364 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



Stray Straws 



De. C. C. Miller, Marengo, 111. 



A BEGINNER might understand from a 

 footnote, p. 140, that a certain size of sec- 

 tion may be found that will average a 

 pound. I don't think the editor means that, 

 for there is no such size. If you find a 

 super filled with sections of such size that 

 they average just a pound, you may find 

 another lot "filled at the same time by anoth- 

 er colony with diiferent average. With the 

 same colony you may find the average dif- 

 ferent in "different yeai-s, or in different 

 times of the same year. [You are correct 

 regarding different colonies. — ^Ed.] 



I^M glad A. I. Root is taking up the cloth- 

 ing question. But why not tell us where 

 those Florida shoes can be had, and at what 

 price? But I'm more interested in women's 

 fashions. If I understand correctly, freak 

 fashions are gotten up in Paris — fashions 

 that self-respecting French women will not 

 wear — and foisted upon American women 

 as the proper caper. Thank the good Lord, 

 a rebellion has begun. A. I., have you no- 

 ticed lately the fashions in The Ladies' 

 Home Journal? It will do your heart good 

 to look them over — genuine American fash- 

 ions, and to me they look beautiful beside 

 the outlandish things that bring high prices 

 merely because imported. 



0. L. Hershiser has made out a strong 

 cas? as'ainst extracting unripe honey, p. 

 177. He's right. But he may not feel so 

 much like condemning Mr. Hopkins' views 

 if he takes into consideration the difference 

 in conditions in this country and in New 

 Zealand. Here, nectar is counted good if 

 it contains no more than 75 per cent water. 

 In New Zealand, nectar, when first gather- 

 ed, is generally thick enough to j^ass for 

 honey Under the United States pure-food 

 laws. Mr. Hopkins saj-s, American Bee 

 Journal 92, ""When first gathered, nectar 

 rarely contains more than 25 per cent of 

 moisture, and usually much less." If the 

 two men were to change places, they might 

 change views. Matter of " locality " again, 

 you see. 



B. 0. Martin, p. 180, I think you are 

 right in saying that bees which become 

 queenless accumulate pollen before becoming 

 queenless. (f it is a case of a virgin lost 

 on her bridal trip. I think Mr. Holtermann 

 is right in saying that when bees lose a lay- 

 ing queen they accumulate pollen after the 

 loss of the qiieen. In both cases there is 

 precisely the same thing, as Mr. Holtermann 

 says: "The bees gathered pollen, and did 

 not have lar\-3e to feed the pollen to, and it 



had, therefore, accumulated in the combs." 

 For, so far as brood was concerned, the 

 colony with a virgin was the same as a 

 queenless colony. You ask, " Did you ever 

 examine a colony that had just lost a queen "? 

 and did you not find the combs full of lion- 

 ey and pollen?" and then you limit the 

 question to the exceptional case of a virgin 

 lost on her wedding-trip. Ask that same 

 question without any limitation and the 

 answer will be, " No, not if the queen had 

 been doing good work at laying right 

 along." 



Try the tiling in this way: Go to a colo- 

 ny witli a good laying queen and no accu- 

 mulation of pollen, and kill the queen. Look 

 two or three days later, and see if tliere's 

 any accumulation of pollen. Not a bit ; for 

 there has been as much brood to feed as if 

 the ciueen had continued laying. But go 

 two or three weeks later, and see if you 

 don't find the extra pollen. 



You seem to think, Mr. Editor, that half 

 a cubic meter of air is rather small for a 

 13-pound colony to use in an hour, p. 204. 

 Let's see. At that rate, in a room 10 by 10 

 and 8 feet high two such colonies would 

 smother inside of 24 hours. Seems to me 

 that's using some air. You're just right, 

 that in a nearly dormant condition they'd 

 use much less. My guess would be not a 

 twentieth as mi;ch. [We did not mean to 

 imply that the limit of a cubic meter of air 

 per colony in an ordinary bee-cellar would 

 kill the bees, for, as a matter of fact, a 

 dozen men all smoking can exist in a small 

 room, overheated, with i^ractically no ven- 

 tilation, for several hours. But it is hard 

 on the men, just the same. If we were to 

 put a colony in a glass bottle, assuming 

 that it could be done, having an internal 

 capacit}' of a cubic meter, and seal it, we 

 believe such colony would be dead in a very 

 short time, even if the temperature sur- 

 rounding the bottle were kept down to 45 

 degrees. The fact is. in an ordinary cellar 

 there would be constant ingress and egress 

 of air. There is usually space around the 

 windows and doors that let in considerable 

 air, especially if the temperature outside is 

 25 or 30 degi'ees lower. The oxygen in or- 

 dinal' air would have to be almost com- 

 pletely exhausted before suffocation would 

 ensue. Perhaps it would pay us next win- 

 ter to make a metal box a meter long, wide, 

 and deep, and see how long a colony would 

 last in it. We would expect them to boil 

 out of the entrance of the hive and die in- 

 side of half an hour. — Ed,] 



