212 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



April. 1919 



January, and February an ov'ereoat is not 

 uncomfortable to the beekeeper, even in the 

 daytime. Thousands of colonies all over the 

 State, so I am told (and this is borne out 

 by personal observation in yards that I have 

 inspected), hardly hold their own. Many 

 become so weak that they are little more 

 than two- and three-frame nuclei. The chill 

 of the night kills a great deal of brood; 

 moreover it checks the queen, and the con- 

 sequence is there will often be very small 

 patches of brood on two or three frames 



No. 2. — This should be studied in connection with 

 Fig. 3. Method of packing a single-story colony 

 that occiipie.s only 7 frames. An ordinary city news- 

 paper is .iust about the right width to cover the top 

 and sides of a 7-fraiiie cluster. The two ends pro- 

 ject over the empty space on either side. Other 

 folds of newspaper close up the space. See Fig. 3. 



which the bees are just barely able to cover 

 and keep warm when the temperature drops 

 during the night. 



Good management, particularly if the lo- 

 calities are at all favorable, to a large ex- 

 tent overcomes this heavy loss of bees from 

 early fall until early spring; but even with 

 the best of treatment there may or may not 

 be a constant depletion in strength. The 

 result is that colonies are not seldom too 

 weak to take ailvantage of the orange flow, 

 which is often heavy. So heavy is this flow 

 that if there comes a day or two of cold 

 and foggy weather, when the bees can not 

 fly, that nectar will drip all over the cloth- 

 ing of the pickers, as they take the matured 

 fi'uit off the trees. It should be understood 

 that there may be ripe fruit as well as new 

 blossoms on the tree at the same time. 

 The Need of Protection. 



What is the remedy? One word covers 

 it, and that is PROTECTION. I am con- 

 vinced that if bees need to be warmly hous- 

 ed anywhere in the United States, it is in 

 California. From some experiments that 

 I have been making, I And that I have been 

 able to build up colonies very rapidly by re- 

 ducing the size of their winter quarters or 

 giving them wrappings of paper. In a num- 

 ber of apiaries that I have visited in the 

 last month or so, I find that there are four- 



* Foul-brood Inspector Geo. B. DeSellem of Los 



Angeles County tells me that he has for years been 



advocating wintering in one story because two 



' stories make ton much room for the bees to keep 



warm. 



and five-frame nuclei in the lower story of 

 a 2-story 10-frame hive.* Bees in Califor- 

 nia, so far as I have been able to see, are 

 wintered mainly in two stories. In the fall 

 their colonies are strong enough to occupy 

 only one story, but they need the other 

 story, some say, for the stores. On account 

 of the severe fluctuation of temperature 

 between night and day, in too many cases 

 the strength of the colony goes down much 

 more than it does in the East where the colo- 

 nies are well packed or put in cellars. I 

 should imagine that the actual loss in Cali- 

 fornia is as great as in some States where 

 the winters are very severe. This does not 

 mean a loss of colonies, but a loss of bees. 

 From the standpoint of capacity to produce 

 honey, it would be better to have 50 colonies 

 of fair strength than to have 100 that are 

 weak. This is an axiom in beekeeping that 

 is so generally accej^ted that it doesn't need 

 any argument to prove its truth. 



I am convinced that N. A. Blake of Pasa- 

 dena, Calif., is pursuing the right policy, 

 when early in the fall he puts the story with 

 the bees and brood on top, if it is not al- 

 ready there, leaving the other story with the 

 combs of stores beneath. This puts the bees 

 up in the wariuest part of the hive. I find 

 a great many beekeepers are leaving the 

 bees in the lower story. When the cluster 

 is down to five frames it is up against the 

 problem of trying to keep its brood-nest 

 warm, notwithstanding the heat is constant- 

 ly rising into the upper story. 



Some argue that they put the upper story 

 on top to keep the combs away from the 

 moth miller. They would be just as safe be- 

 low the cluster. Others sav that the bees 



No. 3. — In some cases where the l:ees are packed 

 this way, the paper becomes damp from the breath 

 of the bees. In other ca.ses bees will gnaw at the 

 paper, carrying it out of the hive bit by bit. For 

 tl-.is reason it is recommended to ufe oilcloth next 

 to the bees and paper on the outside, as additional 

 packing. 



would breed too fast if on top, and that 

 when put below the colonies are stronger 

 in the spring. I can 't see why. 



What Kind of Protection. 



I have spoken of the fact that I have 

 been conducting some experiments. By 

 crowding three- or five-frame nuclei down 

 to the frames that they can actually cover 



