1917 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



231 



the orange blossoms opened, the end of 

 March, the colonies with 12 to 25 frames 

 of brood, had not a drop of syrup, and 

 they would have starved to death had 

 not the orange blossoms been there. 



As Jaffa was dry all summer, we car- 

 ried the bees on camelback trains to the 

 plain of Sharon and the mountains of 

 of Judah, stopping two or three times, 

 for a few weeks at a time, at the princi- 

 pal honey resources. Cactus flowers, 

 agnus cactus, lavender, and finally 

 thyme, grow in succession from May 

 to September. Feeding was there- 

 fore only necessary in February and 

 March at Jaffa, and we always wintered 

 our bees on pure honey. Many years 

 later we learned that English beekeep- 

 ers preferred cane sugar, and explained 

 the absolute superiority of this sugar in 

 the columns of the British Bee Journal. 



I have used sugar since I lived in 

 France, for many years, and have never 



terval the bees completed the l:( comlis. 



From Aug. 13 to Sept. 11, I fed thera 

 2S'A pounds, $2.85. They built eight 

 complete combs. 



August 14 I took away nine complete 

 frames, of which four contained bees, 

 which I put into nuclei to rear queens. 



August 27 I took four frames of brood 

 for nucleus. September 11 I took four 

 frames for nucleus. From Sept. 17 to 

 Oct. 8 I fed them 7 pounds of sugar, 60 

 cents worth. They again built six com- 

 plete frames of comb. 



September 23 I took again from the 

 old stock two frames of brood, and on 

 Sept. 27 five more frames of brood for 

 the nuclei, and from Oct. 9 to 10, I fed 

 them I'/i pounds of sugar, 15 cents. 



October 13 I took again one frame of 

 brood, and on the I'Jth three more 

 frames. In all I fed 60J4 pounds of 

 sugar, or $5 80. 



They went into winter quarters with 



WHERE MY NEIGHBOR TAKES THE MORNING AIR 



had occasion to test which kind is 

 actually superior, simply I suppose be- 

 cause beet sugar is mostly produced in 

 Europe, perhaps England excepted. 

 France has its cane producing colonies 

 which help it a little, but the greatest 

 production is beet sugar all over our 

 continent. When beet sugar fails in 

 years of dearth, as in 1910-11, the 

 smaller cane sugar productions of 

 Cuba, etc., can not help to keep the 

 prices at the general level in normal 

 times. 



Since the war our sugar factories 

 have mostly been destroyed or in the 

 hands of the enemy, being in the beet 

 regions of northern France,and no won- 

 der if we use cane sugar now. But we 

 have just enough for human use, and the 

 bees must wait until everything is in 

 order again to receive their share, if 

 they want any. 



A few years ago I had a colony of 

 bees in a shed right in the middle of 

 the town of Nice, and as my bees were 

 all at the mountains, I resolved to keep 

 this one and feed it, if necessary, on 

 sugar during the long and dry summer 

 months. I gave the colony 13 frames 

 containing only one-half starters. 



From July 10 to Aug. 7, I fed them 

 23}4 pounds of sugar, $2.20, In this in- 



three small colonies which had two 

 frames built full without foundation, 

 and all with worker-cells. There was 

 not a flower extant, some very rare pol- 

 len, gathered from gardens. So much 

 for my experience with sugar and its 

 effect on bees. 

 Nice, France. 



My Neighor's Garden 



BY C. D. STU.^RT. 



BEES are no respectors of persons. 

 When raiding the possessions of 

 my neighbors for nectar, the rich 

 and exclusive are visited with the same 

 assurance as are the work-a day folk, 

 and even more persistently, owing to 

 the greater variety of flowers a special, 

 high-priced gardener can produce over 

 the few plants and shrubs a business 

 man is able to keep alive by casual. 

 afterofBce-hours sprinklings. 



But the important consideration is 

 not the familiar attitude assumed by 

 my bees toward the neighbors, but the 

 attitude my neighbors and I are able to 

 maintain toward one another, despite 

 the disturbing circumstance of my 

 possessing live stock that can neither 



be cooped up, fenced in, tethered, nor 

 hobbled. 



And one particular neighbor is pos- 

 sessed by a fear of bees that even his 

 abiding faith in the protection of the 

 All-Wise can neither overcome nor 

 allay. Not even his best friends can 

 explain this fear. He is obsessed by 

 it. He once had presented to him a 

 hive of gentle Italian bees. They had 

 never stung him. yet he could not be 

 induced to approach them — not even to 

 replace the hive cover that had lilown 

 off during a rain storm. The timely 

 visit of a friend saved the colony from 

 a watery grave, and the bees were im- 

 mediately handed over to the rescuer 

 by a grateful and greatly relieved owner 

 as an appreciation of heroism. 



My neighbor's garden is under the 

 care of an expert, whose sole duty ap- 

 parently is to provide pasturage for 

 our bees, since he cultivates honey- 

 producing flora to a greater extent than 

 any other gardener within bee-range. 

 My neighbor's home is on a beautiful 

 eminence. My bees are situated in an 

 out apiary in the gulch just below, 

 where they can mount, unburdened, 

 and volplane back with their cargoe?. 

 As the season advanced, I became 

 aware of the unhappy mental condition 

 of my neighbor. No matter in what 

 section of his g:arden he chose to take 

 the morning air, ray bees were there 

 to welcome him; if he would sprinkle 

 the lawn or water the shrubbery, there 

 were the bees clustered on hose and 

 f.iucet; or, if he would inhale the fra- 

 grance of the filbert bloom— a low tree 

 that in February puts out catkins simi- 

 lar to those of the pussy willow— a 

 startled bee would graze the tip of his 

 nose. 



Nor was the nuisance, like the gnat 

 or the mosquito, confined to any par- 

 ticular season. My neighbor's shrubs 

 and plants, which numbered into the 

 thousands, had been gathered from all 

 lands and climes, for the sole purpose 

 of proving, to those of Missouri extrac- 

 tion, that anything will grow in Cali- 

 fornia; and at all seasons, barring un- 

 favorable weather, my bees, in true cos- 

 mopolitan fashion, were up and at my 

 neighbor's nectar, both foreign and 

 domestic — the wistaria from Japan, 

 Americanized to " wisteria"; the cat- 

 alpa from the East Indies; and the 

 algaroba, which, although a native of 

 the Mediterranean region, came to my 

 neighbor's enclosure from Oahu, one 

 of the Hawaiian Islands, a seed from a 

 Paris garden having been planted there 

 years ago by Father Batchelot, and 

 which has developed into the same tree 

 known in certain portions of our coun- 

 try as mesquite. 



But even that is not all. If my neigh- 

 bor essayed to reduce his waist line, by 

 a turn at tennis, a bee would fly at him 

 from each of the Cherokee roses that 

 interlace the wire enclosing the court; 

 or, in his daily pacing to and fro be- 

 neath the pergola, the humming of the 

 bees gathering pollen from the passion 

 vine blossoms overhead would disturb 

 his lofty solitude; or, in the hammock, 

 swinging just inside a hedge of cytisus 

 proliferis, or Canary Island broom, a 

 honey tree of great value, Lethe could 

 neither be wooed nor won ; and the 

 rustic chair beneath the oak from 

 whose glossy leaves my bees garner 

 the honeydew, now appeals in vain to 

 its erstwhile occupant. And what dia- 

 bolical. .fancy, could it be that caused 



