THE BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW, 



235 



Crimson Clover as a lioiiey forage plant 

 is beiufi talked about considerably of late. 

 There is yet a d()ul)t as to its.abilily to witli- 

 stand our northern winters. The director 

 of our State experiment station says that the 

 iudicatious nearly all point to its inability. 



Mr. Heddon says that with the exception 

 of the first two years of his bee-keeping he 

 has secured all of the nectar that nature has 

 furnished in his locality, but he gets it now 

 with one-fourth the labor that he did at first. 

 Judging from my own experience, 1 think 

 that he is speaking within bounds. 



«^<«^«ir«.li»1r^ 



Dr. Miller " thinks," in the American 

 Bee, Journal, that the doing without a veil 

 with some bee-keepers looks a good bit like 

 stubbornness, and I agree with him. A vet- 

 eran bee-keeper called upon him one day 

 and was offered a veil. ( )h, no, he never 

 used a veil ; couldn't get him to touch one, 

 but he kept the smoker puffing about his 

 head all of the time, and the Dr, thought if 

 he'd been working with the bees it would 

 have been a saving of time to have worn a 

 veil. 



Foul Brood is not transmitted through 

 the queen ; at least, this seems to be the de- 

 cision of all practical bee-keepers who have 

 had to do with the disease. Cheshire claims 

 to have found the spores of the disease in 

 the ovaries of the queen, but I have yet to 

 know of a case where the disease was com- 

 municated to a healthy colony by the intro- 

 duction of a queen taken from a diseased 

 colony. Mr. McEvoy, the foul brood In- 

 spector of Ontario, says that he has taken 

 home a great many queens that have been 

 removed from diseased colonies, and used 

 them in his apiary, and never has disease 

 been transmitted by this course. 



Food, temperature and moisture are prob- 

 ably the three greatest factors to be consid- 

 ered in the successful wintering of bees. In 

 commenting upon Mr. Boardman's asser- 

 tion, and my sanction, as to the destruction 

 to bees when a low temperature and moist- 

 ure meets as allies, Mr. Heddon asks what 

 we are going to do with his wintering of 74 

 colonies with cold and moisture present in 

 the extreme. Those colonies had nothing 

 l)ut pure sugar stores and were thus able to 

 endure the cold and moisture without hav- 



ing their intestines overloaded. It is the 

 ordinary stores combined with cold and 

 moisture that makes the havoc. Jjeave out 

 one of the factors and the combination is 

 broken. I think it is easier to keep our bees 

 warm and dry in winter than to remove their 

 natural stores and substitute sugar. 



Numbering Hives and the best way of do- 

 ing this is being written about in (Jleaninys 

 by Dr. Miller. Some way I feel like going 

 back a little further and asking why we 

 should number our hives ? If a man is given 

 to experimentation, to keeping track of all of 

 his queens, their ages, the amount of honey 

 stored by their resi)ective colonies, etc., then 

 there is an occasion for using numbers. If 

 it is desired to put each hive back upon the 

 same stand when taking them from the cel- 

 lar in the spring, there may be another use 

 for numbers. My brother and myself once 

 tried to do something in these lines, espec- 

 ially in keeping a little history of each col- 

 ony, but it was abandoned in a year or two. 

 I don't say that in the right man's hands 

 something might not be done by following 

 out this plan, but in the ordinary apiary run 

 for honey I fear it would be time wasted. 



SIZE AND SHAPE OF BROOD NESTS. 



Mr. Heddon says in his paper that " He 

 who fits his hives to successful wintering at 

 the expense of the size, length, depth or style 

 of frame that he prefers for other advan- 

 tages, makes an awful mistake." From an 

 experience with thousands of hives he be- 

 lieves that the depth and length of the brood 

 nest have no bearing whatever on the winter-^ 

 ing of the bees, but he does find a difference 

 in favor of hives not more than eight frames 

 wide. He says further that bees will not 

 breed any faster in deep combs that are now 

 being advocated than in the Bingham frame 

 which is only five inches deep and twenty- 

 two long. I may also add that some are 

 saying that the bees do not rear brood to so 

 great an extent when a divisible brood 

 chamber is used, and that the (pieen is likely 

 to neglect one section. I have used such 

 hives in large numbers now for years, and 

 have never seen anything of the kind. There 

 is usually more brood in the lower section 

 just as there is more brood in the lower part 

 of an ordinary frame of a single story hive, 

 but, at the height of the breeding season, 

 this difference is very slight. 



