1893 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



131 



trance so as to close some of them solid with 

 ice, and the bees smothered. The hives were 

 packed in chaff, and well protected: but when 

 the moisture came in contact with the outside 

 air. it froze before it could run out of the hive. 

 If I had banked the front of the hives with 

 snow. I think the water would iiave run out 

 "before freezing, and the bees would have been 

 saved. The bees had a cleansing flight the 3Sth 

 inst.. the first one since the fore part of Novem- 

 ber. One colonv has the diarrhea verv badly. 

 Flat Rock, Mich., Jan. .31. D. I. Wagai:. 



[Thai's right; lefs have the facts.] 



HOW KAK DO BEES GO IX SEATiCH OF NECTAR'? 

 WILL 15EES EAT HEKKINGS ? 



We take the following from the British Bee 

 Joxirnnl. of Jan. 26: 



Ml'. Heddon, the American apiarist, puts 

 d6wn an "'area,'' or nectar - gathering field, 

 for an apiai'j' atsix miles: i. e.. a radius of three 

 miles, with the apiary as the center. On the 

 other hand. Mr. S. Simmins assures us that 

 honey will not be profitably collected if the 

 bees have to go more than half a mile from the 

 apiary. Yesterday I received a visit from a 

 friend residing about l.=>0 miles further inland 

 from where my apiary is located, and where 

 the flora is totally different. "There's one 

 blessing you enjoy."' he remarked, as we stroll- 

 ed through the apiary, "'and that is, you've 

 none of that beastly ' Noorse Doom ' in these 

 parts. I thought to escape it myself, but my 

 bees store the bitter honey it yields to a great 

 extent in my hives, and yet the nearest ' Norse 

 Doom ' is a good twelve hours" ride (seventy- 

 two miles) from luy farm!" What will Mr. 

 Simmins say to that? 



A Devonshire man out her(> tells me that he 

 has repeatedly seen his father place a red her- 

 ring at the flight-hole of his hives, and that the 

 bees eat it with avidity, leaving only the bones I 

 He assures me this in all earnest. I at first 

 concluded it to be some ancient country dodge 

 to drive off robbers, the smell of the herring 

 overpowering that of the stores and the odor 

 emanating from the hive; but he assures me the 

 bees eat it, and that he has often seen the skele- 

 ton, or clean-picked bones, of the fish lying 

 before the flight - hole! What next? Can 

 any of your readers confirm this ? I know that 

 they feed horses on fish in Iceland; but can it 

 be possible that bees too enjoy such diet? 



Cape of Good Hope. S. D. 



We consider tlie bee-p;isturaee nicldsed within a 

 radius of two miles from his apiary comprises all 

 the gatliering--g'round of any practiciil value to the 

 apiarian. In proof of tins we Icnow of a case wliere 

 several stoclis were reduced to starvation-point one 

 season, witli an avenue of liuje-trees situated two 

 miles away. And from these same limes, the same 

 season, bees located near at hand gathered plenty 

 of honey for themselves, and a fair amount of sur- 

 plus. Our far-away correspondent's " friend " could 

 surely not be serious, or else he was wofully igno- 

 rant of the tiying-powers of bees. It is absurd to 

 talk of their traveling a twentieth part of seventy- 

 two miles for nectar from any source. As to the 

 "red-herring" story, we certainly never heard of 

 bees possessing a taste for flsh of any kind, though 

 they have no distaste for a certain amount of salt. 

 It will be an easy matter, however, to either dis- 

 prove or verify the story at the cost of a red her- 

 ring.-EV/.s. /}. B. J.l 



[Bees in this country have been known to fly 

 from an island 7 miles to the mainland, in 

 search of stores. See April number of GLf;AN- 

 iNGs, 1882. We have had other corroborative 

 testimony, and Doolittle claims that bees go 

 from three to six miles, from choice, and that 

 his bees went from four to five miles to the tea- 

 sels, without any teasels being nearer than 3,V 

 miles. Bees do go long distances, but usually 



not more than two miles, we think. — Ed. 

 Gleanings.] 



THE HEWES escape; AVHAT the I'ORTEIiS 

 SAY OF IT. 



The Hewes burred-hole-tin-escape idea, per- 

 mit us to say, we experimented very carefully 

 with in the spring of 1890; and had we been 

 able to get anything satisfactory out of it, the 

 Porter escape would never have been known to 

 the public. We found it impracticable to make 

 holes through which the bees could not return 

 readily when they wished, and impossible to 

 make any provision for the escape of drones. 



Lewiston, 111.. Jan. 19. R. & E. C. Porter. 



YELLOW .lESSAMINE. 



I have in my yard two jessamine vines. I 

 have watched them closely for several years: 

 and my bees work on them from May till late 

 in the fall. It is one of the plants that the 

 bees work on from early mom until late in the 

 evening, and all summer. Can you tell some- 

 thing about them as a honey-plant? 



Union, Tenn., Jan. 24. J. P. Ralston. 



[Honey from yellow jessamine is poisonous: 

 bees are said to work on i'o very freely.] 



THE ALFALFA FIELDS; INFORMATION WANTED. 



Will some bee-keepers who live in the irrigat- 

 ed alfalfa regions tell us whether their seasons 

 vary as much there as in other places? One 

 not acquainted with the facts would suppose 

 that, with a warm climate, and the moisture 

 under control, the seasons would be nearly 

 alike. How is it? W. H. Upton. 



Morning Sun, Iowa, Jan. 31. 



MAPLE SAP AS A BASE FOR BEVERAGp:S. 



Friend Boot: — I believe you are in a maple- 

 sugar locality, so maple sap may soon be plen- 

 tiful with you. If it is new to you, let me make 

 a suggestion to you. The first good, cool, fresh 

 hard-maple sap you get, please make some lem- 

 onade of it, and see how you like it. Then use 

 some sap instead of water to make the Roots 

 some coffee — if you use coffee. 



Kingsville, O. N. T. Phelps. 



[Very good, friend P. I never tried lemonade 

 made of maple sap; but sap coffee has been a 

 favorite beverage with the Roots ever since I 

 can remember. Come to think of it, you know 

 I do not drink coffee now— new milk right from 

 the cow instead— so I think I will take mine in 

 lemonade. For all these purposes it must be 

 remembered that maple sap changes in a very 

 few hours; and to have it nice it should be tak- 

 en right from the tree, and that which runs in 

 comparatively cold weather— the first of the 

 season, as you suggest.] 



PROPER POSITION OF STORES FOR WINTERING. 



On reading the article on wintering, by E. 

 France, page 19, it occurred to me to state our 

 experience last winter. I had two swarms, 

 good ones, and my father and mother had five. 

 We had four in Nonpariel hives, winter cases, 

 packed on the summer stand, and three in Cary 

 hives in the cellar. Six swarms wintered. One 

 of mine died. (Those wintered out of doors 

 were in much better condition, and gave us 

 nearly all our surplus.) It was one of the best 

 swarms outdoors. I examined the combs to see 

 if I could find the cause of their dying. The 

 bees were clustered in the upper story, looking 

 exactly like your picture of a comb of dead 

 bees; and as Mr. France says, they cluster in 

 cold weather close in the combs, a bee in a cell. 

 The combs of the upper story had not a drop of 

 honey iij them, and weie as white and clean as 

 the combs in supers. In the lower story was 



