40 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



s. 



My 



C 



GLEANED by ASKING 



H. S., V 

 ginia. 



bees are in- 

 fected with 

 European foul 

 brood. I ha\e IS 

 colonies and want 

 to treat them in the 

 spring, and would 

 be glad if you 

 would advise me as 



to the best methods. Would it be best for me to buy 

 queens and requeen, or to buy a breeder and raise 

 (he queens? Can I save the combs that I now have, 

 or must I do away with them? Can I cure it and 

 get a crop of honey next year ? 



A. It would be possible for you to treat 

 your diseased colonies next spring. It will 

 not be necessary to destroy any combs, hives, 

 or equipment. We would recommend to you 

 the Alexander treatment. The colony should 

 be made queenless for a period of 20 days, 

 cutting out cells in the meantime if any are 

 developed, and then giving a ripe cell from 

 the best Italian queen that you have. But 

 if you make your colonies queenless for twen- 

 ty days in the spring when breeding is very 

 necessary, it will put quite a setback to your 

 colonies. It will, perhaps, be advisable to 

 let breeding get started, so that young bees 

 will be hatching out; then make the bees 

 queenless. 



If you have a colony in the apiary that 

 does not have any European foul brood, it 

 may be resistant enough to take care of the 

 disease when it appears; but probably it will 

 be safer for you to buy your queens of some 

 company that has a resistant strain of Ital- 

 ians. It would seem best for you to wait 

 until about June 1 before you begin to make 

 the colonies queenless. In this way you 

 would build up the colonies, providing the 

 European foul brood is not too bad. 



Had you known, it would have been very 

 much better for you to introduce a resistant 

 strain of Italians last fall when the colonies 

 had no brood in the hive and when they 

 would clean up. 



Yes, you would be able to get a crop of 

 honey next season. 



\V. J, N., Amherst, Mass. — In running for ex- 

 tracted honey, what are the various methods em- 

 ployed for getting the combs cleaned up after ex- 

 tracting? "Which of these methods are considered 

 the best and why 1 



A. It is the usual practice to keep the 

 combs whirling in the extractor until they 

 are .as clean of honey as it is practical to 

 get them by centrifugal force. If the ex- 

 tracting is during the midst of the honey- 

 flow, and the combs are to be filled again, 

 they are put back into the hives just as 

 they are. If it is the last extracting of the 

 season, and' the combs are not put back on 

 the colonies they may be stacked up in empty 

 supers in the honey-house, wet. This does 

 no harm, and they can be given to the bees 

 next year. But tliere is one objection to 

 this. If the bees ever get into the honey- 

 house and get at these combs it would start 

 furious robbing. Some, however, at the last 



1 



January, 1918 



extracting, stack 

 the combs up in 

 supers, placing 

 them crosswise 

 and let the bees 

 rob them out 

 clean before they 

 are put away for 

 the fall and win- 

 ter. This makes 

 more or less of an uproar in an apiary, but 

 usually does no harm, provided, of course, 

 there is no foul brood in the yard, either 

 American or European. The practice, how- 

 ever, is always attended with some risk, be- 

 cause one never knows whether his yard is 

 entirely free from. disease. 



J. R. W., Washington. — Can you give a reason 

 why a queenless colony above a queen-excluder and 

 bee-escape hoard, as described on page 96, will not 

 develop laying workers while the same colony placed 

 on a stand by itself will? 



A. It is never quite safe to make a hard- 

 and-fast rule in regard to the behavior of 

 bees, for now and then some colony is bound 

 to break it. However, we should not expect 

 the colony described on page 96 to develop 

 laying workers, for their condition is so near- 

 ly that of a normal colony. They have good 

 queen-cells in process of construction, and 

 they have a dailj' accession of young bees — • 

 two conditions that are usually lacking in 

 colonies that produce laying workers. It 

 seems quite likely, also, that the daily pass- 

 ing of queeu'right bees thrtt their hive might 

 be a partial cause of their immunity from 

 laying workers. 



R. L. B., Ohio. — Sugar being scarce, and high 

 in price, a neighbor of mine is experimenting by 

 feeding 20 hives of bees on glucose. What, in your 

 opinion, will be the result — bees supposed to have 

 no other winter stores, on their summer stands, and 

 are iseldom cotifioed to their hives over three weeks 

 without a flight. 



A. We believe that that neighbor of yours 

 could obtain sugar for feeding if he ex- 

 plained to the grocer that its lack would 

 mean starvation for his bees. Our experi- 

 ence has shown that it is almost impossible 

 to induce bees to take raw glucose. We 

 have poured it all over the combs, and even 

 then they ■nould not take it. It has so 

 little sweetening power that the bees would 

 starve to death even if they took it. It 

 would be almost sure to cause dysentery, if 

 they would eat it, and should be avoided by 

 all means. Grape sugar, a similar product 

 made from corn, is much better. It could 

 he used to stimulate bees in the spring to 

 very good advantage; but, dollar for dollar, 

 granulated sugar is cheaper. Brown sugar, 

 if light in color, is all right for winter stores. 

 The dark-brown sugar should be avoided, 

 but it would be far preferable to either 

 glucose or grape sugar. Grape-sugar feeding 

 is questionable practice even when it can be 

 used immediately for stimulating brood-rear- 

 ing. It is not suitable at all for winter 

 stores. 



