August, 1918 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



471 



FROM THE FIELD OF EXPERIENCE 



groves, the blossoms of which make splen- 

 did pasture for the bees. When the honey 

 season at Glendora is ended the bees are 

 transported to the Ventura district, where 

 they are permitted to remain thruout the 

 summer, when the thousands of acres of 

 bean blossoms are available. After the bean- 

 blossom season is closed the bees are return- 

 ed to the home ranch in Castaic canyon, 

 where they gather honey during the winter 

 from the blossoms of the sagebrush on the 

 mountain side. 



The method of transjjorting the bees is 

 very interesting. By the aid of the truck 

 the moving of the bees is carried on with 

 remarkable speed and without the loss of a 

 single bee. After the bees have done their 

 day 's work and have retired for the night, 

 the owner carefully closes the entrances to 

 the hives and places them gently within the 

 truck, each load consisting of about 100 

 hives. The transporting is done at night, so 

 that while the bees go to bed at Castaic 

 they wake up the following morning in 



A view in ide of the automobile extracting-house. 



Glendora. As it is a smooth road all of the 

 way, the bees, hives and combs are in no 

 way damaged by the trip. In three nights 

 the entire apiary is moved from one place 

 to another. 



The motor truck is not only used as a 

 means of transportation from place to place, 

 but it serves as an extracting-house. The 

 room is equipped with a power honey-ex- 

 tractor, driven by a gasoline engine. By 

 having the truck equipped in this manner 

 it is not necessary to move the hives when 

 they are heavy with honey, but before each 

 moving process the honey is extracted and 

 shipped from the nearest railroad station. 

 The extracting-house may be backed right 

 up to the hives so that it is always ready 

 and convenient. The screen around its open 

 sides protects the workman from the bees 

 while extracting. 



It has been definitely learned that after 

 a winter in the hills the colonies of bees 



grow stronger with the early pasture that 

 the orange blossoms afford, so that instead 

 of becoming run down in health on account 

 of the additional work, the bees, because of 

 having a richer pasture, are always kept 

 in full strength. Altho of better quality 

 the sagebrush honey is a great deal harder 

 to gather, and it has been found that bees 

 do much better work in the sagebrush after 

 they have had a season in the orange or 

 bean blossoms, than they did when they 

 were kept constantly in the canyon. 



Before the motor truck made it possible 

 to transport the bees from place to place, 

 eight tons of honey were secured from these 

 270 stands of bees. Now in addition to get- 

 ting almost this amount of sagebrush honey, 

 the owner secures from five to six tons of 

 orange-blossom honey and between nine and 

 ten of bean-blossom hone}^, whieh shows 

 that the truck has been a good investment. 

 When it is considered that last year honey 

 sold for 12 cents a pound wholesale, it will 

 be seen that this new method of handling 

 bees is certainly a great success. 



Tropico, Calif. Albert Marple. 



ABOUT BREEDING BEES 



Best Results Secured by Rearing All Queens from 

 the Best Breeder 



I should like to say a few words about 

 breeding bees. I wrote an article on this 

 subject years ago, but it was so near like 

 one written by E. S. Miles that I did not 

 submit it for publication. 



In selecting our breeders it is not always 

 safe to breed from your best, as I have 

 found some of these to be poor to breed 

 from; and a man who sends out a queen 

 that has not been tested for breeding as a 

 breeder is dishonest. It is not enough that 

 she produce finely marked bees and lots of 

 honey. Her daughters must be good and 

 uniformly consistent honej^-producers. Of 

 course, the breeder 's drones are selected 

 sitock and bring better results in the mating 

 of said queens. 



My best results in the past 15 years have 

 been achieved by rearing all queens from 

 my best breeder. I select for drone-mothers 

 the best of these as to honey production and 

 other characteristics — of course, mating 

 these drones with queens from said breeder. 

 This brings our breeding queens up to two 

 or three years old, and the most of these 

 live to be four years old. I was surprised 

 that some one did not challenge Mr. Miles 

 on the statement that rearing queens (Ital- 

 ians) from black or hybrid stock has an in- 

 fluence on said queens as to color and other 

 things. I prefer a hybrid colony, if I hap- 

 pen to have one, for the reason that it raises 

 larger cells and more of them; and I chal- 

 lenge any one to prove that there is any 



