GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



April, 1919 



"HEADS "OF GRAIN I Ppeiili rDIFFERENT FIELDS 



Bees That Built Eegarding bees build- 



Comb Upward. ing c o m b upwards, 



page 667, November 

 Gleanings, let me say that last year there 

 were many instances of this in the apiary 

 where I was working. We had a very heavy 

 honey flow which came on suddenly. In one 

 case an empty shallow super had been left 

 on a 10-frame Langstroth brood-chamber by 

 mistake. The bees filled up a great deal of 

 the space by building comb upwards. As 

 far as I can remember, it was not built in 

 circles as Dr. Miller says his was, but con- 

 necting combs were built from one to an- 

 other, in some cases, almost at right angles. 



Conil) tuilt upwards from top-bars. 



I was anxious to obtain a photo, but the rush 

 of work was too great to allow me time. 

 I did, however, later on get a picture of 

 comb built upwards in a nucleus with deep 

 lid and no quilt, which I enclose. You will 

 see that in one place the comb is broken. 

 This was where the bees attached it to the 

 roof when they got up to it, but I know it 

 was built up gradually until the roof was 

 reached, and was not built down. I have 

 also known many cases of foundation being 

 drawn out at the bottom before the top. 

 B. Blackbourn. 

 New South Wales, Australia. 



Not Always the I have noticed at 



Queen's Fault. times, in Gleanings, 



statements and re- 

 marks in regard to poor queens, one recently 

 going so far as to classify the lady of the 

 Queendom to that of a " Plun. ' ' I am sorry 

 to say that I can not agree with this com- 

 parison, no matter how poor or poverty- 

 stricken she may be in her little colony. 



But what I started out to ask was: How 

 poor is a poor queen, or, in other words, 

 when is a poor queen poor? 



Isn 't it a fact that, as a rule, a queen 

 whose colony shows up poor in the spring, 

 is just simply demoralized from some rea- 

 son or other? Isn't this reason a lack of 

 bees or stores, caused by faulty wintering, 

 perhaps too much room for the size of the 

 colony, or stores remote from the brood-nest, 

 or a hundred and one things, which might 



bring about the loss of her subjects, where- 

 by she is judged? While it is true that a 

 queen of this description will remain pover- 

 ty-stricken thruout the season, barely build- 

 ing up the colony in fair shape for the fol- 

 lowing winter; yet, on the other hand, a 

 brood-nest of hatching brood placed on top 

 of this same queen 's colony will cause her 

 hive shortly to become a rouser, ending the 

 season second to none, a veritable top- 

 notcher. I am inclined to think there is a 

 reason for indifferent queens and colonies, 

 and believe the remedy could be found in bet- 

 ter beekeeping. Out of seven nuclei set off last 

 season and gradually filled out with brood 

 and full sheets, five are in fine shape for 

 winter. Over each of the latter, when the foun- 

 dation was drawn out, I set a shallow super 

 of stores and brood merely to get them out 

 of the way for the time. The other two nu- 

 clei gradually dwindled, were robbed out, 

 and disappeared. From this experience it 

 seems to me that stores with suflieient help- 

 ers would be the panacea for many of the 

 so-called poor queens. 



Cincinnati, O. John E. Eoebling. 



A Practical As I have never seen 



Open-air Feeder. anything similar de- 



scribed in Gleanings, I 

 offer a description of an open-air feeder 

 used by Wesley Foster of Boulder, Colo., 

 when feeding thin sugar syrup in the spring 

 for stimulative purposes. 



A flat-bottomed trough is made by •nailing 

 a 3^ -inch rim, made of 1-ineh boards, 

 around a board 10 inches wide and 3 feet 

 long. A float is made by spacing five pieces 

 of lath, each 24 inches long, an equal dis- 

 tance apart, so that when they are cleated 



Will feed a wholei apiary in a few minutes. 



together the float will easily slip lengthwise 

 in one end of the trough. A small piece of 

 %-inch board is nailed to the bottom piece 

 at one end to support one edge of a 60-pound 

 can. When ready for use, the can is filled 

 with sugar syrup of the desired consistency 

 and, after removing the cap, inverted and 

 set in the end of the trough so that the edge 

 of the can oj^posite the opening rests on the 

 cleat. The end of the feeder that contains 

 the float should be slightly the lower. The 

 float prevents the bees from drowning and 



