Gleanings In Bee Culture 



Published by The A. I. Root Co., Medina, Ohio 



H. H. ROOT, Assistant Editor 



A. I. ROOT, Editor Home Department 



E. R. ROOT, Editor 



A. L. BOYDEN, Advertising Manager 

 J. T. CALVERT, Business Manager 



VOL. XXXVI 



SEPTEMBER 1, 1908 



NO. 17 



Stray Straws 



Dr. C. C. Miller 



E. W. Alexander, as one of the rank and file, 

 let me salute you on your triumphant march to 

 receive your crown of rejoicing. "Well done, 

 good and faithful servant! " 



Editor Digges made some experiments which 

 showed that, when working on clover, the bee's 

 load rarely exceeds f'jj of a grain of nectar, yield- 

 ing from 2',^ to j^'i) of a grain of ripened honey. 

 That means that the nectar is boiled down to Yz 

 or 34 of its original weight. The ripened honey 

 averages ^4 grain per drop; but the bee must load 

 up again and again to produce that drop. 



The report of the United States Commission- 

 er of Internal Revenue shows that, during the fis- 

 cal year ended June 30 last, there were distilled 

 119,808,402 gallons of spirits — a decrease, as 

 compared with the previous year, of 14,333,672 

 gallons. There was paid to the government as 

 revenue on whisky and other spirituous liquors, 

 $147,550,281— a decrease of $15,767,038. 



Louis Scholl reports, A. B. J., 236, that he 

 has this year harvested over 40,000 pounds of 

 comb honey, "almost all by his wee little 6-feet-3 

 self." Good for Louis! [Considering the fact 

 that the season has not been very good in Texas 

 as a whole, makes the record of our 6-feet-3 all 

 the better. This means that our Texas depart- 

 ment will be all the richer for the experience 

 which this big crop brought with it. — Ed.] 



D. M. Macdonald, Irish B. J., p. 33, rebels 

 against the idea of having only a bee-space under 

 bottom-bars. He says, " Here, the X-inch, or 

 even the ^-^-inch space below frames is giving 

 place to a full V2-inch. Bees respect all the three 

 equally, and it is my belief that they would be 

 as well satisfied with a full inch." Your head is 

 level, my Scotch friend. Some of the spaces un- 

 der my bottom-bars are -^4 and %, and there is 

 no trouble. Really, the ventilating space is 2 

 inches, that being the depth of the bottom-board; 

 but an open rack within yk of bottom-bars pre- 

 vents building down. How much more than ?s 

 the space might be I don't know; but if I live 

 I'll find out. 



Mr. Editor, you say, p 927, that in baby 

 nuclei, when the queen has filled all available 

 cells she will stick two, three, or five eggs in a 

 cell sure; but are they not all worker-cells? In 

 the case I mentioned, there were five eggs in a 

 queen-cell, and I think no worker-cell had more 

 than one egg. Do you find in baby nuclei 

 (/tieen-celljvfhh more than one egg, and no laying- 

 workers present.? [No: now that we think of it. 



we have never noticed more than one egg in a 

 queen-cell unless laying workers were present; that 

 is to say, under normal conditions there is never 

 more than one egg in a queen-cell, so far as our 

 observation goes. The queen-cell in the nucleus 

 to which you refer must be, therefore, quite an 

 exception to this general rule. — Ed.] 



" Sweet clover usually begins to yield nectar 

 shortly after clover and basswood are out of 

 bloom," p. 1010. Sweet clover must be slower 

 with you than here, or else clover and basswood 

 earlier quitters. White sweet clover opened six 

 days before basswood opened here, this year. 

 How long it opened before the close of white 

 clover, I don't know yet — seven weeks at lea-st. 

 Yellow sweet clover was 23 days ahead of white 

 sweet clover, and only seven days after white 

 clover, in opening. [It is evident from what you 

 write elsewhere in these Straws, and from what 

 you have written at other times, that your clover 

 and'basswood flows begin and end much later 

 than in our locality. It is not strange, then, 

 that your early flow overlaps that from sweet clo- 

 ver. — Ed.] 



A section of honey has been in our refrigera- 

 tor six weeks. It looks just as dry and nice as 

 when first put in. I wish you would try the 

 same thing at Medina. Because a refrigerator 

 is cool like a cellar, does it necessarily follow that 

 a section in a refrigerator will become weepy in 

 the same way it will in a cellar. [Some refrig- 

 erators afford a dry cold, while the average cellar 

 furnishes a damp or wet cold. Then, too, in all 

 refrigerators the temperature is colder than in 

 any cellar. A dry continuous cold of, say, 40° 

 F. , or lower, in a refrigerator, will not make hon- 

 ey candy or become watery, while a variable 

 temperature with more or less of dampness of 50 

 or 60 or even 70° F. will do much damage to 

 comb honey. After all, a room with a dry hot 

 atmosphere, with enough ventilation to carry off 

 moisture, is a far better place for the storage of 

 comb honey than any refrigerator. — Ed.] 



Mr. Editor, you ask, p. 987, what my aver- 

 age yield for this year was. "Was".? Bless your 

 heart, it's not a case of "was" but "will be. " For 

 a good bit of honey is yet on the hives, and the 

 bees are still storing, although slowly. We had 

 an immense clover flow, which continued till the 

 clover was scorched by the drouth, no rain to 

 speak of falling from July 17 till Aug. 11. Then 

 a bounteous rain came, and to-day, Aug. 15, we 

 are getting more. If clover revives, and if hearts- 

 ease comes in suflicient quantity with its water- 

 white honey, the average will be pretty heavy. 

 I'll be glad to give it later. Just now there are 

 piled up in the honey-room 12,100 finished sec- 

 tions, making an average of nearly 94 sections 



