198 



June, 1915. 



American Hee Journal 



few hundred that were quite innocent 

 of any Italian blood, although probably 

 not ail of the 2846. One thing sure, 

 and that is that there are not nearly as 

 many black bees as there were before 

 luiropean foulbrood came along. 



Wesley Foster usually says wisely, 

 and when he proposes an apiarists' 

 clearing house, he is up to his usual 

 standard. I have found it necessary to 

 act in that capacity more or less ever 

 since becoming Provincial Apiarist of 

 Ontario. Those who wish help write 

 to me and those who wish employment, 

 and sometimes I have been able to get 

 the two together. We are also devel- 

 oping at the Ontario .Agricultural Col- 

 lege a civil service school in beekeep- 

 ing, as it were, in so far as that term 

 might be applied to our regular and 

 short course students. About 15 col- 

 leges in the United States and two in 

 Canada are now getting instruction in 

 beekeeping. As these courses develop 

 and receive the encouragement of bee- 

 keepers a constant supply of assistants 

 and managers should be available in 

 the different States and Provinces. I 

 do not quite see how this work of ex- 

 amining and training could be under- 

 taken by an association as such. 



Guelph, Ont., May 6. 



There is so much interest in sweet 

 clover among farmers generally that 

 beekeepers will now find it easy to get 

 a really valuable new kind of this 

 plant introduced widely. 

 Atlantic, Iowa. 



A New Sweet Clover 



BY FR.\NK C. PELLETT. 



PROF. N. E. HANSEN, of the South 

 Dakota State Agricultural College, 

 who has made four trips to Sibe- 

 ria in search of plants suited to the dry 

 uplands of western South Dakota, is 

 now offering for trial in that State a 

 few plants raised from seed which he 

 gathered near Semipalatinsk in 1913. 

 Prof. Hansen has made a number of 

 journeys in the capacity of agricultural 

 explorer, and has introduced a number 

 of things which are proving to be 

 valuable acquisitions. 



The two forms of sweet clover 

 already widely introduced in this coun- 

 try are Mdilotiis alba, the white form 

 which is now coming into favor as a 

 forage plant, and Melilotus olJicinalis, 

 the yellow kind which is generally re- 

 garded as inferior to the white form. 

 In " Plant Life of Alabama," I find that 

 that there is also another kind. Melt- 

 lotus indica which comes from the 

 warmer parts of Europe, and which 

 not only occurs in Alabama, but is also 

 naturalized in South Carolina, Florida 

 and Mississippi. This is said to be a 

 small flowered annual, also of a yellow 

 color. 



The plant lately introduced by Prof. 

 Hansen is Melilotus dt-ntatus, and is de- 

 scribed as "A tall yellow-flowered 

 sweet clover from the Semipalatinsk 

 region. Seeds very large, stems red 

 tinted. Preliminary feeding tests at 

 the Imperial Agricultural College at 

 Moscow, Russia, indicate that the cat- 

 tle prefer it to the common sweet 

 clover." It is also said to be superior 

 as a pasture plant in that it is less 

 odorous. 



Beekeepers living in South Dakota 

 should get into touch with Prof. Han- 

 sen and give this new and promising 

 plant a trial. It is to be hoped that a 

 supply will soon be available to those 

 of us who live in other States as well. 



A Cheap Bee Escape 



BY T. E. CRANE. 



ASIDE from the invention of the 

 movable comb hive, there are few 

 improvements in beekeeping that 

 have given us greater pleasure or en- 

 joyment than the " bee-escape." As 

 we take up the subject, our mind re- 

 verts to the methods formerly used to 

 get the bees out of the supers. If we 

 go back 50 years the favorite method 

 was to take off the boxes, as they were 

 then called, and place them in a dark- 

 ened cellar with a small opening in the 

 window for the bees to fly out, and one 

 man told me how, when he went to get 

 his well filled boxes, the " pesky bees " 

 had robbed them and he had only 



empty combs for his pains. Another 

 told me of his equally sad experience 

 in placing his surplus in his wood 

 room and leaving the windows up 

 "just a little." "You wouldn't have 

 thought of it would you ?" 



Moses Quinby recommended placing 

 supers in a box and covering with cot- 

 ton sheets and then turning them fre- 

 quently, allowing the bees on the 

 turned-up side of the sheet to fly away 

 while another lot collected on the un- 

 derside again. This method worked 

 very well if honey was coming in or 

 the bees in the super were well filled 

 with honey, but if otherwise the bees 

 as they left would not unfrequently 

 break the car.'ngs and take a load 

 home with them, sometimes to such an 

 extent as to render many combs un- 

 sightly, if in glass boxes. With the 

 advent of supers of sections it has been 

 an easy matter to blow smoke down 

 between the sections and drive a large 

 part of the bees out at once, and then 

 with our large dry goods boxes to put 

 our supers in and cover with cotton, 

 we could easily get rid of the rest. But 



J. E. CRANE'S ESCAPE BOARD 



