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GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTUKE. 



May 



school ; and to the praying mothers whose 

 eyes rest on these pages, let me say, " Dear 

 sisters, be ye not weary ; for in due season 

 ye shall reap if ye faint not.'" And lastly, 

 what shall I say to fathers who have not yet 

 made their peace with God ? Do not delay, 

 dear brothers. Ilemember the faithful 

 wives — those who have, perhaps, prayed 

 long years for you. Do not, I beseech of 

 you, harden your hearts against these gentle 

 influences. "' Except ye become as a little 

 child, ye can not enter into the kingdom of 

 heaven." 



CON'DI'CTED BY ERNEST R. BOOT. 



THE WEATHER. 



The weather, for the most part, during 

 the past month, has been either cold or 

 rainy. We have had only a few days in 

 which the bees gathered pollen. The buds 

 are making an attempt to open, but the 

 weather forbids. Soft maples have been 

 out for nearly a couple of weeks, and dur- 

 ing the few days that bees could fly they 

 were gathering some 



NEW honey and pollen. 



I believe that somebody said that the soft 

 maple yields no nectar. It may be true in 

 some localities ; but for Medina it must be 

 a mistake. There is no other source from 

 which the new honey could come. That it 

 has been lately gathered, is evidenced by 

 the fact that it spills out of the combs when 

 the latter are handled roughly or turned to 

 a horizontal plane. 



HOW OUK BEES WINTERED OUTDOORS. 



We put into winter quarters last year, on 

 their summer stands, in chaff, 150 colonies. 

 Two have perished. A few others had to 

 be united. The rest were in fair to good 

 condition. 



OLD OR YOUNG (QUEENS FOR WINTER. 



One fact seems to stand out plainly. Our 

 now strongest and best colonies had, last 

 fall, young queens. Queens that were two 

 or three years old have not begun to equal, 

 in point of strength and brood-rearing, the 

 colonies of their younger sisters. We have 

 observed this fact before, but it was never 

 before so noticeable as during this spring, 

 because we never before had so many old 

 queens in the apiary. This may be one of 

 Manum's secrets of success in wintering 

 (see his report elsewhere), namely, that he 

 will have young queens in his apiary. 

 Young queens in the cellar had the best 

 colonies. 



OUR COLONIES IN THE CELLAR. 



Out of 42 in the cellar, we lost nine— three 

 by starvation, three others because they 

 were very weak in the fall, but we took our 

 chances on wintering them ; and the three 

 remaining died from unknown causes. 

 Well, now, this does not speak as well for 

 the indoor as for our outdoor method ; but 

 when we come to examine into the causes, 

 perhaps we shall not notice very much dif- 

 ference after all. The colonies outdoors in 

 the home apiary had not been used for fill- 



ing orders during the past season, conse- 

 quently were in good condition in the fall 

 and hence ought to winter well. With such 

 assistance as Neighbor II. could render us, 

 we used the basswood apiary— the apiary 

 that was wintered in the cellar— exclusively 

 for filling orders for bees and queens. The 

 result was, the colonies of this apiary were 

 very greatly reduced in strength, not only 

 from the heavy drain of bees and queens 

 that had to be taken from them, but from 

 neglect. After the loss of my horse I found 

 it many times inconvenient (our other 

 horses being in use) to visit the basswood 

 apiary as often as was necessary for a 

 queen - rearing apiary. The consequence 

 was, that some cells failed to hatch, or some 

 queens would be lost in fertilization, and 

 whole colonies would be left queenless for a 

 week or ten days, and this was along dur- 

 ing the fall. For a similar reason we found 

 it a little inconvenient to feed. They were 

 not fed until they were taken back to my 

 house just preparatory to putting them into 

 the cellar. At the time they were fed, 

 many of them would not take down syrup, 

 and hence they were in rather poor condi- 

 tion. But I thought, perhaps over-confl- 

 dently, that in the cellar they woidd surely 

 winter. Well, as I stated, three died from 

 starvation. That was no particular fault of 

 the cellar or method. As it was rather late 

 in the season, we put the bees on rather 

 shorter rations than we would otherwise 

 have done, outdoors. The three weak ones 

 had old queens, and it is pretty evident that 

 they died shortly after they were put into the 

 cellar. The few bees left dwindled away. 

 Perhaps I should say that one of these 

 three had a bottom-board on, and the other 

 two did not. Of 4^2 in the cellar, some 

 seven or eight had bottom-boards. If I was 

 ever satisfied of one thing, it was that those 

 colonies which had no bottom-boards were 

 in much the better condition. One colony 

 in particular, which had a bottom-board, 

 was a stinking mass of bees, and the few 

 that remained seemed tired of life. A large, 

 strong, and prosperous colony in the fall 

 was then dead on the bottom-board, in a 

 white mold. A bottom-board with a weak 

 colony is not nearly so bad as with a strong 

 one. 



THE DIBBERN BEE-ESCAPE. 



I have already tested this to a limited ex- 

 tent. I put some combs into a hive one day 

 when the bees were flying well, and allowed 

 them to get started on them so that it was a 

 real case of robbing. I then placed a cover- 

 board on top. with a hole, over which was 

 placed a Dibbern escape. The entrance 

 was then closed. The robbers passed out 

 quite readily. But only one out of several 

 hundred bees that I watched succeeded in 

 getting back into the hive ; and I venture 

 to say he did not know how he got there, 

 and i doubt whether he succeeded in mak- 

 ing an entrance again. Although the hive 

 was full of robbers, about half an hour aft- 

 erward there was not a bee in the hive, al- 

 though there were hundreds of them flying 

 around on the outside, trying to get in. 

 This test is by no means conclusive, but it 

 is favorable. 



