1902 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



32J 



cag^e: and as soon as the bees begin to 

 alight, bend this piece of wire over the 

 limb, so the caged queen will hang where 

 the cluster will naturally be, when the 

 swarm will alight and cluster the same as 

 they would had the queen not been clip- 

 ped. You can now go about any thing you 

 may wish to, making hives or any thing 

 else, resting assured that j'ou will find the 

 bees there when you are ready to take care 

 of them, no matter if it is not till the next 

 day. If they should go off they will come 

 back to the limb as soon as they find their 

 queen is not with them, and cluster there 

 again, as I have had them do when con- 

 ducting experiments along this line, I even 

 holding them thus until they had started 

 several combs, evidently concluding to make 

 their future home on this limb. I at first 

 thought, when the}' started oft' so, that they 

 would return to the parent hive on coming 

 back, instead of seeking out the limb; but 

 the queen is of all-absorbing consequence 

 to any swarm, and so thej"^ come back to 

 her every time." 



Thk subscription-list of Glkanings con- 

 tinues to grow apace, for which we are very 

 grateful. 



Reports in regard to wintering are un- 

 usually favorable this spring, notwith- 

 standing the winter has been very severe 

 in many localities. 



Watch your State Legislature during 

 these closing days. Some bills are liable 

 to be rushed through; and if you do not 

 look out, some of them may hurt your busi- 

 ness. 



In our issue for March 15, page 227, I re- 

 ferred to the fact that a bill had been in- 

 troduced in our Ohio Legislature, classing 

 sweet clover as a noxious weed, and requir- 

 ing it to be destroyed by the township trus- 

 tees. We sent out something like 1000 cir- 

 cular letters to our subscribers in this 

 State, besides personal letters to some of 

 our Representatives and Senators, and now 

 we have the practical assurance that the 

 bill will be pigeonholed in committee, and 

 the present session of the Ohio Legislature 

 is drawinsf to a close. 



GIVING INDOOR BEES A CLEANSING FLIGHT, 



AND THEN PUTTING THEM BACK IN 



THE CELLAR. 



The bees in our bee-cellars have win- 

 tered nicely. The larger portion, as will 

 be remembered, were in our home cellar, 

 comprising nearly 300 hives, and these, 

 many of them, two and three frame nuclei; 

 and yet they came out bright and healthy. 



One or two nuclei succumbed, but they were 

 very weak. 



During the last days of March there was 

 considerable roaring among the bees, and 

 it seemed necessary to quiet them down. 

 Mr. Warden finally suggested taking them 

 out on the first warm day and giving them 

 a flight, and then returning them. This 

 was done with the bees in both cellars, and 

 the results were eminently satisfactory. In 

 our first trial test, we took out 25 or 30 col- 

 onies, that were quite uneasy. We gave 

 them a flight, and put them back, and, 

 presto! they were quiet, while those that 

 had not had a flight were uneasy as before. 

 These were put out, and they too became 

 contented. 



I believe it has been stated that it is a 

 waste of time and labor to give indoor bees 

 a flight during mid-winter or early spring; 

 but our own experience does not seem to 

 prove the statement. 



When we put the bees out in the first 

 place we numbered and marked their loca- 

 tion, so that in a month hence when they 

 are put out again they will go back in ex- 

 actly the same places. 



EXPERIMENTS IN MEASURING THE TONGUES 



OF BEES AT THE MICHIGAN EXPERIMENT 



STATION, LANSING. 



We have been favored with extracts from 

 a bulletin about to be issued from the Mich- 

 igan Experiment Station on the subject of 

 measuring bees' tongues. They are as 

 follows: 



REPORT OF 1897, PAGE 128. 



A great many queens have been bred for the pur- 

 pose of testing the question whether a strain of bees 

 could be produced which would be characterized by 

 long tongues The tongues of several bees of each 

 colt ny were measured, and were found to average as 

 follows : Black, 4.2 mm.; hybrid, 4.9 mm ; Italian, 5.2 

 mm. One colony of Italians was found whose tongues 

 measured 5 3 mm. The drones from this colony were 

 allowed to fly at will, and the others were kept down. 

 As a result we have in the yard at the pi"esent lime one 

 queen the tongues of whose progeny measure 5.41 mm. 



This result is very encouraging and leads us to con- 

 tinue the experiment. 



REPORT OF 1898, PAGE 141. 



The continued experiment on bees' tongues did not 

 make such narked progress as it did last year. At 

 the beginning of the season the longest tongues in the 

 yard measured 5.41 mm. One direct cress was made ; 

 but, owing to the large number of drones from com- 

 mon stock in the surrounding country, no other 

 queens were satisfactoril3' mated. The bees from 

 this cross have made a gain of .9 nun., and now mea- 

 sure (3. .'U mm. The experiment will be continued. 



REPORT OF 1900, PAGE 90. 



The continued experiment on lengthening the 

 tongues of the bees so that it will be possible for them 

 to reach the nectar in such flowers as June clover, has 

 been carried on with little success, the average lengths 

 of the tongues of those colonies under experiment be- 

 ing no longer than a year ago, the principal diflRculty 

 seeming to be the failure of the desirable mating of 

 queens. When this difficulty can be overcome it may 

 be possible to breed a strain of bees superior to any 

 thing now known. 



There seems to be, from the above, quite 

 a variation, all the waj' from 4.2 millime- 

 ters in blacks to 6.31 millimeters in Ital- 

 ians bred by selection. These figures, 

 converted into hundredths of an inch, stand 

 respectively 17 and 25. 



I do not know what these measurements 



