904 



He bad one colony left, and this one T look- 

 ed over. It was wintered in a single-w^alled 

 double-story eight-frame hive with 10 

 frames — 8 below, 8 above. The colony was 

 in better condition than any colony I found 

 this year. This is the nearest thing- to the 

 old-style box hive which stood about 18 

 inches in height. These old-style box hives, 

 single-walled, come out in the best of con- 

 dition every year here. Colonies in ten- 

 f rame hives with a body of extracting combs 

 on the top, put on early enough so the bees 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



oan glue them to suit themselves, and with 

 young queens with plenty of stores, will 

 store fruit-bloom honey in this locality if 

 they are set in the sun well protected from 

 the north and northwest winds early in the 

 spring. 



I did not lose a colony during the winter, 

 but lost an exceedingly strong one early in 

 the spring from dysentery caused by too 

 stiong a mixture of brown sugar with the 

 white. A continued warm spell for a week 

 would have saved this colony. 



THE LEAN YEAR IN NEW SOUTH WALES 



Sugar for Feeding an Impossibility 



BV A. p. HABERECHT 



Our past season has been one of the worst 

 in the states; nevertheless it was just as I 

 expected after last year's crop. In all my 

 experience in Victoria and New South 

 Wales, a bad season always foUoAvs a good 

 one. What I call the " off season " comes 

 about every seven years. 



T extracted only 1740 lbs. of honey, which 

 T really left in the supers from the season 

 before last. I sold it all at 4 pence a 

 pound months before I extracted it, and 

 now I could get 8 pence for it readily. 

 There is no honey to be bought here. 



There are hundreds of colonies dying of 

 starvation — no honey and no sugar to feed 

 them. The most sugar a housewife can buj- 

 at a time is two pounds, and price is 31/2 

 pence. Therefore the poor bees that have 

 been unable to secure enough stores for 

 their winter use are doomed to die of star- 



vation. 1 expect the loss of bees in this 

 district to be about a half next season. 



My own bees, about 56 colonies, have 

 plenty of stores to see them well into 

 spring; but they are all unusually small, 

 covering about three full-de])th L. frames, 

 and some perJiaps only two frames. But I 

 do not expect to lose more than about one- 

 tifth of them. There is plenty of nectar for 

 Lhem to work on. The yellowbox is out in 

 bloom, and the capeweed will be out at the 

 eiid of this month, which gives abundance 

 of pollen. Oji calm sunny days my bees 

 will work just as they would in springtime 

 for about four hours toward noon day. 



I noticed no disease of any kind last 

 season — no robbing, but wax or bee moth 

 by the million. Although I never lost a 

 single colony, I have lost many stored emp- 

 ty frames of comb. 



Plenty, N. S. W., Australia. 



A DOUBLE-ACTING QUEEN AND DRONE -TRAP 



BY B. R. CURTISS 



In order to construct a trap that will 

 catch the done.s and queens from both the 

 hi-\'e and the outside at the same time, place 

 the excluder in the center of the trap and 

 have a passageway on both sides of the 

 excluder leading up into the trap. 



The excluder could be made in the new 

 wire pattern with an enlargement on top of 

 the upright bars on which to fasten the 

 bottom of the trap. 



In order to keep the drones from crawl- 

 ing out through the passageways it would 

 be necessary to have the excluder extend up 

 into the trap a short distance; then when 

 the drones come to the opening, instead of 

 going down they would crawl up over the 

 excluder. 



The trap would have this advantage: It 



Catching them coining and going. 



could be placed before the hive at any time 

 of day, and catch the drones that come in 

 as well as those that go out. 

 Wallowa, Ore. 



