1917 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



201 



mentary committee upon whose recom- 

 mendation the Experimental Farms 

 were established appeared to demon- 

 strate that defective and wasteful farm- 

 ing was the cause of the agricultural 

 depression prevalent at that time, and 

 that there was need of the discovery 

 and application of more scientific 

 methods. 



For conducting the necessary experi- 

 ments, there are, in addition to the 

 Central Experimental Farm at Ottawa, 

 some 20 branch farms and stations 

 scattered throughout the Dominion. 

 At five of these bees were kept when I 

 was appointed four years ago, and one 

 of my first cares was to see that these 

 apiaries were as well managed as pos- 

 sible, and to find out what practical 

 information of value to local beekeep- 

 ers could be obtained from them. The 

 task had certain difficulties. The api- 

 aries were not large enough to employ 

 a man's whole time, and often we have 

 had to train others. At the present 

 time bees are being kept on 15 of the 

 Dominion Experimental Farms includ- 

 ing Ottawa, and reports made out three 

 times a year of the progress of the api- 

 aries are filed. In the summer report 

 we have.amongst other things, the daily 

 gain and loss of a hive on scales with 

 the meteorological conditions and 

 honey plants in flower at the time. 

 This year a weekly report during the 

 summer has been started with its prin- 

 cipal object the control of swarming. 



The work has demonstrated that it 

 takes at least two years for the average 

 man to become even a fair beekeeper. 

 It has also shown that successful bee- 

 keeping, that is, beekeeping resulting 

 in large and profitable yields of honey, 

 depends on three main conditions: 

 (1) The presence in abundance of nec- 

 tar - secreting flowers, (2) favorable 

 weather for the development of the 

 plants and the secretion and ingather- 

 ing of the nectar and (3) good man- 

 agement of the bees. The first two — 

 honey plants and weather — are the local 

 conditions, and it depends upon them, 

 in a word upon locality, whether a good 

 beekeeper will get a yearly average of, 

 say, 50 pounds of extracted honey or 

 100 pounds. This is a very important 

 consideration to the professional bee- 

 keeper. 



It would, of course, be impossible to 

 investigate in detail the whole subject 

 of productive beekeeping thus out- 

 lined ; it would also be unnecessary. 

 Many bee problems common to all 

 countries are being ably investigated 

 by trained men in the United States 

 and elsewhere, and I have felt it my 

 duty to study first those that are essen- 

 tially Canadian. Occupying as our 

 country does almost the whole of the 

 northern part of North America, many 

 conditions are found in the Dominion 

 that are not dealt with in any text- 

 book on beekeeping. Chief among 

 these conditions are the honey plants 

 found in different parts of Canada and 

 their value particularly in relation to 

 the weather, and two problems in bee 

 management, wintering and the con- 

 trol of swarming. 



I selected these two problems in 

 management because they are the 

 cause of much trouble and loss in Can- 

 ada, and are the most difficult to deal 

 with. Sixty percent loss of bees (not 

 colonies) in winter is not rare, and of 

 swarming it may be said that this fac- 

 tor more than any other limits the 



number of colonies a man can keep. 

 Besides, both problems are especially 

 acute and present special phases in 

 Canada. Our winters are cold and 

 long, and the rapid change from severe 

 winter to our long and glorious sum- 

 mer days brings with it an excessive 

 tendency to swarm unknown in tne 

 tropics where every day is much alike. 



Not much can be said aljout our ex- 

 periments in wintering and swarm con- 

 trol because they have only been re- 

 cently begun. In regard to wintering, 

 the losses in apiaries around Ottawa 

 during the past two years have been 

 quite heavy, and the cause ascertained 

 to be unwholesome and granulated 

 stores, aggravated in many cellars Ijy 

 excessive dryness, in many cases caus- 

 ing a heavy consumption of stores, 20 

 to 25 pounds per colony, and rapid 

 mortality. This investigation has 

 drawn attention to the fact that our 

 winters are very dry, and that in a dry 

 cellar the stores will gradually dry up 

 and the bees may suffer severely for 

 want of water. It has also shown that 

 where stores are likely to prove un- 

 wholesome, allowance must be made 

 for a heavy consumption amounting 

 possibly to more than double the usual 

 consumption of wholesome stores. In 

 order to discover the source or sources 

 of the unwholesome honey, colonies 

 are being wintered on stores gathered 

 at three different seasons ; first period, 

 June 26th to July 18th, the stores in this 

 case consisting of clover honey; sec- 

 ond period, July 24th to Aug. 8th, 

 stores consisting largely of sweet 

 clover honey; third period, Aug. 14th 

 to Sept. 11th, honey from goldenrod, 

 aster, buckwheat, sweet clover and 

 other sources. 



