1902 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



375 



take out 7 or 8 each day, taking them out 

 on favorable days, the 13 favorable dnj's 

 required for the purpose would make the last 

 of them stay in the cellar, I am afraid, lat- 

 er than would be for their welfare. I am 

 wondering- whether friend Holtermann has 

 different weather from mine, or whether, 

 commencing March 15, he takes four to six 

 weeks to get his bees out. 



Toward the last of p. 186 it seems to me 

 there is a flight into the realm of fancy. A 

 considerable distance in that realm seems 

 the idea that, shut up in a cellar, bees will 

 smell pollen and nectar half a mile or even 

 a sixteenth of a mile away. Still, I can 

 not prove he is wrong, and Mr. Holtermann 

 has as good a right to guess as I. He says: 



"Activity means exhaustion of vitality'; 

 and when vitality is exhausted, instinct 

 causes the bees to rear brood to replace the 

 exhausted vitality." It has long been 

 taught that breeding causes exhausted vi- 

 tality; but that exhausted vitality causes 

 breeding is new doctrine. If bees in May 

 " rear brood to replace exhausted vitalits'. " 

 then when that vitality is replaced by young 

 bees ought there not to be a let-up in brood- 

 rearintr? Instead of that, does not brood- 

 rearing increase with vitalit}'? and is not 

 ihe season of greatest brood-rearing pre- 

 cisely the season when there is the least 

 proportion of exhausted vitality? Instead 

 of saj'ing activity causes exhausted vitality 

 and exhausted vitality causes brood-rear- 

 ing, would it not be better to say that activ- 

 ity causes brood-rearing and exhausted vi- 

 tality? 



From the italics in your footnote, p. 187, 

 Mr. Editor, some might think it desirable 

 to keep bees in the cellar till after May 1. 

 Would not that crowd the bees a little to 

 get ready for white clover if the season 

 should prove to be unusually early? 



Marengo, 111. 



[The main portion of this article is an- 

 swered in one of my footnotes to Straws, 

 and in an editorial elsewhere, in this issue. 

 With regard to the matter of fresh air, we 

 must consider that bees are animals. The 

 temperature of their bodies is about the 

 same as ours or any warm-blooded animal. 

 They require air; and while the}^ do not 

 breathe with the mouth, as we do, they 

 have breathing-mouths or breathing-pores, 

 and take in supplies of oxygen, the purpose 

 of which is to enrich the blood, just as it 

 does with us. I can not, therefore, see why 

 bees should not have fresh air in cellars, 

 and why they should not have fresh water 

 — every thing fresh. If we can keep the 

 temperature down below 55, and give them 

 air every night when it is not too cold, it 

 seems rational to suppose that, other things 

 being equal, the conditions will be ideal. 



I have been in our machine-shop cellar, 

 where there were 300 colonies and nuclei, 

 with the sunlight streaming through the 

 doorwa}'; yet so contented were the bees 

 that light caused them no disturbance. I 

 have gone in at other times, and turned on 



an electric light, with the same result. 

 Sometimes one bee would fly out, but the 

 great mass of them would remain quiet. 



The number of dead bees on the cellar 

 floor was very small in comparison with 

 the number on the floor of our out-yard cel- 

 lar that did not have the same amount of 

 ventilation. There was much more dysen- 

 tery at the out-cellar, notwithstanding the 

 temperature was more uniform. Even dur- 

 ing warm weather, when it was 70 outside, 

 it would be down to 50 inside. The bees at 

 our out-yard had all the favorable condi- 

 tions for wintering except daily doses of 

 ffi'sh air. An examination of this cellar 

 showed the bees were quite uneasy, and 

 thousands of them came out, and died on 

 the cellar bottom. While the colonies win- 

 tered all but two, there was a general de- 

 pletion in the aggregate number of bees. 

 Oil the other hand, the colonies and little 

 nuclei at the home cellar, with their daily 

 supply of fresh air, retained their strength, 

 and those that had a mid-winter flight, and 

 i^-^ot started to brood-rearing, actually came 

 out stronger. 



These experiments will be conducted, if 

 any thing, on a larger scale next winter. 

 We shall probably have one or two more 

 cellars constructed, and in one of them, at 

 least, we will confine the bees a la Doo- 

 little, and leave them to see what becomes 

 of them. — Ed.1 



CLIPPING QUEENS. 



Stimulative Feeding in the Fail ; Adopting the 

 Langstroth Frame. 



BV F. GREINER. 



Different bee-keepers practice different 

 methods in clipping queens' wings. Hon. 

 R. L. Taylor said at an institute he would 

 catch a queen by her wings with his right 

 hand, and place her upon his knee. She 

 would then immediately catch hold of the 

 fabric covering his knee. With thumb and 

 fore finger of his left hand he would grab 

 her thorax sidewise. With a pair of scis- 

 sors he would then clip the wings without 

 there being any danger of cutting off legs. 



Many beekeepers have of late claimed 

 that clipped queens come up missing more 

 frequently than those not clipped. Some 

 think the reason might be that, when a 

 queen is held by the thorax, as in Mr. Taj'- 

 lor's case, her scent is slightly changed by 

 this contact with inan's fingers, when after- 

 ward the bees will regard her as a stran- 

 ger. There ma3' be some truth in this. 

 Still, it does not explain why queens (clip- 

 ped) come up missing months after the oper- 

 ation. 



I do not think it best any more to handle 

 queens by the thorax, when it can be avoid- 

 ed. It is not at all necessarj' to take hold 

 of a queen by the thorax when we wish to 

 clip her. I simply pick up a queen bj' her 

 wings with my left hand, hold her a few 

 inches above the frame-tops, and draw the 



