1901 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



975 



to death without a supplj' of hone}' already 

 in the hive. I immediately began to mea- 

 sure the tong-ues of its bees, and I was not 

 a little gratified to see that these same bees 

 had longer tongue-reach than those that 

 were inclined to rob at the same time. 

 Fearing that I might have made a mistake 

 I had one of our men do some measuring, 

 and his observations were the same as 

 mine. I then began to think that there 

 might be something in long tongues. We 

 called for reports. A few came in, that for 

 the time being seemed to confirm the theory, 

 but the}' really proved nothing. We asked 

 for more reports, but they have not come in. 

 As I have already said, no sicbsfaiiticrl 

 proof has been advanced that long tongues 

 are in proportion to the honej' j'ield, and so 

 far there is onl}' a theoretical advantage. 

 And now that two seasons have gone by, it 

 is but fair to say that the proof is still 

 lacking, either because of the apathy of 

 bee-keepers to report or because there is no 

 real direct relation between the two. But 

 the value of our red -clover queen under con- 

 sideration we considered rested not on the 

 length of the tongues of her bees, but on 

 the fact that they gathered honey from red 

 clover when other bees were idle; and her 

 daughters were sold because the mothers' 

 bees gathered honey in excess of other col- 

 onies; and I believe that those who are 

 advertising long-tongued stock are really 

 placing more stress on their honey-gather- 

 ing qualities, and not because they may 

 have long tongues as compared with other 

 bees in the yard. 



Mr. Miller is strictly correct in saying 

 that it will take years to stretch the tongues 

 of our present varieties. But in the mean 

 time let us concentrate our efforts toward 

 breeding bees for business. If we get long 

 tongues, well and good; but let us not go 

 so far as to concentrate all our energies on 

 yellow bands or long tongues, or some 

 other feature that_ of itself amounts to 

 nothing. — Ed.] 



A Big 



THE SEASON OF 1901. 



Honey=flow for our Big Friend 

 Tongues and Honeygathering. 



BY G. M. DOOLITTLE. 



Long 



I commenced to keep bees in the spring 

 of 1869, so have been in the bee-keeping bus- 

 iness for nearly 3>Z years. During those 

 years we have had many peculiar seasons, 

 but none so much so as that of 1901 ; there- 

 fore I thought the readers of Gleanings 

 might like to know something about it. 



We have been in the habit, of late, of lay- 

 ing considerable stress on location, which 

 was right and proper ; bvit the bee-keeper 

 who fails to realize that seasons are not 

 alike, and so conforms to set rules of work- 

 ing, expecting that the same rule will work 

 the same result each season, if applied to 

 the same locality, will find that success 



will not alwaj-s follow such a course. The 

 successful apiarist must keep an eye out for 

 all the little and big kinks which often 

 come up in the business, so as to turn each 

 and every thing to the best advantage, leav- 

 ing no stone unturned which will allow of 

 a pound of honey being obtained which 

 would otherwise have gone to waste by not 

 being treasured in the hive, and, finally, 

 into some of the necessities or luxuries of 

 home life for himself and famil}'. These 

 thoughts suggest themselves from the fact 

 that a honey-flow came so suddenly from 

 an unexpected source this season that Doo- 

 little came very near being caught with his 

 " porridge-dish bottom side up," last June. 

 The bees were set from the cellars about 

 the middle of April ; but the weather was 

 so bad for the next two weeks that it seem- 

 ed that the results would have been better 

 had they been left in the cellar till May 1. 

 High winds, with mostly cool, cloudy weath- 

 er, prevailed all through the last half of 

 April, 3'et there would often come a few 

 minutes of sunshine, by the sun's peeking 

 out through some rift in the clouds, when 

 the bees would go out in search of water 

 and early pollen, only to get lost by the 

 clouds going over the sun again. With 

 May came nice weather for the bees, and 

 they went to brooding with a will, as plenty 

 of pollen was to be obtained from the differ- 

 ent early pollen-bearers, while early honey 

 came in from the willows and soft and hard 

 maple. Then it came on to rain, and it did 

 rain most of the time for nearly or quite a 

 month, being cool withal the most of the 

 time, so that, in spite of all I could do by 

 way of feeding or coaxing, brood-rearing 

 stopped pretty much entirely in all colonies, 

 the "pretty much" being at the out-apiary, 

 and the " entirely " here at home. I was 

 so eager about this brood matter, as brood 

 at this time meant workers in the basswood- 

 honey harvest, that, before I was hardly 

 aware of it, the red clover, standing on the 

 hundreds of acres in this locality, com- 

 menced to assume a pinkish hue, and then 

 turn red, something not known for nearly 

 or quite 20 years, owing to a midge working 

 in the head, thus blighting the buds just 

 before the blossoms opened, so that we had 

 neither blossoms nor seed in these parts for 

 that length of time. 



At about the same time the rain ceased, 

 the skies' cleared ofT, and the weather be- 

 came warm, and then hot — so hot it could 

 hardly be endured by humanity from June 

 20 to July 10. June 15th I stopped feeding, 

 and on the I7th I thought it would be best 

 to take the feeders off, some of which were 

 placed on the hives in extra-surplus ar- 

 rangements. When I came to the first of 

 these surplus arrangements I found the bees 

 in there building comb with a little thin 

 nectar in the cells, the sight of which stim- 

 ulated me to greater activity, if possible, 

 than that manifested by the bees. Feeders 

 were rushed off, and the supers, filled with 

 sections, rushed on, so that the night of the 

 18th found every thing in readiness for the 



