88 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE, 



Feb. 1 



menced, and for eleven weeks we had little or 

 no rain, and the season was so foreshortened as 

 to be almost a failure — any way a poor one. Jan. 

 19, 1908, 1 placed her with two frames of brood 

 only (no honey to speak of, as she laid up to 19 

 cells wide beneath the top-bar, and 14 wide 

 against the bottom-bar on a splinted frame) inad- 

 vertently on the old stand, and had removed five 

 frames of brood (hive is ten-frame). At the end 

 of the season, i. e. , on March 15, the hive con- 

 tained nine of the frames literally full of honey 

 from top to bottom bar, and end to end. The 

 tenth frame had about half brood on both sides, 

 and a little honey or pollen. All the honey was 

 capped dark-looking, and quite unpleasant, to 

 my liking There are few Italian colonies here 

 (I have only five), and I am inclined to call such 

 a queen a good one; but how does she compare 

 with your experience.? The eight frames in the 

 hive at the time of taking her brood away con- 

 tained wired sheets ot foundation, full sheets. 

 The queen was imported from Australia. 



This spring, on August 2 (corresponding to 

 Feb. 2 in your climate) she had three frames about 

 three-quarters — perhaps slightly more — full of 

 brood, and now, at the beginning of September, 

 I am putting her in a nucleus to obtain breeding 

 comb and lengthen her life. Is this correct.? 

 Her bees would shortly have swarmed had I not 

 removed her, as we have had a spring drier and 

 sunnier than I have ever known before. 



White clover is our main honey crop, and this 

 is a dairying district. I dare say other plants as- 

 sist considerably, as dandelion is very common 

 in pastures; and in a dry season that weed-pest, 

 pennyroyal, flourishes over 24 inches high, even 

 on the dryest land, and has had to be included in 

 our schedule of weeds in the noxious-weeds act. 

 Pennyroyal honey has a slightly unpleasant 

 taste, but not unbearable. It yields in dry sea- 

 sons enormously, judging by the bees and other 

 insects upon it. 



I should add that half of my black colonies 

 last autumn had to be fed, though this was partly 

 due to too much humbugging in a season that 

 turned out a poor one. But the Italian colony 

 referred to had some manipulation also. 



4. On page 799, July 1, Stray Straws says, 

 " Smoking not allowed during office hours, etc.," 

 which you endorse; but can you not put it in 

 again to read during any hours.? 



5. I*not our New Zealand bottoiii-board su- 

 perior to the Danzenbaker.? It is simply a flat 

 board two feet long by the width of the hive, 

 having in the front a V ^ inch deep, cut from 

 the full hive width in front to the apex of the V, 

 4 inches back, so that, to regulate the width of 

 the entrance or shut the hive right up, it is only 

 necessaryto slide the body to or from the front edge. 

 In hot weather the body overlaps the alighting- 

 board, which is sloping, and attached or not, as de- 

 sired, to the cleats beneath the bottom. With the 

 Danzenbaker one must have a block of wood to 

 close the entrance, I having used a frame; and to 

 do so during a case of robbing, the bees actually 

 moved the frame end away so as to get past it. 

 This could not occur with our V-shaped bottom 

 and hive drawn right to the back edge of the bot- 

 tom-board. I have ten Danzenbaker bottoms in 

 use, and am doing away with them gradually, as 

 our climate does not warrant their use. We 



have no show, and frosts are gone by 10 a.m. in 

 the depth of winter. Every frosty night means 

 a gloriously warm day, and bees fly whenever it 

 is not wet. 



Kihikihi, N. Z. 



[Dr. Miller, to whom this was referred, re- 

 plies:] 



1. The object of the whole proceeding is to 

 have all the bees except the field force in the 

 queenless hive while leaving the brood with the 

 queen, and it seems the quickest way to do it is 

 to exchange hives. We thus have in the cell- 

 rearing hive not only all the very young bees, 

 but a younger lot of field bees as compared with 

 those of the other hive. If we "simply brush 

 the bees from the combs of the queenright hive 

 into the cell-building hive," we have in the cell- 

 building hive only the very youngest bees and 

 the older part of the field-bees; whereas by the 

 changing indicated we leave in the cell-building 

 hive all the bees of the two hives except these 

 older field-bees. One can hardly think of a bet- 

 ter assortment of bees to start and complete 

 queen-cells. 



If it be too heavy work to lift the hives, the 

 change can be made by merely changing frames. 



The whole thing looks fussy on paper, and be- 

 tween you and me it is fussy. Moreover, there 

 is no need of any such fussing. I had supposed 

 it necessary to have in the cell-building hive no 

 brood except the one frame for cell-building. I 

 have found since that no such necessity exists. 

 If a frame partly filled with comb freshly built be 

 put in the center of the hive, the bees have such 

 a strong preference for it that no cells to speak of 

 are built on the old combs. So, instead of all 

 the fuss detailed one merely needs to change the 

 queen from one hive to the other, which is sim- 

 ple enough. In actual practice, all I do now is 

 to put the freshly built comb in the center of any 

 colony made queenless, and I get cells of best 

 quality. It is very, very simple. 



2. It works well in many cases, but can not be 

 put down as reliable in all cases. 



3. A queen whose workers cap honey watery 

 is out of the question for comb honey, but may 

 be all right for extracted. That aside, I should 

 say that the question whether a queen is good 

 enough to breed from should not be settled 

 merely by the record of her performance. The 

 question is not merely, " How well has she done.?" 

 but " Has she outstripped others.? " If she is the 

 best you have or can get, then she is good enough 

 to breed from. What you report of the perform- 

 ance of that queen was likely excellent, consid- 

 ering the poor season. 



Once a queen has her reputation thoroughly 

 established, your plan of keeping her in a nucleus 

 is excellent. 



But we do have early swarming here — not, of 

 course, up here in the North, but remember that 

 some of our Southern States are nearer the equa- 

 tor than you are. 



4. Your amendment with regard to smoking is 

 good, and is adopted in some cases. As civiliza- 

 tion advances it will be more general. 



5. Hardly worth while discussing which is bet- 

 ter when we have something that is better than 

 either — a plain shallow box two inches deep, 

 with an open-work rack to put in during the time 

 when bees would build down. 



