526 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



Grace Allen 



THE 



DIXIE BEE 



Nasliville, Tenii. 



Thank you, Mr. Chadwick. 



* * * 



I was glad to see in E. S. Miles' 

 article, page 462, June 1, that I 

 am not the only one who gets nerv- 

 ous from the fear of squeezing the 

 , --^ queen too hard, or otherwise in- 

 juring lier when clipping. I shake like a 

 foolish aspen leaf when I get started on 



that task. 



« • • 



Our first attempt to use the Fowls adap- 

 tation of the Alexander method of increase 

 seems to have been successful. On May 9, 

 finding queen-cells with well-advanced lar- 

 va?, we raised the entire brood-chamber to 

 fourth place up, leaving one frame of brood 

 and the queen below. The bees attacked the 

 nine full sheets of foundation with energy, 

 and in a week had several frames of drawn 

 comb. On May 16 we removed the queen- 

 less brood from the fourth story to a new 

 location, and on June 2 had two frames of 

 eggs and young larvae. 



Among the " Interesting People " in the 

 June American Magazine is "Honest Mose," 

 Idaho's new governor, Moses Alexander. 

 His is an interesting story, and, according 

 to the account, he gives promise of giving 

 the people of Idaho a good, clean, economi- 

 cal reform administration. But, alas that 

 he should say, mentioning the needless ex- 

 pense that he intends to cut out, " It does 

 not appeal to me to have such officers as 

 bee inspectors. The people have certainly 

 been stung enough already " ! Surely some 

 of Idaho's enthusiastic beekeepers will be 

 able to show Governor Alexander the real 

 economy of maintaining the office. 



That di'y April I commented on last 

 month has been labeled by the Weather 

 Bureau the driest in forty years. Headed 

 by a dry cold March, it was tagged by a 

 dry May — that is, till about the middle of 

 the month. The clover came unusually early, 

 hurried into an early maturity by the dry 

 weather, we heard it explained, while the 

 bees, retarded by the long-lingering winter, 

 had been late in building up. That is not 

 a happy combination. Then in mid-May, 

 with clover in bloom, and a pretty fair 

 force of bees, it began to rain, and " Sunny 

 Tennessee "' seemed as much a myth as Mr. 

 Chadwick described " Sunny California " to 



have been. For two or three weeks there 

 was rain, cloudy weather, high winds, and 

 the bees could not work. Several dark 

 windy days I watched the few adventurous 

 ones battling with the winds. It was right 

 in their faces as they came back to their 

 hives, and often sudden gusts forced them 

 to make several attempts to alight at the 

 entrance. 



I kept wondering what the bees do when 

 they are shut in that way for a week or 

 more in the summer; but the weather that 

 kept them in their hives kept me out. What 

 do they do? 



The locust flow was excellent, and the 

 poplar good, though our own bees get only 

 a little of the former, and, so far as we 

 know, none of the latter. White clover is 

 our main stay, and it is pretty fair. The 

 rains may have helped it, though they came 

 too late to give full value of good effect. 



OP INTEREST TO WOMEN BEEKEEPERS. 



Lifting is certainly the greatest problem 

 for us. So far, in our own little yard, we 

 have managed to do the liives with the 

 heavy supers on either Saturday afternoon 

 or Sunday morning, when Mr. Allen is 

 here; but that is not always convenient, and 

 we realize that we must work it out some 

 other way, if I am to do the actual work, 

 and our apiary increases as we wish .it to 

 do. Of course, there are the shallow supers 

 to fall back on, though they mean more 

 expense and more labor of putting frames 

 together, wiring, putting in foundation, etc. 

 I suppose we shall resort to them another 

 year, however, if we don't have an inspira- 

 tion in the meantime. Personalh', I am 

 greatly interested in the various articles 

 that have appeared on the Long Idea hive, 

 and I wish I knew a little more about the 

 construction and manipulation of the one 

 pictured on page 147, Feb. 15, used by Vic- 

 tor Vargas Gamallo, Professor of Beekeep- 

 ing at Havana, Cuba. It seems as though 

 such a hive as that might be manufactured 

 as cheaply as the standard hive, as it does 

 not recjuire the large boards mentioned by 

 the editor in that article, as a cost-objection 

 against the Long Idea hive developed and 

 used by Mr. Poppleton. I for one should 

 like to be able to get into the brood-cham- 

 ber without lifting off any supers. [We 

 liave an article from Mr. Poppleton going 

 into the whole matter quite fully. This will 

 appear in an early issue. — Ed.] 



