802 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



December, 1919 



BEES, MEN AND THINGS 



(You may find it here) 



HONEY crop 

 in this part 

 of Idaho 

 was as poor as 

 one can expect 

 in a dry season 

 such as we had 

 this year, and 

 had it not been 

 for sweet clover 



along the creek that I seeded two years ago 

 I could not have taken off at all. — Mrs. 

 Margaret Green, Washington County, Ida. 



I hope you can give us some good recipes 

 on how to make honey wine this year. — 

 Louis Biediger, Medina County, Tex. 



The so-called disappearing disease was 

 very bad until about or near the close of the 

 buckwheat bloom. The bees ran about in all 

 directions and gathered in heaps and died 

 by the thousands. — Elwood Bond, Monroe 

 County, Pa. 



It has been an unusually late fall here. 

 Today, Nov. 4, the bees are bringing in pol- 

 len and honey from tobacco bloom. The 

 honey is very dark, with good body and 

 strong flavor. — Bernard Johnson, Campbell 

 County, Va. 



Geo. H. Eea has been very successful in 

 getting sugar for the New York State bee- 

 keepers. He knew exactly what he wanted 

 and went after it. He had the backing of a 

 well-organized system of Farm Bureaus 

 within the State who co-operated and did 

 everything according to the program he laid 

 out, and the result of it is highly gratify- 

 ing. — J. G. Needham, Professor of Entomolo- 

 gv and Limnologv, Cornell University, Itha- 

 ca, N. Y. 



Nelson W. Peck, a Yakima Valley beeman, 

 paid $1.00 a minute for a 75-minute ride in 

 an airplane for the purpose of picking out 

 locations for his stands sufficiently removed 

 from spray-poisoned orchards. He says he 

 would have saved $10,000 if he had made 

 such a flight a year ago, and he plans to 

 make three more before finally placing all 

 his bees. Peck lost 750 out of 1,000 colonies 

 of bees last season from poisoning. — Wash- 

 ington Farmer, Spokane, Wash. 



This is not a very big place — about the 

 size of California. We have a total of 

 about 100,000 colonies. We have a coopera- 

 tive association to handle all the honey. This 

 last season we exported $165,000 worth as 

 well as supplying the local market. For 

 the last two or three years conditions have 

 not been normal at all here, as we have no 

 boats to export our produce. Just now it is 

 being got away rapidly. — T. J. Mannex, 

 Waihou, Thames Valley,' N. Z. 



A judge in Thompson, Conn., the other 

 day fined a man $50.00 and sentenced him 

 to three months ' imprisonment for stealing 

 a hive of bees. The man who swiped the 

 hive of bees might have got away with it 



perhaps, if, while 

 he was lugging 

 off the hive in 

 the dark, his 

 foot hadn 't slip- 

 ped, and he got 

 a fall that wak- 

 ened the bees so 

 that they poured 

 out and stung 

 hhn on the face and hands so severely that 

 the swelling betrayed him the next day, and 

 he was arrested. — Boston Post. 



An organization of Inland Empire apiar- 

 ists to be known as the Inland Empire Bee- 

 keepers' Association and to hold its first 

 meeting in Spokane the early part of next 

 February is recommended in the report of 

 the executive committee of the Northern 

 Idaho Beekeepers ' Association. — Spokane 

 News Bureau. 



We have inspected 700 more apiaries this 

 year than last and many more thousand 

 colonies. This has been accomplished with 

 the same number of inspectors (four), and 

 we conducted 16 beekeepers ' tours in as 

 many counties. Four to nine demonstration 

 meetings were held daily with an average 

 attendance of 24 beekeepers. — C. O. Yost, 

 Marion County, Ind. 



The farmers let their tobacco bloom late 

 in the season for the first time I have ever 

 known them to manage it this way. It is 

 the richest honey plant I have ever seen. 

 There were great drops of nectar in the 

 bloom and the bees worked on it to beat 

 anything I have ever seen. The blossom is 

 trumpet-shape so the bees can get all of the 

 nectar. — J. M. Venable, Surry County, N. C. 



The Cascade Mountains divide Washing- 

 ton from north to south; and so far as con- 

 ditions and climate are concerned it is the 

 same as two separate States. The west side 

 has never been considered much of a bee 

 country. There are not more than a dozen 

 commercial producers on that side, and none 

 of them on anything like a large scale. — W. 

 L. Cox, Chehalis County, Wash. 



On page 588 J. E. Crane speaks of clean- 

 ing propolis from sections. Now, when I 

 raise comb honey for the market I take m.y 

 broken sections, that part with the beeway, 

 and lay them on top of the sections in my 

 super, exactly covering the becAvay in the 

 sections, and . that stops the trouble from 

 propolis. The sections will come off as 

 clean as a pin. — L. E. Eeed, Clay County, 

 Kan. 



I own three apiaries. In one, an Italian 

 yard, there seems to be no letup to drones 

 even tho I deprive them of all unnecessary 

 drone comb. Bees will draw worker-cells 

 to drone dimensions any way. In another 

 apiary it seems impossible to get enough 

 drones, altho I have the bees draw out start- 

 ers for drone comb. Neither locality nor 

 honey flow seems to make the difference. I 

 believe the difference is due to the strain, or 



