230 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



July 



of these little flies, the frames covered 

 with webs and the larvae all dead. 



I put one of the dead larvse under 

 the microscope and found on it many 

 nests of tiny oblong pupae near the 

 legs of the larva. Investigating the re- 

 fuse on the bottom of the hive, the flies 

 seemed to be hatching and flying up 

 whilst I looked. I then began to look 

 through the mating nuclei which con- 

 tained frames from last summer's 

 queen-rearing, and found that a few of 

 them which showed traces of the bee- 

 moth also had a number of these flies 

 present with larvse all dead. 



This fly belonging to the family of 

 Hymenoptera, probably Dibrachys clis- 

 iocamfcE is a parasite which lays its 

 eggs in the larva or pupa of the bee- 

 moth, which after hatching feed on the 

 larva and kill it. 



In daytime these flies like the sun- 

 shine and come out on the windows by 

 thousands. At night they return to 

 the hives where small holes permitthem 

 to enter and lay their eggs. 



The thought occurred to me that 

 this matter might be investigated and 

 these flies bred for distribution among 

 beekeepers who are troubled with 

 moths, as a means of destroying this 

 pest. 



University Farm, St. Paul, Minn. 

 ■ I ■ 



Value of Sugar as Food for 

 Bees 



BY PH. J. BALDENSPERGER. 



THE following article from the pen 

 of our old friend Ph. J. Balden- 

 sperger, will interest our readers, 

 concerning both the value of sugar as 

 bee-food in times of dearth and the ex- 

 perience of a veteran in handling hun- 

 dreds of colonies of bees in Syria and 

 the Holy Land, a country similar in its 

 honey resources to our arid southwest- 

 ern States. Mr. Baldensperger who 

 speaks and writes several languages 

 fluently, is now located in southern 

 France, at Nice. 



On page 88, March, 1917, the question 

 about "Cane z/s. Beet Sugar" is dis- 

 cussed. This question has interested 

 me in so far as I have been feeding 

 sugar in years of dearth or simply as 

 stimulative food for the past 37 years. 

 When we began modern beekeeping 

 in 1880, we had very nearly 30 years of 

 experience with bees, in the old fash- 

 ion, but then only did we begin to work 

 really with bees in the frame hive. 

 Jerusalem is a dry place, indeed ; the 

 old Canaanite name Jebus, is very simi- 

 lar to Yabes, the modern Arabic for 

 dry or hard. When we really started, 

 we went headlong into the business, 

 and as beginners, did not wait for the 

 right moment, which would best suit 

 the bees, but we seized on the moment 

 when it seized us. Our first expense 

 was sugar. We made hives with old 

 boards, as D. A. Jones, of Beeton, Can- 

 ada, then in Jerusalem, showed us, and 

 fed the bees as the same gentleman fed 

 his bees to carry them with him to 

 .'\merica. 



In those days the hogshead of sugar 

 was just disappearing, and was replaced 

 by loaf sugar and sugar dust of the 

 consistency of earth and small pebbles. 

 Sugar was then taken with a spoon, 



the pebbles and sugar dust used in the 

 coffee or tea. The sugar sacks sold 

 then, weighed about 180 pounds each, 

 and the Arabic shepherd called an 

 Attal, carried such a sack on his back 

 from the shop inside the walls, to our 

 school-house on Triori outside the 

 walls, a little over a mile distant. Cars, 

 wheelbarrows and the like were abso- 

 lutely unknown; there were donkies 

 to carry heavy loads; but I think the 

 shopkeepers who paid a strong man 

 about a beshlik a day, which corres- 

 ponds to about ten American cents, 

 found human labor cheaper. 



