May. 1918 



I. R A N T N O S T N 



K K (' r LT I' 1- K 



w 



c 



LJ 



E have lost 

 winter- 

 ing up to 

 Apr. 1 about five 

 per cent of our 

 bees — somewhat 

 more than usual. 

 The intense cold 

 of the past win- 

 ter ha.5 caused 



a larger consumption of stores which has 

 resulted in a good many cases of starvation; 

 but April is here at last, the snow is gone, 

 and the bees once more filling the air with 

 their gentle hum. I wonder if there is any 

 one so unresponsive to their environment as 

 not to feel the thrill of a new life when all 

 aljout us is throbbing with the fresh new 

 life that April brings to us. 

 » » * 



I am glad Mr. Latham has pricked the 

 bubble of a "let-alone hive," page 216. 

 The inspector sees so many "let-alone hives" 

 in his rounds that they possess no charm for 

 him. "Let-alone hives" and "fool-proof 

 hives" should both be relegated to the rear 

 in these davs of bee diseases. 



We have recently purchased a small yard 

 of 28 hives. Seventy per cent were dead 

 and those left were in poor condition, as the 

 result of attempting to winter in large 

 brood-chambers and without sufficient pack- 

 ing or stores. AVe always find something 

 to learn in looking over our neighbors ' yards 

 that have met with misfortune or neglect. 



As restful as robin songh in spring time, 

 after the long, bleak, snowy winter, are the 

 warm colors of the cover page of Gleanings 

 for April. Again and again have I turned to 

 it to rest and refresh myself and assure 

 myself that the winter is over, the sno-v\ 

 rnelted and gone, that green fields and open- 

 ing flowers are before us. [You, Mr. Crane, 

 have caught the exact idea and have experi- 

 enced the exact feelings the F.ditors had in 

 mind when selecting that April cover de- 

 sign.] 



* * * 



Dr. Miller quotes A. I. Eoot as saying. 

 "There is no easier, quicker, and safer way 

 of feeding bees that are short of stores 

 than to give them sealed stores of honey, ' ' 

 page 218. This is quite true; but how are 

 we to proceed when we have no sealed stores, 

 as often happens in spring time! Where 

 quilts or cushions are used over brood- 

 chambei's we sometimes use granulated lion 

 cy on top of frames verv satisfactori\y or 

 fill combs with inferior honey or FU<rar syrup 

 and feed same ;ir sealed stores, but sealed 



stores are th<> best. 



« » * 



There is doubtless a tendencv in building 

 new combs for bees to draw in the lower cor- 

 ners, especially near a large entrance, as 

 suggested by A. C. Miller, page 212, and 



SIFTINGS 



J. E. Crane 



1 



^"^^^^^^^^ 



lU 



233 



later filling in 

 with drone-comb. 

 If the space is 

 small, it seems 

 to satisfy the in- 

 stinct of the 

 bees for drones, 

 and does . little 

 harm; but if t'-.e. 

 patch of drone- 

 comb is large, w*e have been in the habit of 

 cutting out a triangular piece and inserting 

 a piece of worker-comb in its place resting 

 on the bottom-bar. Such insertions are rare- 

 ly gnawed out, and the drone-comb removc<l 

 is rich in wax and pays well for the work. 



* * * 



I have a great deal of respect for Mrs. 

 S. Wilbur Frey, page 214, if she can ac- 

 complish all she claims on pages 214 and 215 

 in "a poor season." "During the entire 

 season," she says, "there were only a few 

 good days that the bees were able to gather 

 honey, and the farmers had plowed up their 

 lands for cultivated crops, . . . there is 

 a little basswood, a few red raspberries, and 

 here and there a buckwheat field, that yield- 

 ed very little last year. ' ' She also assures us 

 that she secured but little from fall flowers 

 as compared with ordinary years, as her 

 combs were full of brood, and yet she se- 

 cured from colonies run for section honey 

 an average of 50 lbs. surplus per colony and 

 enough to winter them, and an average profit 

 of over $7.00 per colony. Is not there some 

 mistake about this that is likely to deceive 

 young beekeepers? A season when a yard of 

 bees gives a profit of more than $7.00 per 

 colony can hardly be called a poor year. 



* * - 



I am surely grateful to Dr. Miller for his 

 more complete method of the treatment of 

 European foul brood on jiage 218. I had 

 sup^iosed that to make the caging treatment 

 successful it was necessary that a\\ foul 

 brood cells must be cleaned out and polished 

 before brood-iearing was begun. But noW 

 we are given to understand that it is only 

 those that have died at a certain age and 

 turned yellow that spread disease. There 

 appear to be a good many mysteries con- 

 rected with the spread of this disease that 

 it would be a comfort to have cleared up. 

 How long docs the virus live under different 

 conditions.? What conditions are most fa- 

 vorable for its development or its death? 

 fcomeyears ago a teacher in our graded school 

 asked for a single-comb observation hive. 

 I selected a suitable comb, and while getting 

 things ready dropped the comb for a little 

 time into a hive that proved to be infected 

 Avith Euroiiean foul brood. I expected this 

 fomb of brood would soon develop disease, 

 but I found no indication of disease that 

 season. However, the next spring it came 

 down with a virulent form of European foul 

 brood, so bad that we did not attempt to 

 cure it but destroved it — combs and all. 



