JULY 15. 1915 



571 



BEEKEEPING IN CALIFOENIA 



P. C Chadwick, 



Did you ever notice tliat the 

 most ardent " free trader" is in 

 favor of a tariff on his particular 

 product? The beekeeper is no ex- 

 ception. 



Mr. E. F. Atwater's air-drain- 

 age article, page 406, June 15, does not 

 appeal to niv sense of reason in the least. 

 Air drainage is a term I cannot quite com- 

 prehend, to say nothing of being able to 

 tix it in my mind as anything more than a 

 fancy. , » , 



There is nothing that will discourage the 

 swarming fever more than to remove the 

 old honey from the extracting combs 

 before the new flow begins in earnest. The 

 fact that there is plenty of old comb 

 honey on hand seems to satisfy their judg- 

 ment that swarming is their only recourse. 

 « » • 



Dr. Miller says, page 481, June 15, 

 "And you cannot know the performance of 

 a queen until she has lived through the 

 full season"! I recently had a young 

 queen that filled five combs full of eggs in 

 five days from the time she started laying. 

 That is performance enough for me. 

 * » * 



In a discussion with my friend Mr. 

 Bixby a few years past, I contended that 

 I lost no more bees on a cold day when 

 they were going three miles to the orange 

 than those that had only half a mile to 

 go. In this I am comdnced that Mr. 

 Bixby was right, the past season having 

 proved to my satisfaction that the loss is 

 considerably greater on the long-distance 

 flight. 



Mr. SchoU thinks that I should have 

 said a young good queen, when I said 

 that a young queen was half the battle 

 in fighting disease and securing surplus. 

 He adds that he has seen many young 

 queens that were not as good as old ones, 

 yet ^Ir. Scholl must admit that age puts a 

 handicap on a man as well as a queen, and 

 the rule must remain in favor of the young 

 qui'en. » , , 



For a number of years I have been 

 watching the work of different colonies 

 during the time of the yielding of nectar, 

 to satisfy myself whether or not some colo- 

 nies did not gather nectar from one source 

 while others were working on another. I 

 have decided that such is the case, and my 

 discussion is based on the fact that I had 



Redlands, Cal. 



one colony this season that took a fancy 

 to hoarhound nectar while othei-s were 

 working on the last of the orange. The 

 one colony filled their combs with the dark 

 hoarhound honey while the rest were 

 gathering the lighter. 

 • « « 



Tiie season has advanced far enough 

 to be able to figure a little on its produc- 

 tion. If all sections of southern California 

 are to be judged by my own locality I 

 would say that production would be no 

 greater than last season. Indeed, it 

 seems probable that there will be much 

 less than last season. With 25 per cent 

 more colonies my production will be less 

 than last season. Swarming has been the 

 gi-eat drawback to heavy production. With 

 those who gave constant care to their bees 

 this trouble was greatly reduced; but the 

 haphazard beekeeper this season found liis 

 crop passing in swarms, and, indeed, 

 found many of his swarms passing over 

 the hills and far away. More ideal 

 weather than we have had for the past six 

 weeks could not be asked for, but the flow 

 has been slow for all that. 

 « « « 



I have been making some experiments in 

 connection with the discussion last spring 

 as to bees drawing foundation on a cer- 

 tain amount of sugar syrup. In this 

 experiment I have satisfied myself that it 

 takes almost no stores to cause foundation 

 to be drawn to one-third its cell depth. In 

 this I mean to say that it is not and should 

 not be termed comb-building. Removing a 

 super from a strong colony at the close 

 of the main honey-flow, while there was a 

 slow flow at hand, and replacing it with 

 ten full sheets of foundation, I found that 

 the colony would draw the ten sheets to 

 one-third the cell depth in two to three 

 days. But there they stopped abruptly, 

 and continued to draw the cells to the 

 finish only as they were needed to store 

 their honey. Tliis led me to the conclusion 

 that there was sufficient wax in medium 

 brood foundation to draw the cells to one- 

 third their length. To prove my conclu- 

 sions T removed the foundation at the end 

 of the fifth day, Avhen work had appar- 

 ently stopped, except on two combs in tlie 

 center, and replaced the entire super with 

 one containing another full set of founda- 

 tion. In thi-ee days this was drawn to the 

 same length as the first; but there, again, 

 the rush work stopped, just as before. 



