318 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



Ti 



*HE "Bee- 

 Flowers o)f 



North Amer- 

 ica, "by John H. 

 Lovell, appears 

 in the April 

 American Bee 

 Journal. Some 

 who really love 

 nature are re- 

 pelled quite as readily by an article on flow- 

 ers as by one on statistics, expecting to find 

 there a tiresome enumeration of order, fami- 

 lies, genera, sj^ecies, etc., together with oth- 

 er dry facts and botanical expressions which 

 they do not understand. Such a one will be 

 happily surprised by the most entertaining 

 way that Mr. Lovell introduces to us the 

 flowers especially adapted to bees. He re- 

 fers to the three roles the bees play as hon- 

 ey-makers, fruit-makers, and flower-makers, 

 and particularly discusses the last. He says 

 that bees alone among the insects feed their 

 brood on pollen, and that they have been 

 the unconscious builders of thousands of 

 bright-colored attractive blossoms that have 

 added so appreciably to the happiness of the 

 world. Studying the ways in which bees 

 have modified flowers in the past, should, he 

 thinks, teach us useful lessons in regard to 

 the possibilities of the future. The real bee- 

 flowers, he shows, are quite unevenly dis- 

 tributed in the different plant families. He 

 distinguishes between bee-flowers and hon- 

 ey plants, and says that the great group 

 Compositae, such as asters and goldenrods, 

 are not bee-flowers since they have not 

 adapted themselves to the bee, and yet he 

 says no other family contains so many hon- 

 ey plants. Special adaptations and changes 

 of form are mentioned in connection with 

 the lily family, orchid family, and others. 

 It is also stated that the golden currant 

 changes its color when it ceases to secrete 

 nectar. 



The pea family consists almost entirely of 

 bee-flowers, many of them being excellent 

 honey plants, such as the clovers, vetches, 

 and locust; also the heath and blueberry, 

 and many of the mint family, 



On color Mr. Lovell makes some surpris- 

 ing statements. He says honeybees and 

 bumblebees have been observed to make 20 

 per cent more visits to the red and blue 

 flowers than to the white and yellow, and 

 that east of the Rocky Mountains and north 

 of Tennessee there are 366 red and red-pur- 

 ple flowers and 519 blue and blue-purple 

 flowers, and a large part of them are bee- 

 flowers. Experimentally he has proved that 

 bees can readily distinguish blue from other 

 colors, and he believes that bees might easily 

 learn to associate blue with flowers likely to 

 supply nectar. It is certain, he says, that 

 blue coloration is correlated with high spe- 

 cialization of the corolla, and that in the 

 absence of insects (especially bees) the col- 

 ors would never have been evolved. 

 *■ * * 



The March issue of The Beekeeper 's Item 



W^^^^^^^ 



May, 1919 



is a special 

 queen number. 

 Perhaps the best 

 article is one by 

 H. D. Murray, 

 describing the 

 method of rear- 

 ing queens 

 which Dr. Miller 

 recommends t o 

 the ordinary beekeeper. His version is 

 about as follows: 



During an artificial or natural flow, when 

 the queen is laying freely, and comb built 

 readily, attach vertically a strip of founda- 

 tion, about two inches wide and four long, 

 about one-third of the way from each end 

 of the top-bar of an empty frame. Eemove 

 a comb from the hive of the best breeder 

 and replace with this prepared frame. 



In a week or ten days this will be about 

 three-fourths full of drawn comb, the lower 

 line of the brood and eggs forming the let- 

 ter W. Trim off the comb up to the newly 

 hatched larvae, and insert the comb be- 

 tween combs of honey and pollen in a strong 

 queenless and broodless colony, and contract 

 the entrance to a sjiaee large enough to ad- 

 mit only three or four bees at a time. On 

 the eighth day after giving the prepared 

 comb, count the cells and kill as many 

 queens as you have cells, and on the tenth 



day distribute them. 



* * * 



A most interesting article on J. S. Harbi- 

 son, the first commercial honey-producer of 

 the Pacific coast, is given by Frank G. Pel- 

 lett in the April issue of the American Bee 

 Journal. In order to get Harbison 's 67 colo- 

 nies of bees from Pennsylvania to California 

 it was necessary to ship them to the Isthmus 

 of Panama, freight across, and then reship 

 to their destination, an entire distance of 

 5,900 miles. Finding colonies very scarce 

 in the West, Harbison made other importa- 

 tions, selling 240 colonies at $100 each. 



Mr. Harbison claimed to have invented 

 the section for comb honey in 1857, his sec- 

 tion being a two-pound size. Sixteen years 

 later he shipped to Chicago his first carload 

 of comb honey — at that time probably the 

 largest shipment ever made by one producer. 

 Three years later, in 1876, he shipped 100 

 tons (ten carloads) to New York. This won- 

 derful shipment attracted considerable in- 

 terest. Among those who saw the remarka- 

 ble trainload was a young man named M. H. 

 Mendleson whose imagination and ambition 

 were so fired that he also was impelled to 

 strike out for California, where, some years 

 later, he duplicated the crop that sent him 

 west, and is today one of the largest and 

 most successful beekeepers of the State. 



* * * 



Under the title "Food for Bees" the 

 March issue of the British Bee Journal gives 

 the following astonishing quotations and 

 remarks: 



(1) "Toasts of bread steeped in strong ale, 

 and put in a beehive, is very good and cheap 



