976 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Dec. 15 



harvest, which, by the 20th, was coming- in 

 at a good basswood rate, only that the nec- 

 tar from clover is much thinner than that 

 from basswood. Had I not had every thing 

 in readiness to set right on the hives (the 

 surplus arrangements being all filled during 

 the winter with sections having foundation 

 and baits in them) I should have lost much 

 from this rush of nectar coming on so rapid- 

 ly from an unexpected source. The red 

 clover continued in bloom from June 15 till 

 nearly August 1, that giving nectar in June 

 and the first third of July being mostly 

 from the small kind, while, beginning with 

 July 10, the mammoth kind gave the most, 

 the j'ield from each being curtailed to quite 

 an extent, as field after field was cut for 

 hay. Basswood yielded fairly well, but 

 the yield from this was mixed with the clo- 

 ver yield, so that it was impossible to tell 

 just what the basswood yield would have 

 been had no clover been in bloom. 



With August came a dearth of honey 

 which lasted till about the middle of that 

 month, when buckwheat began to yield 

 very moderately, and continued thus for 

 about two weeks, when the season for 1901 

 was over, so far as honey was concerned. 

 The larger number of colonies in each api- 

 ;ry were heavily drawn on for queen-rear- 

 ing, those at the out-apiary to supply bees 

 for nuclei, and those at home by having 

 their queens taken from thein to supply ear- 

 ]y orders, so that I can not tell what the 

 yield from the whole would have been had 

 these colonies not been robbed in this wa}^ 

 From the few colonies which were not drawn 

 on in this WRy I obtained an average yield 

 per colony of 180 lbs. of section honey, here 

 at the home yard, and about 175 at the out- 

 apiary, this being the highest average yield 

 of any year in my bee-keeping history. 

 The best before was in 1877, when the aver- 

 age yield was 166| pounds per colony. 

 But in 1877 a small part was extracted hon- 

 ey, while this year I extracted none. 



Having the results at mj' command, and 

 seeing that Prof. Gillette, of the Colorado 

 Experiment Station, desired bees for the 

 purpose of measuring their tongues, I sent 

 him 12 bees from each of four colonies, num- 

 bering them as 1, 2, 3, and 4. No. 1 was 

 from my old honey-gathering stock, which 

 I have been about 30 years in trying to per- 

 fect. No. 2 was from a queen I got by way 

 of exchange in 1900; No. 3 was from a gold- 

 en breeder, and No. 4 was from a queen of 

 the long-tongued stock introduced April 29, 

 1901. 



Colony 1 gave 261 completed one-pound 

 sections, 21 partly filled, and had about 42 

 lbs. in their hive October 1 for wintering, 

 or about 317 lbs., all told. 



Colony 2 gave 44 poorly filled sections, 

 and had 12 lbs. in the hive October 1, or 

 about 54 lbs. in nU. 



Colony 3 gave 68 completed sections, and 

 had 37 pounds in the hive October 1, or 105 

 lbs. in all. But this colony was drawn on 

 for brood for queen-rearing several times a 

 wee!: drrin"- the whole of the season, so it 



would be impossible to tell just what it 

 would have done had it been otherwise. 



Colony 4 gave 65 sections and had 28 lbs. 

 for winter. The result of Prof. Gillette's 

 measurements is as follows: No. 1 gave an 

 average tongue-length of 25.4 hundredths of 

 an inch; No. 2, 25.6; No. 3, 25.6; and No. 

 4, 25.8. From these measurements it will 

 be seen that the bees from the long-tongued 

 stock really had the longest tongues by 

 four-tenths of a hundredth of an inch over 

 No. 1. It will also be seen that the colony 

 having the shortest tongues gave more hon- 

 ey by 65 pounds than all of the other three 

 colonies, having longer tongues, combined. 

 All were worked as nearly alike as possi- 

 ble, with the exceptions noted. 



It may be claimed that all these colonies 

 gave bees with unusuallj' long tongues. 

 This may be so; but it does >iof prove that 

 the gathering was in proportion to the 

 length of tongue. 



On page 401, May 1, 1901. I see a proposi- 

 tion to send the measurements of tongues 

 from both good and poor workers to Dr. 

 Miller, so he could tabulate a report of the 

 same. I have been looking anxiously for 

 that report; but if it has been given I have 

 failed to see it. When Rambler reads the 

 above he inay feel dift'erent from what he 

 did when he wrote on " back numbers " on 

 page 745. No, nc. Rambler; Doolittle al- 

 ways rejoices when one brings out some- 

 thing ahead of what has been done in the 

 past, and never thinks of "whacking" 

 back because some one has been enabled to 

 give an advanced thought on something he 

 has dug out. I have been experimenting 

 and writing these 30 years only that I 

 might be of some little help to the bee-keep- 

 ing world; and to the one who is thus work- 

 ing, improvements which sltq i eal are al- 

 ways a cause for rejoicing. True Chris- 

 tianit}^ consists, in part, according to the 

 Bible, in making the world better for hav- 

 ing lived in it. 



[A partial answer to this is given in the 

 answer to Mr. Miller, just preceding. In 

 the record of j'our four colonies, the mea- 

 surements of the tongues are so nearly 

 alike that reallj' there is no diff"erence, at 

 least for practical purposes — that is, honey 

 production. Between the bees in No. 1 and 

 those in No. 4 there is only th^oit- This is 

 so infinitesimal that it counts for nothing. 

 If, however, No. 1 showed a tongue-reach 

 of iVo and No. 4 iVn or f^^',, then there would 

 be a decided variation. It is evident, how- 

 ever, that colony No. 1 did not produce the 

 317 lbs. of honej', all told, because its bees 

 had longer tongues than those of the others. 

 Its honey-gathering qualities were depen- 

 dent on some other characteristic or combi- 

 nation of them. Prof. Gillette's figures 

 show tongue lc}is:th. Now, it may be that 

 the actual tongue reach was much greater 

 in the colony that produced the largest 

 amount of honey than in the others. You 

 will remember I have drawn a distinction 

 between tongue reach and tongue length. — 

 Ed.1 



