c 



AlGllST, 1918 



BETTER be a 

 side - line 

 beekeeper 

 than a main-lin- 

 er, when honey- 

 producers are 

 saying, as they 

 are i n middle 

 Tennessee in 

 this month of 



July, 1918, "Our fair hopes all went glim- 

 mering." I don't know just exactly what 

 fair hopes do or where they go, when they 

 go glimmering, but I do know there's not 

 going to be as much honey as we had ex- 

 pected. Extracting is not yet completed, 

 but some beekeepers around here say they 

 won 't have any honey at all to take off. 

 One Williamson County producer looks for 

 about a 40-i)ound average from his produc- 

 ing hives. But they won't all produce. 



The prospects were unusually bright this 

 spring, tho I regretted seeing clover come 

 so early, as many bees were not ready for it. 

 But it brought good promise with it — there 

 seemed to be a wealth of it, tho the dis- 

 tribution was not even — but alas it did not 

 fullill the jjromise. No two beekeepers offer 

 the same explanation. "Too much rain in 

 the spring washed out all the nectar," one 

 says; "so little rain this summer, it sort of 

 dried up," says another; "there just wasn't 

 any nectar," still another asserts. Personal- 

 ally, I don 't know — tho I do know we are 

 disai^pointed — again. And I do know, too, 

 that Dr. Phillips says the nectar secretion of 

 white clover is ' ' quickly affected by ad- 

 verse weather conditions. ' ' And we 've had 

 all kinds of weather conditions, adverse and 

 all. The present dry spell has lasted so 

 long it has become a real drought, and now, 

 without rain, we have passed from very hot 

 to very cool. 



* * * 



This year, as I have used far more shallow 

 supers than ever before, I feel justified in 

 adding an opinion to the many others that 

 have been expressed pro and con. I like 

 them very much better than the full depth. 

 Just because they are lighter to lift off, you 

 will say. That is a very important reason, 

 and the one that prompted their purchase in 

 the first place, but it is by no means the 

 only reason. In a locality like this, where 

 there are not often heavy crops, the shallow 

 supers are particularly valuable. The clover 

 honey, even tho only a small croji, will be 

 safely sealed over before bitterweed comes 

 on or honeydew puts in its appearance. And 

 if the season is good, you have only to tier 

 them up. They make more combs to uncap 

 at extracting time, true, but the uncapping 

 is easier, comb for comb. 



And as Miss Fowls once cleverly suggest- 

 ed, if one is quite too proudly strong to be 

 willing to lose the opportunity that the full- 

 depth supers afford to display his strength, 

 let him insert his tool under two of the 

 shallow supers and toss them off double. 



Yes, in consideration of my locality and 



GLEANINGS' IN BEE CULTURE 



Beekeeping as a Side Line 

 LJ 



1 



the fact that I 

 am not a steve- 

 dore, I have def- 

 initely planned 

 a 1 1 "full - depth 

 bodies for brood- 

 chambers, a n d 

 expect to take 

 surplus honey 

 hereafter a 1 - 

 most entirely from shallow frames. Unless, 

 indeed, I finally get into Long Idea hives. 

 That experiment was scheduled for this sea- 

 son, but somehow the cogs slipped, and so 

 it must await 1919 for trial. 



* * * 



In spite of the fact that in the last three 

 weeks we have made rapid downward re- 

 vision of our crop prospects, and the total 

 will doubtless fall far short of our hopes, 

 yet the contrast between our new country 

 location aiid our own home yard continues 

 to be impressive. In the country, a few 

 hives grew to quite a chummy height — an- 

 other super, and the bees and I would have 

 stood shoulder to shoulder. Altho this noble 

 height was partly the result of hopes that 

 failed to materialize, yet for any such tow- 

 ering condition, I choose the shallow supers, 

 for the large combs, if filled, I have to lift 

 cut one by one till the super is of a lif table 

 weight; and that is certainly a slow and 

 tedious process. 



* s * 



The Pellet plan of increase (based on 

 raising and mating the young queen in a 

 super), tried out in three colonies, was suc- 

 cessful in two. In the third, the young 

 queen was found lying dead on one of the 

 top bars. But, except for making the hole 

 in the supers, I liked the method very murh 

 — it was so safe and sane. In fact, it looks 

 almost fool-proof. Even where there was 

 no increase, there could be no loss. While 

 there is no surplus in the hives whose brood 

 was thus raised to start the new colonies, 

 that fact would seem chargeable to the per- 

 son rather than the system. The new colony 

 I set off yesterday is populous and has a 

 wealth of stores, and is in much better 

 shape than the little colonies started at 

 about the same time, as nuclei. Whether 

 big producers would care for it or not, it 

 seems well worth while for side-line bee- 

 keei^ers to try out. 



* * * 



When workers are seen tugging away at 

 drones, the end of the honey flow is likely 

 upon us. When they start a wild case of 

 robbing, it quite surely is. Both of these 

 unwelcome occurences were part of one 

 day's demonstration at Peabody College 

 Summer School last week. Combs of honey 

 that would have been left unmolested two 

 weeks before started a little riot before I 

 realized. The usually gentle colony became 

 resentful — to the great regret of at least 

 one student — and hives had to be closed in 

 a hurry. I tossed weeds over the entrances, 

 plied the smoker vigorously (lacking car- 



