Ai'Rit, 1918 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



209 



that they can hardly reach their alighting 

 boards. All this is a heavy strain on the vi- 

 tality of the little workers, and the supposi- 

 tion can safely be accepted that not many of 

 them survive beyond the beginning or middle 

 of June. 



This is the every-day, normal routine of 

 bee life and does not cause spring dwindling. 

 A weak colony tliat occupies three or four 

 spaces and has a little patch of normal brood 

 in the center of its cluster can hardly be 

 called "the result of spring dwindling. " 

 Other factors are resj)onsible for their weak- 

 ness. More likely they went into winter 

 weak and came out weak in the spring. 



When I gave my bees their first spring ex- 

 amination about tlie first week in April (a 

 slight glance from the top to make sure they 

 had plenty to live on), I considered them in 

 ]>romising condition for a normal honey crop. 

 I could see no indications that anything un- 

 usual could or would happen. About a month 

 later, when I unpacked them, they were so 

 heavy that I had to call on my daughter, 

 my usual helper in such emergencies, to help 

 me take them out of the sheds and set them 

 on the ground. It reminded me very forcibly 

 of Mr. Doolittle's assertion that plenty of 

 stores were the means of building colonies up 

 in the spring, and I anticipated that with 

 all that honey my bees must be getting in 

 fine condition for my spring manipulations. 



About that time I was expecting and hop- 

 ing that my queens, the first installment of 

 which I had ordered mailed May 10. would 

 arrive in time to begin dividing at the first 

 blossoming of the apple trees. They did ar- 

 rive May 12. I prepared them for making 

 my divisions, and as soon as an open spell 

 of weather permitted, I began work with the 

 bees. Opening the first hive, one I had mark- 

 ed "extra prime" in April, I found its colo- 

 ny (imagine my surprise) sadly depopulated, 

 at least in comparison to what I had expect- 

 ed. Thinking that some mishap had befallen 

 this one, I opened the next, also marked "ex- 

 tra prime" and found it in the same condi- 

 tion — and the rest of the yard not much dif- 

 ferent. Everything that had been marked 



1, is sealed honey; 2, empty cells; 3, sealed brood; 

 4, cells from which brood has hatched. 



prime was hardly medium; all the mediums 

 were weak; and all the weak mere remnants 

 and small ones at that. This was a puzzle; I 

 had never experienced anything like it be- 

 fore. To ascertain, if possible, the cause of 

 this strange phenomenon, I examined quite 

 a number of broodcombs. The accompanying 



drawing shows wliat I found — a genuine case 

 of spring-dwindling, caused by complete fail- 

 ure of young bees hatching to take the places 

 of the dead and dying generation. All the 

 combs were practically broodless. 



Mr. Doolittle's theory of "plenty of 

 .stores" is all right, if the conditions of the 

 season are favorable. If the bees can fly, 

 gather water and pollen, perhaps bring in a 

 little new honey and otherwise make them- 

 selves useful to ad\ance home affairs in 

 general, then with plenty of honey in the 

 hive, the queen is induced to fulfill her ma- 

 ternal duties of stocking up her hive with 

 brood- But with such a season as we had 

 that spring (1916), when from the middle 

 of April until late in June, cold rainy wea- 

 ther prevailed during which time bees for 

 weeks could not leave their hives, all the old 

 honey they might have had would not have 

 induced the queen to lay. My customary 

 practice of reducing all my colonies to as few 

 combs as they can well cover and filling the 

 vacancies with division boards, gave me an 

 immense lot of capped honey, all more or less 

 granulated. From almost every hive I took 

 from two to four combs, and when I had 

 them all gathered up one-half of my honey- 

 house floor was literally covered with such 

 combs set on end. If I had left them in the 

 hives, they would not have been touched by 

 the bees for brood-rearing, and all the space 

 they occupied would have been lost to the 

 queen 's use, and would only liave been a 

 strong incentive to swarming. 



But I uncapped them — two, three and four 

 at a time — and hung them under a little out- 

 door shed for the bees to work on them. As 

 fast as the bees cleaned these combs out I 

 inserted them in the center of the brood-nest 

 of such colonies as, could use them to advan- 

 tage. This manipulation I kept up during 

 the two months when no honey was coming in 

 from natural sources, and by the time the 

 sweet-clover flow began, about the middle of 

 July, all that old honey was transformed into 

 bees and brood. 



It makes all the difference imaginable, 

 whether a colony is clogged up with old hon- 

 ey in the hive or whether that same honey is 

 brought in from outdoors. During a honey- 

 dearth bees are as eager to carry it home as 

 they are to gather nectar from natural 

 sources, and the effect in regard to encourage- 

 ment of egg production is nearly the same. 



When the sweet clover flow came the bees 

 were then in exactly the same condition as 

 they are under normal conditions at the be- 

 ginning of the white clover flow. They had 

 entirely outgrown the effects of the previom 

 spring dwindling; their hives were full of 

 young, energetic workers, and their combs 

 were covered from side to side with brood 

 of all stages, leaving little chance to store in- 

 coming honey in the brood chamber. Altho 

 the honey-flow from sweet clover is never so 

 profuse as the earlier white clover flow, the 

 colonies were, as a consequence of close man- 

 agement, in the very best condition for su- 

 per-work. G. C- Greiner. 



