930 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Dec. 15. 



snow, I never knew this bloom to yield enough 

 honey to show in the combs. Why should not 

 this crop of bloom yield honey as well as the 

 first? VVith this second crop, every season ap- 

 pears to be an •■ off'" season; and the time ap- 

 pears to have come when off' years are getting 

 to be more the rule than the exception with our 

 main honey-plants. 



Alfalfa has done very poorly in Colorado for 

 the two past seasons. Last year, in well-man- 

 aged apiaries, the yield was about 30 lbs. per 

 colony; and by reports, I judge that this year it 

 has been still less. Previous to 1892 there were 

 several seasons in which the yield per hive 

 ranged anywhere from 120 to 200 lbs., nearly all 

 from alfalfa. Alfalfa, as compared with the 

 other live honey-yielders I have mentioned, may 

 stand first, excepting basswood. I have never 

 known an entire failure with the basswoods. 

 Cloudy and cold days and dry weather may 

 come; but if there comes only one or two days' 

 gathering from it, we always get some honey. 

 White clover comes into bloom a week or two 

 earlier than basswood; and, though it may not 

 yield a surplus, the bees manage to get enough 

 to live, and patch and prepare the combs so 

 that what basswood gives can be seen. 



Poor honey seasons in California are caused 

 by insufficient rain in the winter season to make 

 the sages grow. Some very favorable things we 

 have here are weeks and months of perfectly 

 cloudless days, such that the bees can fly in 

 search of honey every day. In Iowa, pleasant 

 sunny days are scarce— sometimes being cloudy 

 and chilly through neaily all the clover and 

 basswood blooms. Then, again, it may be so 

 dry through the spring that clover is dried up. 



in Colorado the weather is between that of 

 Iowa and California— much sunshine, and some 

 clouds and rain. If there were no rain at all it 

 would not affect alfalfa, as it depends upon ir- 

 rigation. For this reason alfalfa ought to be a 

 pretty sure honey - yielder. Failure may be 

 largely due to its being mowed before it comes 

 into bioom. Clover blooms for some considera- 

 ble time before the bees get much honey from 

 it— so long, in fact, that the inexperienced may 

 conclude that it is not going to yield at all. In 

 this respect, alfalfa seems to imitate clover. In 

 California, alfalfa is mowed even closer and 

 oftener than in Colorado; and, while its scarci- 

 ty of heads which escape the mower and sicl<le 

 tend to lessen the yield, the weather and at- 

 mosphere are nearly always favorable. Cali- 

 fornia alfalfa honey is much darker than Colo- 

 rado alfalfa— about like Iowa heartsease— light 

 amber. It also has a correspondingly strong 

 flavor. In Colorado it is nearly the quality of 

 basswood (Colorado bee-keepers think it sur- 

 passes basswood in color and flavor); but I have 

 failed to think that it surpdsscs basswood. 



One thing which these western honeys have 

 to their advantage to give them light color and 

 mild flavor is the light sandy soil upon which 

 they grow. Heavy rich soil produces darker, 

 stronger honey, even in the case of basswood- 

 trees. I have kept an apiary on each kind of 

 land at the same time, so as to make this com- 

 parison. 



I See the report that mountain honey is rich- 

 er than valley honey. My appetiie seems to 

 indicate the reverse, for, the higher in the 

 mountains I find it, the more I can eat, to the 

 extent of nearly making a meal of it; and I 

 have sampled it from bee- trees on the highest 

 mountains in the middle of the San Bernardi- 

 no range. There were three grades found, the 

 darkest being a very little lighter in color and 

 milder in flavor than pure buckwheat. The 

 different colors were placed in well-separated 

 positions in the combs, which might indicate 

 three periods of the gathering. The light col- 



ored was stored earliest in the season, and the 

 dark later — just three kinds, and not an ounce 

 of any other. This tree was located near the 

 " timber-line,"' much higher than and several 

 miles distant from where sage grows; and the 

 lightest honey was nearer a water color than 

 any sage honey 1 have seen. In the immediate 

 vicinity I found growing manzanita, white- 

 thorn, buckthorn, yucca, and a peculiar kind of 

 oak which the bees work upon a great deal for 

 honey-dew. I think the white honey came 

 from whitethorn, as I have never seen that kind 

 of honey anywhere else, and as whitethorn 

 grows only on the tops of the highest mountains. 

 The dark honey may have come from yucca, 

 although all the plants I mention, and several 

 others that were new to me, are honey-yielders. 



California is a marvelous country in that 

 nearly every tree, shrub, and weed is a honey - 

 yielder, and which may be numbered almost by 

 the hundred. Yet none but sage furnishes a 

 surplus to compare with c-lover, basswood. or 

 alfalfa. Wild alfalfa, wild buckwheat, alfila- 

 ree, burr-clover, sumac, oranges, and beans are 

 about equal to buckwheat, heartsease, and the 

 yellow weeds that grow along the fences in 

 iowa. Sage growth is entirely dependent upon 

 the moisture of the rainy season; yet when we 

 go up a mountain from the sun side and cross 

 over the summit we find no sage on the shaded 

 side. Nor does sage grow to the tops unless the 

 mountains are very low; and the idea that the 

 bees first work upon the bloom in the low lands 

 and continue up the mountains, thus lengthen- 

 ing out the harvest, is easily exploded. The 

 sage on the scorched mountain-side is shriveled 

 up and dead before that in the valley. 



C. W. Dayton. 



Pasadena, Cal., Nov. 25, 1893. 



T"WO QUEENS IN ONE HIVE. 



THE PLAN NOT A SUCCESS ACCORDING TO THE 

 EXPEHIMENTS OF S. CORNEII.. 



During the past two or three years the Brit- 

 ish Bee Journal has been full of what is. in 

 Enghind, called the "Wells plan." Mr. Wells 

 puts two colonies into the same hive in the fall. 

 They are separated by a wooden division-board 

 about three-sixteenths of an inch thick, per- 

 forated with holes a little too small to allow a 

 bee to pass through. The perforations are 

 about half an inch apart. The bees use the 

 same entrance, the members of each family 

 taking their own side of the division board. 



At the beginning of the honey-flow, in the 

 following summer, queen - excluding zinc is 

 placed over the frames, and surplus chambers 

 are put on in which the bees of both colonies 

 work in common, without fighting, and, I be- 

 lieve, without the loss of many queens. The 

 amount of surplus obtained is regarded as the 

 produce of one" hive; and when compared with 

 the surplus ston>d by a colony having only one 

 queen, is, as might be expected, larger; but I 

 do not recollect seeing any evidence that it Is 

 more than twice as large. 



As I use the closed-end Quinby frames, all I 

 needed to give the plan a trial was the per- 

 forated division-board; so in the sumuKT of 

 1892 I arranged eight colonies in four pairs on 

 the above plan. After leaving them about a 

 week, to get the same scent, I put sections on 

 two of the double stocks, and the other two I 

 ran for extracted honey. There was no fight- 

 ing, but in 12 days the perforations in the divi- 

 sion-boards weie mostly filled with propolis. 

 Those worked for comb honey swarmed early, 

 both colonies at the same time, and then they 

 sulked and gave me little profit. I gave eight 



