732 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CUL-ILKE 



Nov. lo 



let me give some opinions on the twelve aft- 

 er three years of experimenting. 



The advantage is found chiefly where an 

 excluder is to remain on all the year, or 

 where it is preferred to remove surplus su- 

 pers during the winter months. 



In the first place, a ten-frame is not suffi- 

 cient for brood room here where the bees be- 

 gin to breed up early in the year, and do 

 not cease for lack of bloom, as is often the 

 case in the East between the fruit and clover 

 bloom. AVhere the supers are removed the 

 same condition prevails as under an exclu- 

 der, so far as brood room is concerned; but 

 the necessary stores are lacking to keep 

 things booming during the cold foggy days 

 that keep the field workers in before the main 

 flow begins; and this is no small item, for 

 we have much of this weather in February, 

 March, and more or less well into May of 

 wet st-asons. 



To sum up the matter of a tw elve-franie 

 hive, I may say that I do not think it has 

 any advantage over the ten-frame where it 

 is manipulated as I describe below, but, on 

 the contrary, has the disadvantage of being 

 bulky and unhandy. The excluder should 

 be removed as soon as the honey-flow is over, 

 and one super left on above the brood-cham- 

 ber, allowing the bees and queen to have 

 unrestricted freedom of the hive. There is 

 little question but that the tendency of the 

 bees during the late summer and fall is to 

 store largely in the brood-chamber whatever 

 they may secure, where the excluder is left 

 on during that time. 



There should be no great hurry to get the 

 excluders back on in the spring. Leave 

 them off until, say, ten days before begin- 

 ning to extract, for this in itself will have a 

 tenitency to hold back swarming by giving 

 the queen plenty of room to keep busy. 



Usually brood will be fovmd in anywhere 

 from 7 to 17 franits, and a large number of 

 colonies will have from 10 to 14; in others 

 there will be 7 or 8 frames above and none 

 below. Be this as it may, the queen should 

 be gotten below the excluder; but no effort 

 should be made to get the brood down. The 

 more room below, the better for the future, 

 and the less the tendency to swarm before the 

 combs are ready to extract. If the bees can 

 be kept ahead by the use of the extractor 

 there will not be nearly the trouble with 

 swarms. 



Extracting can be done, if necessary, be- 

 fore the brood all hatches, provided it is 

 sealed; and by the time the second extract- 

 ing is ready, the upper story is free from 

 brood. 



A better way, if there are surplus combs, 

 is to place a super of empty combs under 

 the super nearly filled, and allow the re- 

 maining brood to hatch while this second 

 super is being filled. 



In this way a very large amount of brood 

 is allowed, so that there are bees on hand 

 early. Then with the ten frames of brood 

 space below, the colony will remain in a 

 booming condition during the entire season. 



Red lands, Cal. 



HONEY ADVERTISED BY THE NATIONAL 

 ASSOCIATION. 



$50,000 Would be Needed if Effective Work 

 is Done; When and How to do the Adver- 

 tising. 



BY WESLEY FOSTER. 



"What we want to do is to make the 

 housewife think of honey when she is order- 

 ing groceries." In other words, we want to 

 get honey out of the luxury class as much 

 as possible, and into the staple and necessi- 

 ty class along with sugar, potatoes, flour, 

 etc. This will not be fully accomplished; 

 but what has been done in some small sec- 

 tions of the country can be done in the 

 country as a whole, with the different meth- 

 ods of advertising. By advertising I mean 

 any thing that will arouse people's interest 

 in honey. A swarm of bees alighting on a 

 department-store window on a crowded city 

 thoroughfare is advertising, for it will al- 

 most stop traffic, and thousands talk bees 

 more or less intelligently for an hour. The 

 presence of several specialist bee-men in a 

 town will cause comment; and when a com- 

 munity is aware that honey in commercial 

 quantities is produced right at their doors, 

 that commiinity i^* going to be a large con- 

 sumer of honey. Honey has been produced 

 in quite large quantities in all the irrigated 

 portions of the West, and the towns in these 

 districts are all good markets for honey. 

 Boulder merchants are not afraid to buy 

 honey, both comb and extracted, by the 

 ton; and a himdred pounds of comb honey 

 a week is sold by some of the large ones. 



But this condition can be brought about 

 in the large cities through advertising in 

 papers, and d'-monstrating in stores and 

 house-to-house canvassing with samples, 

 taking orders for the grocer to fill. Perha])S 

 there is more fear of adulteration in the 

 city than in the country; but persistence 

 and an honest straightforward campaign 

 will break down prejudice and fear. 



The whole groundwork of an increased 

 honey consumption consists in develojjing 

 a steady, firm, and constant demand among 

 the consumers; and to do this we must have 

 a continuous supply of honey of even grade 

 a.id kind put up in the style of ))acUage 

 that the trade demands. This supply must 

 be easily reach-^d by the retailers through 

 the wholesalers and jobbers. Now, this 

 steady, year-round demand can be built \\\\ 

 only through several kinds of advertising 

 being used simultaneously. The daily pa- 

 pers and magazines, together with the trade 

 papers to reach the wholesale and retail 

 trade, must be used, and these supi)le- 

 mented by all the descriptive articles we can 

 persuade the dailies and monthlies to have 

 their best writers prepare for their columns. 

 The work of the scientific queen-breeder, 

 and the improvements in apicultural appli- 

 ances, and, in fact, every branch of bee cul- 

 ture, has undergone a development as mark- 

 ed as any industry during the last fifty 

 years. 