To study the effect of varying de- 

 grees of humidity on bees wintered on 

 these different stores, some of the col- 

 onies will be wintered in a dry cellar 

 and others in a moist one in our new 

 apicultural building, which was occu- 

 pied on Feb. 11th last. Following a 

 method adopted with success at the 

 end of last winter, each colony is be- 

 ing supplied with an empty shallow 

 chamber between the brood-chamber 

 and floor, and paper trays are to be 

 slipped in over the floor and removed 

 at fixed intervals to estimate the rate 

 of mortality of the bees. By making 

 daily observations on the rate of mor- 

 tality last winter in this way, it was 

 definitely ascertained that the supply- 

 ing of water to the bees in the cellar 

 reduced the mortality. 



Some colonies have been wintered 

 outside during the last four winters. 

 A smaller proportion of these have 

 died in winter, and the living colonies 

 have come out stronger and, protected 

 by the packing, have built up faster in 

 spring than the colonies wintered in 

 the cellar. 



The problem of the control of swarm- 

 ing can be attacked in two ways, by 

 endeavoring to breed a non-swarming 

 bee and by manipulation. The former 

 looks attractive, but needs close atten- 

 tion, requiring more than I feel justi- 

 fied in spending on it at present. Pre- 

 liminary experiments in the latter, ma- 

 nipulation method, were undertaken in 

 the apiary at Ottawa this year with the 

 result that the expanding of the brood- 

 nest so as to reduce the congestion of 

 young bees and give the queen more 

 room to lay was not found to be so 

 efficacious in preventing the building 



of queen -cells in preparation for swarm- 

 ing as was hoped, although it had a 

 certain effect. Cutting out queen-cell's 

 every week is apparently necessary un- 

 der the conditions we encountered this 

 year at Ottawa. Even this measure, 

 however, had its efficiency much re- 

 duced by two things, the frequent 

 building of queen-cells from worker 

 larvie and the frequent issue of the 

 swarm before the queen-cells were 

 capped over. A strong desire to 

 swarm had developed in the majority 

 of the colonies in the apiary, and this 

 desire spread to nearly all the other 

 colonies and continued while favorable 

 conditions lasted, rendering the usual 

 methods of preventing swarming of 

 little use. These were conditions in 

 which the treatment of making arti- 

 ficial swarms or hiving natural swarms 

 on the parent stands was indicated. 



But the principal subject upon which 

 I wish to speak today is locality, in par- 

 ticular the quantity and quality of the 

 crops of honey obtainable in different 

 parts of Canada and the principal fac- 

 tors that controlthe yield, honey plants 

 and weather. 



Ottawa, Ont. 



[To be continued! 



Some Bee History 



BY H. B. PARKS, BIOLOGIST. 



DURING the period in which the 

 United States was recovering 

 from that struggle that gave to 

 her independence, a few adventurous 

 Russians under the leadership of Count 

 Baranoff, took possession of Alaska 

 and founded colonies to the far North- 

 west. The Russians in America be- 

 came the source of wealth for the 

 home land, the exploit ground for the 

 adventurer, and a safe harbor for the 

 exile. With the colonies came the 

 priests and monks of the Greek church. 

 As these came from the barren steppes 

 of Siberia, where every available source 

 of food must be utilized, they were well 

 fitted to become the pioneer teachers 

 of Alaska. 



These pious fathers brought with 

 them from the fields of Kazan a double- 

 walled straw skep and its hord of toil- 

 ers. Here along the Gulf of Alaska in 

 the heart of Seward's Ice Berg, the 

 honeybee started to work in 1809, and 

 today in Sitka and other old Russian 

 towns in Alaska are the sturdy descend- 

 ants of this hive. 



The flower season of southeastern 

 Alaska is of good length, and because 

 of the abundant rainfall the flowers are 

 mostly insect pollinated, so that the 

 bee has the nectar supply. But it rains, 

 it rains and then pours, and the brave 

 little worker dodges the drops and gets 

 his store of sweets. The flowers are 

 mostly pendulous and the nectar secre- 

 tion great. The native bees are covered 

 with a rough hairy coat and pay little 

 attention to the rain. It is a peculiar 

 sight to the beekeeper from the States, 

 where the bees are inactive during 

 showers, to see these Alaskans under 

 the cover of the leaves gathering their 

 loads and then during a lull in the 

 storm go to the hive. Because of the 

 damp and rainfall mos t of the hives are 

 located on shelves under broad eaves 

 or in open garrets. 



Early the priests imported a clover 

 resembling white clover for a bee pas- 



