1908 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



993 



Fancies and 

 Fallacies 



By J. E. Crane 



The testimony of E. W. Alexander as to the 

 value of bees to farmers, page 642, should not be 

 forgotten when neighbors complain of our bees. 



FORMING NUCLEI. 



The plan of forming nuclei from queenless 

 colonies to rtiake them stay in place, as given by 

 Dr. Miller, page 622, May 15, is well worth re- 

 membering. It is a good practice, when we find 

 any new method of management or manipulation, 

 to put it to the test in a small way, and then we 

 do not forget it. 



# 



PREVENTING LEAKAGE IN HONEV-JARS. 



Mr. C. F. Smith is on the right track in using 

 soft paper to prevent leakage in covers to tum- 

 blers filled with honey, page 624. I have often 

 thought that if we had something like blotting- 

 paper for the inside of caps like the Simplex and 

 other jars, it would be far better than the hard 

 board now sent with them. The soft paper gives, 

 and a close joint is made. 



KILLING MOTHS. 



On page 571, May 1, Prof. H. A. Surface adds 

 much to our know-ledge for controlling the rav- 

 ages of the bee-moth, and 1 have put his plan to 

 the test and find it easily used. I have turned 

 down a corner of that page so as to find it easily. 

 The recipe is easily remembered, but it may be 

 well to have his article handy to refer to, to be 

 reminded of his cautions about using the danger- 

 ous drugs. 



BOTTOM STARTERS. 



The question raised by H. M. Jameson, page 

 643, as to why bees commence on bottom start- 

 ers first, is interesting. He ascribes it to lack of 

 heat; but as heat rises one would suppose it would 

 be hotter at the top than at the bottom of the sec- 

 tion. I think differently. It has seemed to me 

 that the cause lies in the fact that some bees dis- 

 like to go far from their combs to start new combs. 

 Many years ago I used boxes holding about four 

 pounds of honey, with two starters of comb at 

 the top, say 1 5^2 inches square, with none at the 

 bottom, and I found that certain colonies were 

 much inclined to begin at the bottom. This 

 was especially true of weak colonies and some 

 strains of Italian bees. 



* 



BROOD AND HONEY IN THE SAME CELL. 



I saw something new a few days ago. In 

 transferring some young larv^ from a brood- 

 comb to queen-cells for queen-rearing I found a 

 cell among the brood nearly filled with honey, 

 and a larva floating on the honey. The larva 

 appeared to be about two days old, and I guessed 

 that it had died from an unwholesome diet. 

 Evidently some worker or workers had needlessly 

 stored honey in a cell already occupied with 

 brood. I do not remember ever seeing or hear- 



ing of such a thing before. I have seen plenty 

 of larva- floating on honey, but it was where the 

 clumsy hand of man had interfered by extracting 

 both honey and brood together. Well, I think 

 we ought to be charitable toward this one little 

 witless bee for making such a mistake. The 

 wonder is not that one has made a mistake, but 

 that of the many millions of worker bees hatched, 

 all know without teaching or experience how to 

 feed the young larv;t by preparing just the right 

 kind of food, and the exact quantity, as well as 

 placing it in the right cells. 

 * 



QUEEN-TRAPS VS. CLIPPED QUEENS. 



It seems evident by the article on page 555, 

 May 1, that R. L. Taylor does not intend to be 

 led or misled by A. J. Halter, and on the next 

 page Dr. Miller proceeds to prod him because he 

 has dared to say that " clipped queens are an un- 

 mitigated nuisance at swarming time," and some 

 other things. Well, I don't know much about 

 the use of queen-traps; but it has seemed to me 

 that the use of them on several hundred hives 

 would be more " plague than profit " as an ac- 

 quaintance used to say, and I could not well get 

 along without clipping all my laying queens in 

 spring, with apiaries many miles apart, and tall 

 trees near. For all that, there is room for a dif- 

 ference of opinion between sensible people as to 

 the value of clipping queens' wings. Talking 

 with some extensive bee-keepers in Michigan last 

 summer I expressed my surprise that they did 

 not clip their queens' wings; but they showed 

 me in about two minutes that they could care 

 for their bees during swarming time with less 

 labor if the queens could fly than if their wings 

 were clipped, to say nothing of the labor of look- 

 ing up all queens in spring. 



It makes a good deal of difference whether you 

 have several apiaries run for comb honey with 

 many tall trees near by, or whether you have 

 only one yard with a few small trees and shrubs, 

 and are working for extracted honey. Those 

 Michiganders are a splendid lot of men, but they 

 have a way of doing their own thinking, and do 

 not hesitate to take short cuts, even if not ortho- 

 dox. 



* 



WIND AND WINTERING. 



Which way shall we face our hives during 

 spring weather.'' page 419, April 1 — a live ques- 

 tion, surely, and one that gives me a chance to 

 say that wind plays a more important part in 

 wintering and springing than most bee-keepers 

 are accustomed to think. At the beginning of 

 winter I had in my home yard 127 colonies to 

 be wintered outdoors. I have just been looking 

 them over, and find a loss of 15 colonies, nearly 

 all during the spring. We have had one of the 

 worst springs for bees I ever knew — almost con- 

 stant heavy winds, either north or south, from 

 March 15 to May 15, with the exception of the 

 last week in April. Of the abo\e number of 

 colonies 24 faced north, 35 east, 30 south, 38 

 west. Of the dead colonies, 2 faced the north, 

 6 the east, 2 the south, and 5 the west. One of 

 those that died facing north was robbed late in 

 spring, and died from starvation. In propor- 

 tion to the number of hives, the loss in those 

 facing east was twice as great as in those facing 



