20 



January, 1915. 



American Vae Journal 



vent all side play, while the cleats on 

 the fences themselves space in such a 

 way that the sections are all held a 

 bee space apart. 



I submit the above hoping it may be 

 a help to some one, as a little lumber 

 can generally be found and cut up 

 whereas we often dislike to cut up a 

 five dollar bill for a lot of new supplies 

 which may never be used again. 



Elgin, 111. 



Sweet Clover Bloat 



BY .A. F. BONNEV. 



THE following letter from Mr. Aid- 

 rich is not a surprise to me, while 

 I had nothing to lead up to the 

 article he alludes to, sav r my inherent 

 doubt of what everybody believes: 



"I have just read your article in the 

 October issue of the American Bee 

 Journal, and notice what you say re- 

 garding sweet clover. You say we do 

 not know that it will not bloat cattle. 

 The fact is it will to such an extent as 

 to kill them, under certain conditions. 

 A few years ago I had a 40-acre field 

 of sweet clover pasture, and during the 

 month of May lost a very fine 2-year 

 old heifer from sweet clover bloat. 

 Day after day the bunch was driven 

 to the lot about 9 or 10 o'clock a.m. 

 and fed on old hay and other ways 

 fussed with until their sides would 

 come down a story or two. There was 

 a patch of alsike in connection with 

 this pasture, and I gave it full credit 

 for the bloat. But when I found this 

 one dead before it got to the alsike, 

 and others bloatiny badly, I decided it 

 was the sweet clover or the thought of 

 the alsike ahead of them. This was 

 the first and only season we had any 

 trouble from sweet clover bloat. But 

 in the spring of 1913 my neighbors were 

 bothered the same way, with their 

 stock. 



"Sweet clover is getting a lot of 

 puffs, but it is worth all that it gets. It 

 is about 18 or 20 years since I began 

 sowing it. A few old farms that I had 

 rented and salted with clover helped 

 advertise it in this section. 



" It is a friend to the beekeeper be- 

 cause it is the surest clover crop. On 

 the other hand, it is the poorest clover 

 honey we have. Some years it w uld 

 not be fit to eat if there was not some- 

 thin .■ else stored and extracted with it. 



"Nevertheless it is the poor man's 

 friend." B. A. Aldrich. 



I figured that we had no good evi- 

 dence that sweet clover, when eaten in- 

 ordinately, would not produce bloat, 

 or what I think is fermentive indiges- 

 tion. Unfortunately for those who 

 contend that it will not, there is such 

 a small percent of sweet clover eaten 

 by cattle in proportion to that con- 

 sumed of the white th it we have no 

 data, or, I might say, not enough infor- 

 m ition to enable us to form a conclu- 

 sive opinion. 



At the present time we have not a 

 whit of evidence that either the bitter 

 principle of sweet clover or the cuma- 

 rin will prevent indigestion in cattle 

 when the stomach is overloaded with 

 clover. So far we have but the one 

 case, or cases, reported by Mr. Aldrich, 

 and knowing the gentleman as I do I 



PENNA AND HIS APIARISTS WITH DADANT. (The tail man is Mr. Penna.) 



have a great deal of respect for his 

 judgment. The first time I met him, in 

 Des Moines, when we had our first 

 State association meeting, I steered 

 him u? against a good hot dish of 

 cliile con came. I was then not long 

 out of Mexico, the galvanizing of my 

 latin insides was still intact, and the 

 mess was a treat to me, but while the 

 tears came to his eyes, he never flinched, 

 but finished the dish, smiling. Such 

 a man always has my profound respect. 

 'Buck Grove, Iowa. 



[This matter of bloat in cattle from 

 sweet clover is worthy of further in- 

 vestigation. We will be glad to hear 

 from beekeepers on this subject. — 

 Editor.] 



Brief Rehearsal of the Season 

 of 1914 



BY G. C. GREINER. 



WITH the gathering up of the bee- 

 feeders, the removal of the last 

 supers and queen excluders, and 

 shifting the bees to winter position, 

 the honey season of 1914 and its bee- 

 yard work is practically ended. If 

 feeding, where necessary, has been 

 properly attended to, it remains only 

 to assign our bees to their winter 

 quarters as the last outdoor work for 

 the season. These may be indoors or 

 out; either will give satisfactory re- 

 sults if properly managed. Much de- 

 pends upon locality and season. I pre- 

 fer and practice wintering on the sum- 

 mer stands. 



The accompanying photograph is a 

 center view of my apiary as it appeared 

 during the height of the white-clover 

 honey flow. As nearly as the short 

 flow would admit the yard was man- 

 aged in every particular as described 

 in my four articles on " Doubling the 

 Yield of Surplus Honey," in the Ameri- 

 can Bee Journal last spring. In spite 

 of the poor season and a little disap- 

 pointment with my queens the results 

 have again been such that my new 

 method is proving itself more and 

 more a complete success in every 

 direction. 



As will be seen from the picture, the 



yard was run for both comb and ex- 

 tracted honey. All colonies with half- 

 story supers are comb-honey producers 

 and those with full-depth supers are 

 run for extracted. Nearly all of the 

 latter have two supers. Some of the 

 more ambitious ones needed a third, 

 but as I did not feel safe in the build- 

 ing up of sky-scrapers and have them 

 tumble over on account of their dan- 

 gerous proportion between height and 

 foundation, 1 resorted to exchanging 

 empty combs for full ones when they 

 needed more room. I use an S-frame 

 hive of the jumbo pattern, and seven of 

 these frames in the supers. When well 

 filled, ready for the extractor, one of 

 these supers weighs about 85 pounds, 

 and yields from 58 to 00 pounds of ex- 

 tracted honey, making about 120 

 pounds for the two. Besides, taking 

 away two in some cases, even three of 

 the heaviest combs with the bees dur- 

 ing the forepart of the honey-flow when 

 equalizing, and again when exchanging 

 two or three full combs for empty 

 ones during the latter part of the flow, 

 brings the yield of some of these colo- 

 nies to about 150 pounds of white 

 clover honey. 



Although we had not what we might 

 call a buckwheat honey flow, some of 

 the better colonies started in quite 

 well for a few days, but unfortunately 

 unfavorable weather setting in, they 

 broke off as abruptly as they com- 

 menced. Thus the buckwheat honey 

 crop proved almost a complete failure, 

 and the little we did get was of poor 

 quality. Only a few colonies had a 

 portion of their center combs capped, 

 but the greatest share was unsealed 

 honey. 



In making a rough estimate 25 

 pounds would probably be all that 

 could be added to the above 150 pounds, 

 making all in all 175 pounds as the 

 yield of one of my best colonies, equal- 

 ling 350 pounds for spring count. This, 

 of course, is the extreme. My bees 

 have not averaged those figures by 

 many pounds; 135 pounds, spring 

 count, is all I extracted. 



The reason why my yield has not 

 been heavier, is because I had to de- 

 pend too much upon foundation. The 

 40 sets of combs which I burned up 

 three years ago, when battling with 

 foul brood, necessitated an equal 