The sugar sack weighing about 180 

 pounds cost about 15 piasters the 

 sottel, so the pound of sugar was worth 

 about 10 cents. We did not know 

 whether the sugar was cane or beet; all 

 we knew was that it came from Mar- 

 seilles. I began feeding the co'onies 

 with sugar, simply, because sugar was 

 the only sweet to be found, though we 

 lived in the " land flowing with milk 

 and honey." The dibs of the Arabs and 

 dabsh of the Hebrews was made of 

 grape syrup boiled to such a consis- 

 tency as to hinder fermentation for 

 half a year, that is from October to 

 March. Honey was no current article 

 in the Jerusalem market, and that is 

 why we used sugar. Bees developed 

 verv well on this food. We had heard 



last century, was 6 degrees C. (43 de- 

 grees F.) in the early morning on a 

 January day. There were a few almond 

 trees in blossom, but they did not give 

 sufficient honey to stimulate brood- 

 rearing worth while. Pollen was to 

 be had on daisies and the like. A Ger- 

 man beekeeper living in the German 

 colony north of Jaffa, often complained 

 of this lack of flowers just before the 

 enormous honey flow, and his bees 

 were never ready in time, as he disliked 

 to feed or shrunk before the expense. 



We usually fed the bees every eve- 

 ning from about Feb. 25 to March 25, 

 or even to the beginning of April, 

 pouring the prepared syrup into each 

 hive, either by tne flying hole or from 

 the top. It took us hours to pour in 

 the feed to several hundred hives daily. 

 We were generally two at the same 

 hive, one to handle the syrup, the other 

 to smoke the bees. We began with not 

 over one-sixth of a pound the first day, 

 and for a week at the same rate, then 

 increasing the portion until we reached 

 a pound or more daily, as the colony 

 showed progress. I have been told that 

 sugar degenerated the bees, was a cause 

 of foulbrood, and other nonsense, but 

 I have continued feeding in time of 

 need here in the Alps of southern 

 France as well. 



Well-fed bees, provided they had a 



s^-YJf'S. 



»x ^^ 



V ' 



fVSD,Y NATURE NOT BOQK^^-' 



SMALL HYMENOPTERA THAT FEED UPON THE LARV.E OF THE BEE- 

 MOTH— (See the contribution by Mr. Roiina) 



about artificial pollen, pea meal, flour, 

 etc., and threw a little in or about the 

 hives, but bees never troubled very 

 much about this, and in all my later 

 experience I used sugar, preferring it 

 to honey, excepting when our own 

 honey flow was so great that we found 

 no ready market for it. Pollen was 

 largely provided by nature everywhere 

 when it was wanted. 



When we began pastoral beekeeping, 

 carrying the hives from Jerusalem to 

 Jaffa, and vice ;'ersa, we usually fed the 

 bees on large quantities of sugar, which 

 often arrived at Jaffa after a tempestu- 

 ous sea voyage, somewhat washed over 

 by the salty waves. The merchants 

 at that time offered us the damaged 

 sugar at about half its usual price. The 

 German shopbroker called it " Havari 

 sugar," which we found later to be a 

 corruption of the French "sucre ava- 

 rie" (damaged sugar). 



The orange blossoms suddenly burst 

 into bloom about the beginning of 

 April, andhoney flowed in atthe rate of 

 2 to 20 pounds a day per hive. We had 

 to stimulate the bees, beginning the 

 middle of February, as the climate of 

 Jaffa is very moderate. The coldest 

 day I registered in the eighties of the 



vigorous mother and workers enough 

 to pull the colony through five or six 

 weeks of dearth to the doors of abun- 

 dance, always largely paid for the ex- 

 penses, and were as fierce as any bee- 

 keeper can imagine. As far as degen- 

 erence goes, the result of such degen- 

 erate bees by sugar feeding was an 

 income of anything between 50 and 180 

 pounds per hive, with an average of 

 about 120 pounds or over. The num- 

 ber of hives were often between 400 

 and 500. I heard a maitre in apiculture 

 of our region criticize my observa- 

 tions because he thought I worked with 

 one-half dozen hives on Sunday after- 

 noons only, as he himself practiced his 

 apiculture. As for sugar infusing foul- 

 brood or preparing bees to receive it, 

 my long experience in Palestine has 

 shown me that foulbrood never ap- 

 peared simply because the bacilli were 

 not present. 



Again, it was objected that the 

 sugar would contribute to adulterate 

 the honey, but those who tried to hit 

 at that did not reflect that food is given 

 to the bees to stimulate them when 

 there is not a drop to be found, and 

 how could the syrup consumed, not 

 stored, affect the honey ? Just before 



