124 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



Decembkk, 191 



FROM THE FIELD OF EXPERIENCE 



is still will not penetrate thru a hive wall 

 as will a higher temperature aceonipaniod 

 by wind. A stiff blow at a freezing tem- 

 j/orature carries away the heat generated 

 l)y a colony of bees much faster than a still 

 air down close to zero. E. R. Root. 



Medina, O. 



MURDEROUS JAPANESE HORNETS 



In His Own English, a Japanese Beekeeper Tells or 

 Their Destructiveness 



Being a reader of Gleanings since the 

 years before, I feel very happy to be so. I 

 think you will take the attention of the 

 beekeeping in Japan, and am sure you would 

 like to do. 



Yesterday, the September 19th, my bees 

 are attacked by hornets. I am sending speci- 

 men of the same (queen and worker hornets) 

 in this cover, I will tell you of Japanese 

 hornets, the greatest bee enemy in Japan. 

 They are, indeed, the worst dreaded enemy 

 of our bees in our country here, altho I do 

 not know if hornets or wasps do not great 

 damage to your bees in your country. 



May I tell you of the fact that if one or 

 two hornets come into our apiary and attack 

 a hive of bees which come out of the en- 

 trance to guard, until the whole bees of the 

 hive are killed or badly wounded? There is 

 no fighting between the two, altho there are 

 many crowding bees in tli.e entrance. Be- 

 cause the hornet is so strong, it never minds 

 the bee 's sting or jaw. In the most ease. 



Picture of terrible Japanese hornets, shovvin? size as 

 compared with Italian lioneybee. Abi ut (mc-halt size 



after 10 or 20 minutes, our loving bees of 

 the hive are wholly destroyed and ruined, 

 altho the hornet can not get thru the nar- 

 row hive entrance. So doing, they come our 

 apiary from August to November, day by 

 day. So it is the inost dreaded enemy of 

 Japanese beekeepers. 



Yesterday morning, about 8 a. m., I went 

 to my bees in the back yant. There were 

 four hornets upon a hive. A hundi-ed bees 

 were wounded and killed. Instantly I hit 

 down them with wire-racket which I made 



as hornet-hitting racket, and killed them, 

 cutting off the head. I came back to my 

 work in the house. Nextly, about 10 minutes 

 after, I went out to see the bees. There 

 were two hornets upon another hive. About 

 50 bees were killed. I hit down hornets all. 

 Then I determined to be standing in the 

 yard till evening, and so I did. Hour after 

 liour? No! minutes after minutes the hor- 

 nets came. I hit them all; and upon the 

 sunset I counted 40 of hornets' heads. 



I ask if you will kindly tell me of the 

 hornet in your country. Do they never such 

 damage for your bees? I would like to have 

 an opinion from you and your fellow bee- 

 keepers on them. Yasuo Hiratsuka. 



Tara, Gifu-ken, Japan, Sept. 20, 1918. 



THE PRICE QUESTION AGAIN 



Harm Done by Those Who Sell Small Amounts 

 of Honey Irregularly 



An article under caption, ' ' The Eternal 

 Price Question,'' in the October Gleanings, 

 impels me ' ' to speak in meetin. ' ' It oc- 

 curs to me that your correspondent, Dr. A, 

 F. Boiiney, is like those farmers he men- 

 tions "as having started." He has made a 

 start, but has need to go farther than he 

 has yet gone, if he really wants to settle 

 the price question, and put it where it shall 

 cease to trouble the producer of honey. 

 Whether he be a large or a small producer, 

 makes little difference. The same person is 

 rarely, if ever, both a large and a small 

 ]troducer of the same article at the same 

 time. 



Usually the large producer gets a better 

 price for his product. Why? Not because 

 he has more honey to sell than his neighbor, 

 or a better quality perchance, but because 

 he doesn 't attempt to retail his honey at 

 wholesale prices. If asked "what is whole- 

 sale price," his reply would be "the prices 

 quoted by w'holesalers to retailers. ' ' And 

 just there is where many producers nmke 

 their mistake. They do not consider even 

 when they have only a small lot of honey 

 to dispose of that by retailing it at whole- 

 sale prices they are not i)laying the game 

 fair. The price does not depend on location 

 half so much as on the sak-sman and on the 

 general market value of the i)roduct, which 

 is established and maintained by the jobbers 

 and those who know the market 's needs. 



After several years ' experience on the 

 road as a honey salesman, selling hundreds 

 of cases every month in the year to whole- 

 sale and retail trade, I am quite sure there 

 is no one thing more demoralizing and which 

 interferes as much with the sale of honey in 

 certain localities as the attempts of some 

 ])roducers to dispose of a few hundi^^l 

 pounds of honey which they happen to have. 



