1908 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



699 



sands of robbers that will be continually prying 

 around the cracks of the hives and the entrances 

 of weak colonies. There is no advantage in 

 working in this way. The hives should be 

 opened early in the morning or late at night, or 

 by moonlight. One can do very fair work pro- 

 viding an attendant holds a lantern. In a word 

 we may say, be careful to avoid the robbing 

 habit; for when it is once started in a yard it is 

 likely to continue throughout the season, caus- 

 ing no end of annoyance and loss of bees, and a 

 continuous uproar in the yard. — Ed.] 



IS THERE A PERFECT LOCATION? 



Some Observations from a Bee-keeper 



Who has Traveled all Over the 



United States and Cuba. 



BY LESLIE BURR. 



I have been in almost every section of the 

 United States that has the reputation of being 

 a good honey-producing country, and I spent 

 the greater portion of four years in Cuba. 

 While there I visited all of the provinces and 

 worked bees in half of them. What I intend to 

 do now is to show what the conditions are in 

 various parts of the country. 



First we will go to California and take a look 

 at conditions there. The bee industry is of such 

 importance that you can hear the prospects of a 

 honey crop the coming season discussed at the 

 hotels in the cities, or at the corner groceries in 

 the small towns. 



And then when you see the sage-covered hills, 

 with not a foot of them under cultivation, you 

 say, this is surely a bee-keeper's paradise, and so 

 it would be if the sage yielded every year. But 

 it does not, and the bee-keepers often think they 

 could improve their condition by making a 

 move, and wish that they were in Arizona or 

 some other place where fog is unknown. 



In Arizona and New Mexico conditions are 

 much the same, for you are not always sure of a 

 honey crop. Since there is no rain, the bee- 

 keeper has to go where there is irrigation, and 

 he has but one thing to depend upon for his sur- 

 plus honey, alfalfa. And if you think that an 

 alfalfa region is a bee-keeper's paradise, divest 

 yourself of the thought; for, while there are sev- 

 eral crops of hay cut each season, the period of 

 bloom is so short that it takes several months to 

 get as much honey as would be obtained in the 

 same number of weeks in the North. 



Then there is that great State, Texas, where 

 you can get any thing you want in the line of 

 climate, where you can travel in a direct line as 

 far as from Chicago to New Orleans, and still 

 be inside of the State lines, where you can spend 

 the winter at Corpus Christi out of doors and 

 then go into the pan-handle region in May and 

 find a blizzard raging. 



But, to come back to the question of bee loca- 

 tions. Texas has her share; but do not expect 

 to find them everywhere. There are parts of 

 Texas as large as the average Eastern States 

 where it would be impossible for bees to live, 

 let alone gathering any surplus. And Texas is 

 the same as the previously mentioned localities. 



You are not certain of getting a crop. The 

 mesquite is a freak, like the sage of California or 

 or the black mangrove of Florida, in that it 

 yields only when conditions are right. 



Possibly, now, your thoughts have strayed to 

 Colorado, and in your mind you have pictured 

 the great alfalfa-fields, with the mass of sweet 

 clover growing along the irrigation-ditches and 

 road-sides. What you will generally find is 

 that a great portion of the alfalfa is cut before 

 coming into bloom. But you argue that it has 

 been proved that it is a loss to cut alfalfa at such 

 early periods, and it is only a question of a short 

 time until the farmers will let it bloom as in 

 years gone by. But such reasoning is mostly 

 "hot air," for, as a rule, where the early cutting 

 of alfalfa is practiced the hay is used for feeding 

 sheep, and alfalfa for sheep has to be cut before 

 coming into bloom. 



Then there is such a thing, in parts of Colora- 

 do, as overstocking. I know of one crossroads 

 where there are three apiaries almost within a 

 stone's throw of each other. Each of these 

 apiaries belongs to a well-known bee-keeper. 

 There is another section of the State where there 

 are ten thousand colonies within a space of 

 twenty miles square, and the size of the apiaries 

 is such that a Californian or a Cuban would 

 hardly feel justified in calling them an apiary. 



So much for various parts of the country. 

 But do not think that I mean it is impossible for 

 one, no matter where he is, to be able to benefit 

 himself by a change of location. Not a bit of it. 

 I believe that, to make a success of bee-keeping, 

 one must have a good location, and that the 

 man and hives are secondary. But what I do 

 want to say is, that nowhere is there a great bee 

 paradise which one can find by moving one or 

 two thousand miles; and that he who wishes to 

 better himself can most likely do so just as well 

 by moving fifty or sixty miles as a thousand; 

 for, from my own observations, there are still a 

 number of good locations in the North that are 

 not overstocked. The old Spanish explorers 

 sought for their visionary Eldorado, but it was 

 never found; and so it is with the bee-keeper 

 who thinks that somewhere there is a perfect 

 bee country. It does not exist. 



Valparaiso, Ind. 



PERFECTION IN BROOD - COMBS 

 WITHOUT WIRE OR SPLINTS. 



BY WALTER S. POUDER. 



Having received many inquiries about wiring, 

 and using splints in brood-frames, and as many 

 of these inquiries are from readers of Gleanings, 

 I should like to explain the method which I have 

 found most satisfactory. In short, I use neither 

 wire nor splints; but having my combs perfect is 

 one of the hundred things that I am " cranky " 

 about. I have had considerable experience in 

 extracting and in shipping bees, and once thought 

 that wiring was absolutely necessary ; but with 

 horizontal wiring I found bulged combs, and in 

 vertical wiring the wires along the top-bar were 

 very unsightly to me, and the bees seemed to 

 want to store propolis along these wires, and to 

 me the work of wiring always seemed very tedi- 



