but then, even with all these eccentrici- 

 ties of the season the fruit and farm crops 

 were not destroyed, though some of them 

 had a hard time to make a creditable show- 

 ing. .Just this week, the first of September, 

 we have had a beautiful sight, the whole 

 range of mountains forming the continental 

 divide blanketed in a glistening sheet of 

 snow several inches deep. As I stood in the 

 bee-yard to-day watching the bees hurrying 

 to and from the alfalfa, sweet clover, rosin 

 weed, etc., I could see the snow of the range, 

 twenty-five miles away to the west. 

 <?> 



RIPENING COMB HONEY. 



Mr. Doolittle tells, in the August Ameri- 

 can Bee Journal, of the way the honey in 

 unsealed cells around the edges of the sec- 

 tions leaks and runs out when the section is 

 tipped over on the side. Now, our alfalfa 

 honey will run out of the unsealed cells 

 right after it has been stored; but after a 

 very few days of our hot dry sunshine, the 

 honey in these unsealed cells is thoroughly 

 ripened. Our arid climate does the same 

 thing for us that Mr. Doolittle secures by 

 painting his shop with black paint to draw 

 the heat, and by using a stove when the 

 sun does not furnish the warmth. This 

 thickening and ripening effect which our 

 dry atmosphere has on our honey is one of 

 the reasons for the ready sale which Western 

 honey enjoys. Many a time have I been a 

 section of snow-white comb honey broken 

 till it seemed there could not be a cell wall 

 that was not shattered, and yet the honey 

 was so thick that it would hold its shape 

 for several hours. Our Western sun and 

 aridity accomplish this result. 



