1902 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



973 





Bright shines the sun this wirni December day ; 

 Dandelions a peeking, the bees at times at play ; 

 The seasons seem reversed in some peculiar way 

 When fierce December smiles on us as sweet as pleas- 

 ant May. 



\b 



Even a hasty glance over the bee journals 

 of Europe shows a great increase in activi- 

 t}^ in bee matters. New organizations of 

 bee-keepers are constantly forming; meth- 

 ods are freely and ably discussed; the old 

 is giving place to the new; ruts are being 

 filled up, and new paths are coming into 

 view; new uses for honey are causing an 

 increase in price; new sources of nectar 

 are constantly coming to the front. One 

 French bee paper, V Apiculteur, in addition 

 to its regular 48 pages has an "extra" 

 containing 64 pages, the whole looking more 

 like a book than a magazine. But the 

 journals of this country are in no respect 

 behind in apicultural progress. The lead- 

 ing lines of thought may be stated, broadly, 

 to be in the line of increasing our bee-ranges 

 and find ingmore and better marketsfor honey. 



(ffw/r^M/a/Apublished in Hannover, Prus- 

 sia, sa5's that the number of bee-keepers' 

 unions in Schleswig-Holstein, in 1872, was 

 20; now it is 67. In the former year the 

 number of members was only 476; but now 

 the membership is 2921. The district in 

 question is smaller than Illinois, with less 

 population than Chicago alone, and yet it 

 has three times the membership of the Na- 

 tional in this country. 



Mr. F. J. Root, 90 West Broadway, New 

 York, a brother of the writer, is a corres- 

 pondent of the London Grocer and other 

 journals. He is in a position to reach a 

 large audience, and is working right along 

 to instruct the world in regard to the uses 

 and nature of honey, and to counteract 

 many false impressions that have been 

 scattered in the press of late j-eiirs. He 

 sends the following clipping from the Lon- 

 don Grocer: 



Honey is a valuable and wholesome article of food, 

 which is not so much seen on our breakfast tables-^ 

 and on our readers' counters— as it ought to be; but it 

 will probably be taken up commercially one of these 

 days. A Colonial Office repoi t on Malta mentions that 

 honey is one of the products of that British island In 

 the northwest portion, overlying the upper coralline 

 limestone, are uncultivated lands suiable for the 

 growth of the wild thyme. A firm at Biichircnra cul- 

 tivate the bee on a rational and commercial basis, and 

 the honey produced is of the first quality. The output 

 could be incrfa.sed were it not for the destruction of 

 the thyme, which is, when dry, collected for fuel. 



If the readers of this journal will send* 

 similar items to Mr. K., they may reach a 

 class of readers outside of beedom, and 

 thus do more good than to have them come 

 before readers who are already informed. 



Hydromel cuts a large figure in French 

 bee journals. How this beverage would 

 rank in America as a "temperance drink" 

 is something I should like to know. I have 

 never heard of anybody making it in this 

 country. The Revue Eclectique says, 

 "Hone)' wine, in short, should be preferred 

 to all alcoholic beverages, even to beer, 

 which, owing to the lupuline in it, causes 

 narcotism in the cerebral system." So far, 

 so good; but I have always supposed that 

 hj'dromel had some alcohol in it. If not, 

 and it is an enemy of strong drinks, it may 

 be well to consider it along with soda 

 water, lemonade, etc. 



Following up the subject of honey as a 

 food, the Revue says, "Everybody knows 

 that the two principal elements which form 

 a perfect food are albuminous substances, 

 such as meat, and hydrated substances, 

 such as sugar. Now, among these last we 

 must place honey, so rich in the principal 

 hydro-carbons. Chemistry shows that its 

 coefficient of nutrition (that is, the quantity 

 of material available for nutrition) is 80; 

 in other words, honey contains 80 per cent 

 of carbo-hydrate. If we admit, with 

 science, that an adult requires 800 grams 

 (about 25 ounces) every day of hydrate ma- 

 terial, it will be understood what a help 

 honey offers as a food." 



-^ 





QUEENS BEING "BALLED." 



"Mr. Doolittle, I came over this evening 

 to have a talk with you about queens. Did 

 you ever have one balled, or the word chis- 

 tered might more nearl)' express it?" 



"Yes, I have had the bees cluster or ball 

 a queen quite often when I was trying to 

 introduce her. I was often confronted with 

 such things in my early bee-keeping. Have 

 you been having queens balled during the 

 past summer?" 



"Yes. It was in this way: I had two 

 swarms come out nearly together. The 

 first had a queen with its wing clipped, and 

 the most of the bees had returned when the 

 other issued, this last swarm having a queen 

 with perfect wings. This swarm clustered, 

 and was hived in the usual way. In half 

 an hour or so the bees began leaving their 

 hive and went straggling back to the hive 

 from which they came. After a little I 

 opened the hive and found a ball of bees 

 nearly as large as a hen's &^^ on the 

 bottom board, and in this ball of bees was 

 the queen. Why did these bees act in this 

 way?" 



"In this question you have touched on a 



