434 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



May 15 



" Besides all this, Mr. Brown, foul brood is 

 liable to break out, and we have no foul-brood 

 laws in our State." 



"Well, Mr. Fowls, here is my dollar for 

 membership. Glad you called my attention 

 to the matter ; and this point about foul brood 

 is important. We need to be in position to do 

 something in case it appears." 



Oberlin, Ohio. 



[Now that Michigan has recently passed a 

 foul-brood law, Ohio, on the border, ought to 

 follow suit. Our Ohio bee-keepers have talk- 

 ed over this matter a number of times, but so 

 far it has all ended in "talk." In the pic- 

 ture accompanying, the artist intended to 

 represent under the Ohio banner, beginning 

 at the left, Mr. Fowls, your humble servant, 

 and Dr. Mason. The man with a hammer in 

 his hand, behind the legislative anti-foul- 

 rood fence, is supposed to be N. E. France, 

 the father of effective foul-brood legislation. 

 No wonder he looks with complacency on 

 such scenes in Ohio •; and no wonder the poor 

 little chaps in Ohio are beginning to be 

 alarmed. But we must quit our "talking" 

 and get down to business, and that means to 

 see that our candidates before their nomina- 

 tion for the senate and legislature are favora- 

 ble to a bill like the Wisconsin measure, for 

 instance. I have already approached some of 

 the candidates for my own district and coun- 

 ty. Let's up and at 'em, now. — Eo.] 



YELLOW SWEET CLOVER. 



Some of Its Peculiarities. 



BY M. M. BALDRIDGE. 



I find from experience that sweet-clover 

 seed, no matter how fresh it is, is no excep- 

 tion to the general rule about certain seeds 

 germinating the first season. Only a part 

 germinates, and there may be several distinct 

 crops from one seeding. 



Dec. 2, 1897, I planted a row of yellow- 

 sweet-clover seed in my garden, in a shallow 

 trench, and then covered the seed from one to 

 two inches deep with soil. The seed was 

 fresh, having been gathered by me in July 

 the same year. In February or March follow- 

 ing, we had a week or so of very warm spring 

 weather, and a fine crop of plants came up. 

 A few days after, there was a big change in 

 the weather, and every sweet-clover plant was 

 killed by frost. In April or May following, 

 another crop of the plants made its appear- 

 ance ; and before the growing period ended 

 they were perhaps 2 feet high. In February 

 following (1898), the hard freeze destroyed 

 these plants — roots included — with just one 

 exception At one end of the row one soli- 

 tary stool of the plants survived, and they 

 made a fine growth, and also a good crop of 

 seed. This experiment thus far demonstrated 

 that the yellow sweet clover will sometimes 

 winterkill, and that the plant is a biennial, 

 the same as the white variety, and not an an- 

 nual, as some writer, whom I can not now re- 

 call, has claimed. This stool of plants was 



at the extreme north end of the row of the 

 seed I had planted in Dec, 1897. 



Well, there came up in the spring of 1899 

 another crop of plants the whole length of 

 that row, and from the same seed I planted in 

 Dec, 1897, and they also made a satisfactory 

 growth, being from 2 to 3 feet long before cold 

 weather set in. These plants came through 

 the winter in good condition, and in June, 

 1900, they were in full bloom quite early in 

 the month — from 3 to 4 weeks before the white 

 variety showed any blossoms. I think this 

 row of plants was just passing out of bloom 

 at the time Mr. A. I. Root visited this city and 

 made me a brief call. See Gleanings for 

 July 15, 1900, in Notes of Travel. 



The foregoing shows three distinct crops of 

 plants of the yellow sweet clover, and I know 

 that only one planting of the seed had ever 

 been made upon that plot of ground. As yet 

 I have seen no sign of the fourth crop of 

 plants, and do not expect to see it ; but it 

 would cause me no great surprise should it oc- 

 cur, for I am satisfied that the seed may re- 

 main in the soil for 20 years, more or less, and 

 then germinate and grow. And this fact may 

 explain why many who are not bee-keepers 

 have tried to exterminate sweet clover from 

 their premises, and have not succeeded. 



St. Charles, 111., Mar. 21. 



THE SWART H MORE SYSTEM OF QUEEN- 

 REARING. 



How to Prepare Small Nuclei: a Sim|)Ie and Ef- 

 fecti\ e Plan for Getting Oueens Fertilized. 



BY SWARTHMORE. 



A great deal has been written, said, and 

 done to simplify and cheapen methods for 

 cell-getting, until now queen-breeders have 

 about all that can be desired in an almost per- 

 fect system of cellwork, from the egg to the 

 mature queen, her care after hatching, and all 

 that. But cell-getting is not the expensive 

 part of queen-rearing ; in fact, it does not rep- 

 resent an eighth part of the work connected 

 with the securing of a laying queen, ready for 

 posting to the customer far or near. 



The ^r^a/ expense in queen-rearing is that 

 necessary for the proper fertilization of the 

 young queens after they are reared. The 

 queen-breeder, heretofore, has been obliged to 

 tear asunder large numbers of full colonies to 

 form nuclei of a frame or two each to receive 

 the young queens, each in a separate colony 

 for mating purposes only. 



Now, all this is expensive — not alone in 

 bees but in time, labor, care, and a hundred 

 other ways. Full colonies are ruined, and all 

 revenue from bees thus treated is entirely cut 

 off until a laying queen is secured, sold, caged, 

 and mailed. All this woeful waste has set me 

 to thinking about a plan of operation to lessen 

 the expense and labor in queen-rearing at the 

 mating period. 



Some years ago I succeeded in mating a 

 number of queens from 4^X4^4 section box- 

 es, each supplied with a teacupful of bees ; 

 but not until the past .season have I been able 

 to say that I have discovered a practical meth- 



