GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



May, 1919 



HEADS OF GRAIN 



proceeded as usual, and, working quietly and 

 slowly, kept things cleaned up all the time. 

 In spite of care in being extremely gentle, 

 all the colonies killed their queens. I do 

 not believe all those queens died, as I had 

 requeened with young stock at the end of 

 the preceding season. That is, I had re- 

 queened most of my colonies, and had, un- 

 unfortunately, lost my records so I could 

 not tell which had been so treated. But I 

 lost every queen, without exception, just 

 about two weeks before white-clover bloom. 

 This, with the fact that we had an unusually 

 dry season during sweet-clover bloom, gave 

 me absolutely no surplus last year. 



Milwaukee, Wis. Charles B. Piper. 



[We have had reports of the loss of 

 queens from several beekeepers during the 

 past season; and we noticed that more of 

 our queens disappeared than usual; but that 

 all of yours disappeared in so short a period 

 of time is surely very unusual, and we can 

 not account for it. Handling queens, in 

 clipping, sometimes causes a few to be de- 

 stroyed, especially if there is no honey com- 

 ing in at the time; but this could hardly ex- 

 plain such a loss as yours. A similar report 

 was recently made by D. P. Murry (see page 

 538, Sept. Gleanings, 1918).— Mel Pritchard.] 



The Trailer No After using a trailer 



Good for with my Ford for one 



Beekeepers. summer, I came to the 



conclusion it was a 

 poor investment for a beekeeper. The jerk- 



DIFFERENT FIELDS 



ing motion will about ruin a car in a short 

 time. To pay for my experience with trail- 

 ers I had the pleasure ( 1) of replacing one 

 axle, one drive shaft, one differential gear, 

 and making small repairs, to say nothing 

 about the extra wear on tires. For a man 

 who has very little hauling to do a trailer is 

 all right; but for a beekeeper, nothing is 

 better than a tin Lizzie with a light de- 

 livery bodj'. Ed Swenson. 

 Spring Valley, Minn. 



Are His Bees The review in the 



Immune March Gleanings of 



to the Disease? articles on the Isle of 



Wight disease has 

 been of great interest to me. I have been 

 quite sure that the disease now prevalent 

 in the Northwest is this disease and no oth- 

 er. I have lost nearly 400 colonies, ending 

 four years ago. Only seven colonies are left 

 cut of my whole number. These seven colo- 

 nies had the disease, but got over it. For 

 three seasons I kept them simply to make 

 sure they were all right. Last season I in- 

 creased again to nine colonies. I do not sell 

 queens now, as the bees are only hybrids. 

 In my eagerness to keep all recovered colo- 

 nies I made the mistake of letting a black 

 queen (one of the seven) survive. 



Why do I write this? Just to let you 

 know that the symptoms (page 171) are 

 exactly like the ones we experienced, and 

 that diseased colonies, if they recover, will 

 not get it again if brought in contact with 



Ml-, fciweiisoii iiiul the U'ailer he didn't likt 



