128 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



April 



ably vanish if good laying queens and 

 proper food are supplied in the fall, if 

 the bees are wintered in a good cellar 

 and have sufficient protection to May 

 20. 

 University Farm, St. Paul, Minn. 



bees are necessary for the thorough 

 fertilization of the bloom. Their inter- 

 ests are identical. — Editor.] 



Honeybees and Spraying 



BY T. J. TALBERT. 



MANY fruit growers and beekeep- 

 ers believe that fruit trees 

 sprayed with arsenical poisons 

 are apt to poison honeybees. Some 

 farmers go so far as to make the state- 

 ment that entire colonies of bees are 

 destroyed by the poisonous sprays ap- 

 plied in the orchards during the sum- 

 mer. 



Careful experiments and observa- 

 tions extending over a series of years 

 have shown conclusively that if the 

 spraying is done at the right time but 

 little if any harm will be done to honey- 

 bees. The so-called calyx spray or the 

 application made immediately after the 

 blossoms fall is the one to which most 

 injury is attributed. 



The calvx spray should not be made 

 until the petals or blossoms begin to 

 fall. If the application is made earlier 

 than this it is not an effective spray 

 against the codling moth and apple 

 scab, the two most important pests to 

 be controlled at this time. 



Before the blossoms fall the repro- 

 ductive organs of the flower (stamens 

 and pistil) fill and almost close the 

 calyx cup, thus prev-nting the poison 

 from reaching the place where the ma- 

 jority of the codling moth worms take 

 their first meal. At this time the little 

 green calyx lobes are turned down in 

 such a way that it is very difficult to coat 

 them with the spraying solution and 

 consequently the small developing ap- 

 ples are not protected well against 

 apple scab. 



Spraying apple trees when they are 

 in full bloom is also apt to prevent a 

 satisfactory set of fruit. The spraying 

 solution may be strong enough to burn 

 and destroy the reproductive organs of 

 the flowers. , , . 



By the time the petals begin to fall, 

 when the spraying should begin, prac- 

 tically all the nectar has dried up and 

 the bees are not visiting the flowers. 

 No injury can therefore be done to the 

 bees if the sprays are applied imme- 

 diately after the petals fall. 



The sprays made in the orchard have 

 a repelling effect upon the bees. That 

 is, the strong sulphur smell tends to 

 drive the bees from the trees. The 

 liquid is very distasteful to them. There 

 are, therefore, many reasons for not 

 spraying when the trees are in full 

 bloom, while there is not a single good 

 reason for spraying at the time when 

 the spraying may be dangerous to 

 honey bees. 



Columbia, Mo. 



[We consider it very important to 

 use some repellent in the sprays, for 

 even if the spraying be done after the 

 bloom has fallen there is a possibility 

 of some of it falling on blossoms be- 

 neath the trees and poisoning the bees 

 in that manner. There need be no 

 clash between the beekeepers and the 

 horticulturists on this matter since the 



Beekeeping in Carniola 



BY FRANK ROJINA. 



NEARLY three years ago I left 

 Carniola, a State in Austria of 

 3886 square miles, with 525,000 

 population, to study American beekeep- 

 ing at the University State Farm, under 

 the supervision of Prof. Francis Jager. 

 Carniola is a country with mountains 

 rising to a height of 12,000 feet, the 

 sides of which are covered with fir and 

 deciduous leaf-bearing trees. For over 

 300 years the inhabitants (Slovenes or 

 Slavs) have given many thousands of 

 colonies, honey and wax as payment 

 for taxes. From that we can see how 

 educated were our grandfathers, by 

 steady work with the Carniolan tjees. 

 In 1769, Empress Maria Teresa, of 

 Austria-Hungary, took up bee-culture 

 and "appointed a Carniolan, Anton 

 Jansa, professor of beekeeping in 

 Vienna, making an appropriation of 

 $600 a year that he might spend his 

 entire time with the bees. 



Jansa lectured at the public gardens 

 in Vienna, also traveling around as an 

 extension man, giving methods of bee- 

 keeping as practiced in his native State. 

 It was something new to the people of 

 Vienna to see a Carniolan hive, as they 

 were using only straw hives. The 

 Vienna township had used his methods 

 and hives only three years when the 

 production of honey and wax in two 

 months' time was valued at $10,500 as 

 against $2000 or $3000 before. 



Jansa, himself, when he started in 

 1770 had only 16 colonies, and in two 

 years' time increased his apiary to 300 

 colonies. During this time he discov- 

 ered parthenogenesis and what we call 

 the McEvoy foulbrood treatment, writ- 

 ing many articles for publication of 

 this discovery. Not until a long time 

 afterwards did the professors and peo- 

 ple of Vienna believe in him. He dis- 

 covered the drone was the male bee. 



fertilizing the queen while on the wing, 

 and also that an unfertilized queen is 

 no better than an ordinary worker-bee, 

 laying only drones, while the ferti- 

 lized queen lays two kinds of eggs in 

 all the cells, unfertilized in the drone- 

 cells and the fertilized in the worker- 

 cells. 



Jansa published a book entitled 

 " Swarming," which was of great bene- 

 fit. Later, his second book, nearly com- 

 pleted at his death, was published by 

 one of his students. It is entitled, 

 "Complete Information on Beekeep- 

 ing." 



It is too bad that Anton Jansa is not 

 known among the American beekeep- 

 ers. The Austrian beekeepers call him 

 the first and Dzierzon the second great 

 man in bee history. 



All the beekeepers in Carniola have 

 bee-houses, about 60x20 feet, and about 

 12 feet high, built of logs with brick 

 foundations, the home of their bees for 

 summer and winter. For the winter 

 months these houses are provided with 

 curtains made of straw mats which roll 

 down on the outside, making the bee- 

 houses wind and snow proof. There is 

 very little packing done inside the bee- 

 house, which is kept at an even tem- 

 perature of about 50 degrees. 



The principal hives in use are the 

 Carniolan, measuring about 1600 cubic 

 inches, with movable frames. There 

 are a few box-hives. Many improved 

 hives are used for experiments. These 

 are the Vienna, Bohemian, all kinds of 

 German, and a few American hives. 



The principal honey flowers are the 

 red buckwheat, which gives nectar only 

 in the morning; red, white, blue, and 

 yellow clovers, basswood, dandelion, 

 which gives only pollen, blueberries, 

 wild and common chestnut, which pro- 

 duce very dark honey, and many others. 

 A pure Carniolan colony with a young 

 queen may harvest in a year from 200 to 

 300 pounds of honey. 



The extracted honey is put into bot- 

 tles, pails, and small barrels and is sold 

 at an average of 30 cents a pound. 

 Some is sold in the' combs, but the ex- 

 tracted honey brings a better price as 

 it is used a great deal in cooking. 



MODEL OF HONEY LABEL USED BY CARNIOLAN BEEKEEPERS 



