286 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



would not undertake a trip which in windy 

 weather means sure death to them. 



So far as I can see from the writings of 

 various authors it was generally believed 

 that bees would cross only short distances 

 over water; but here is a ease that shows 

 that assumptions, though long believed, may 



be erroneous. By a long-distance flight to 

 the source of nectar the loss of time con- 

 sumed by the flight is not of so much im- 

 portance as the wearing-out of the bees and 

 the losses incident to long-distance flying. 

 Kempten, Bavaria, Germany. 



E FOR KEEPING ANTS AWAY FROM 

 THE BUILDING 



BY E. R. ROOT 



When we stopped off at Delray to visit 

 Charley Repp, where the Repp brothers, of 

 apple-growing fame, have their Flonda 

 farm on which they grow cucumbers by the 

 carload I asked if there were any bees in 

 the vicinity, and was told there was a man 

 who had quite a house-apiary not a gi'eat 



Fig. 1. — George Hoeness' house-apiary near Delray, Florida 



distance away. Of course I said I should 

 like to see it, and, sure enough, he had 

 quite a building. I took a picture of it as 

 shown in Fig. 1. 



No one seemed to know veiy much about 

 the owner, except that his name was George 



Hoeness. He owned a couple of town lots, 

 ail the bees there, and had been gone for 

 two years. He used a sort of long German 

 frame, very deep, and each colony was in a 

 compartment by itself. Some of them were 

 dead, but others were very much alive, as 

 we found when we tried to " investigate." 



But the thing that 

 interested me pai-tic- 

 ularly was a way to 

 provide against tl>3) 

 depredations of ants, 

 which are very trou- 

 blesome in those parts. 

 The accompanying il- 

 lustration. Fig. 2, will 

 show one of the cor- 

 ner foundaitions sur- 

 rounded by a concrete 

 l)ox to hold water. 

 Every time it rains 

 these boxes get filled 

 with water, so, of 

 course, the ants do not 

 have very much chance 

 to get into the build- 

 ing. 



Not much was 

 known of this Mr. 

 Hoeness, and it was 

 thought he had gone 

 to Michigan. His near- 

 est neighbor is Mr. J. W. Lamb, and possi- 

 bly he may know where he is by this time 

 if he has not returned. 



Of course bees are very necessary for 

 growing cucumbers. No bees, no cucumbers. 

 That has been proven over and over again. 



ARKANSAS RETROSPECTS AND PROSPECTS 



BY C. W. RIGGS 



Last year was one of the worst known 

 in the histoi-y of this section, and bees as 

 a general thing did not make honey enough 

 to winter. T fed from tlie outside along in 

 November and December; and on January 



11, as all the bees were flying nicely, I 

 went through my yard of twenty-six colo- 

 nies and equalized "the stores. T had five or 

 six small nuclei that I thouglit it hardly 

 possible to get through the winter, but to- 



