1895 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



319 



way of foundation. How any one can be satis- 

 fied with a half-and-half mixture, even at a 

 reduced price, is beyond our comprehension. 



Theke is talk in the American. Bee Journal 

 of reorganizing the old Northwestern Bee-keep- 

 ers' Association. The old organization was a 

 power for good, and would never have disband- 

 ed except that it was deemed advisable to con- 

 centrate its energy in the State association, 

 having an annual appropriation of ?!.500. 



Foul-brood Inspector Wm. McEvoy, it ap- 

 pears, has done some pretty thorough work in 

 eradicating foul brood in Ontario. If he con- 

 tinues in office (as we hope he will) the disease 

 will soon be a thing of the past for Canada. 

 Every State on this side should have at least a 

 foul-brood law. While it is improbable that 

 we should be able to get a State appropriation 

 to defray the expense of an inspector, we should 

 have the law, so that it may be used in case of 

 emergency. 



In our next issue. Trade Notes, Mr. Heddon 

 and Mr. Danzenbaker will discuss further, 

 in a friendly way, the patentability of divis- 

 ible brood- chambers. Some interesting points 

 will be brought out on the subject of pat- 

 ents in general, by both parties. I do not 

 know to what extent this question will be 

 interesting to our general readers; but unless 

 they signify a general desire to have the subject 

 continued, I believe it would be better to have 

 it dropped with our May 1st number. As I have 

 already said, we desire both parties to have a 

 fair hearing. If they wish to continue it fur- 

 ther, they can probably do so through the 

 medium of Mr. Heddon's paper. 



The time has now arrived when we should 

 be gathering our usual annual honey statistics, 

 or, rather, statistics of winter losses. We desire 

 every bee-keeper who will, upon receipt of this 

 number, to send us, on a postal card, answers to 

 these two questions: 1. What per cent of your 

 own bees were lost during the past winter, up 

 to the time of your writing? 2. What per 

 cent were lost in your vicinity '? In order to get 

 the facts in time for our May 15th issue, it is 

 absolutely necessary that you give this your at- 

 tention at once. The more distant States, such 

 as California and the like, do not have the 

 winter problem to contend with; but we think 

 the most of the others will be able to report so 

 we can get something of an idea as to how bees 

 wintered, by our May 1st issue. Do not pass 

 the matter over, thinking somebody else will do 

 It for you. We need reports from every one. 



Langstroth hives. If he will procure, say, a 

 dozen colonies in such hives, with loose bottoms, 

 we will pay the expense of transferring to his 

 own hives if they do not winter as well. This 

 is not a challenge to Mr. Boardman; but it 

 might help to throw light upon a point concern- 

 ing which there has been more or less guessing. 

 For the present I can only say that, with his 

 square and deep hives, he seems to winter 

 better than his neighbors with the Langstroth. 

 In fact, he appears to be the only man, so far as 

 I know, who winters year after year with no 

 loss. Years ago we gave a picture of " the man 

 who never loses bees," and that was none other 

 than our East Townsend friend. 



In another column, H. R. Boardman writes 

 that he put out his bees on the 5th, from his 

 bee-house, and reports " no loss, and condition 

 perfect." I should like to know, just for the 

 fun of it, whether he would winter as well in 



Winter losses throughout the country, so far 

 as I can gather from the reports, will not be 

 nearly as bad as I at one time feared. The 

 heaviest losses seem to be among the careless 

 beekeepers— those who have a fashion of let- 

 ting the bees take care of themselves, largely, 

 or among those who, as Mr. Boardman himself 

 says elsewhere, do not take any bee-paper. 

 Our colonies at the basswood yard, all in one- 

 story chalT hives or winter cases, wintered per- 

 fectly, so far as I could see when I went down a 

 few days ago. A large part of their stores was 

 sealed basswood honey that had been kept in 

 combs stored away in stacked-up hives. Late 

 in the fall these combs were distributed in some 

 of the more needy colonies. In addition, we fed 

 very little sugar syrup. Our home-yard loss 

 will aggregate more than I stated in our last 

 issue, from the fact that I supposed we had 

 more colonies than we actually had. The cor- 

 rected per cent of loss is 4. 



DEAD-AIR SPACE HERMETICALLY SEALED, VS. 

 PACKING-MATERIAL. 



The following short editorial is from the Bee- 

 keepcrs'' Rente w : 



" Dead air is all right, providing- you can get it in 

 a space or compartment that is air-tight," so reads 

 a sentence in an editorial in a late issue of Glean- 

 ings. I beg to differ. It makes no difference, If the 

 space is between two walls that are hermetically 

 sealed, if these walls are placed between two differ- 

 ent temperatures, the air next the wall on the warm 

 side will become warmed and will rise, while the air 

 next the cool wall will become cooled and will settle; 

 thus there will be a circulation inside of even an 

 hermetically sealed space, that continually robs the 

 warm wall of its heat and passes it over to the cold 

 wall. The filling of this space with sawdust or chaff 

 breaks up this circulation. 



When I first read it over I was inclined to 

 think Mr. Hutchinson was right and I wrong. 

 Then it occurred that I had read recently in 

 one of the mechanical journals that a steam- 

 pipe Incased tightly in wood, leaving an air- 

 space of one to two inches around the pipe, was 

 a better protector than a similar pipe similarly 

 incased in wood, with packing-material occu- 

 pying the air-space. I am sorry that I can not 

 now refer to the authority; but a long series of 



