JUNE 1, 1913 



daj' and night would cause an Easterner 

 some uneasiness for fear of frost, for a 

 change in temperature between day and 

 night is often from tliirty to forty degi'ees. 

 It is not at all uncommon for the tempera- 

 ture to fall at this time of the year from 

 ninety degrees at midday to forty by four 

 o'clock of the following morning. It can 

 readily be seen from this that bees must 

 AAait until after sunrise on many days be- 

 fore the air is sufficiently warm to permit 

 them to venture into the field. But the con- 

 dition just spoken of does not necessarily 

 cause loss of bees. Fog is one feature that 

 causes heavy loss. By this I do not mean 

 the low dense fogs, but the high fog clouds 

 that drift over the sky the greater part of 

 many days, wluch become denser in the early 

 afternoon. Then, again, the intermittent 

 cloudy days following a storm fluri-j- bring 

 conditions that are equal to any bee-trap 

 that was ever invented. The sun comes out 

 for i^erhaps twenty or tliirty minutes, which 

 gives the bees reason to pour into the field 

 by the thousands, when suddenly a cloud 

 floats over, obscuring the sun, and perhaps 

 it remains there for an indefinite time, caus- 

 ing the bees to chill in the field to such an 

 extent that they are unable to take wing 

 and return to the hive. The sun sometimes 

 shines enough to warm them and enable 

 them to return ; but the number of times 

 that they are unable to go back is sufficient 

 to deplete the field force so that it is very 

 roticeable in the numerical strength of the 

 liive. These conditions prevail more or less 

 every spring; and until the weather becomes 

 more settled, there is a constant drain on 

 the forces that are so much needed at this 

 time of the year. 



* » * 



A DISAPPOIXTIXG SEASON. 



This will, perhaps, be my last report on 

 crop conditions in this part of the State for 

 this season, for there will be no crop. Tliis 

 is the most complete failure for many years, 

 and I doubt if it has a parallel in the histo- 

 rj of the industry here, though of this I am 

 not sui'e; but that it is the nearest to a 

 complete failure for ten years I am quite 

 sure. Why ? Every tiling has been against 

 us from first to last, and conditions are not 

 yet what might be called normal. Of all 

 the reasons for a failure, the lack of rain is 

 the chief cause, with the freeze and an un- 

 usually cold spring to contend with, though 

 I consider the freeze to be the least of our 

 troubles. Conditions seemed bad from the 

 beginning; but the bees got a fairly early 

 start at breeding, and this gave a ray of 

 hope for a time. However, the loss of bees 

 from some cause was so great that even 



those with a good -supply of brood failed to 

 make the progress that we had hoped for. 

 For example, on March 1st, in marking my 

 colonies I came to one with two frames of 

 brood which was marked 2. Two weeks later 

 it was the same ; but by the end of the third 

 week they had spread to four frames, and 

 there they have remained since that date. 

 They have spread eggs wider several times, 

 but they have been taken up because of 

 being chilled or by choice of the bees under 

 the influence of continued cold. 



Another cause in the orange districts 

 was the early blooming, in spite of the 

 cool weather before the bees were ready to 

 gather the nectar, the heaviest flow being 

 almost to a day one month earlier than last 

 season. My scale colony showed the heaviest 

 day this year on April 25 : last season it was 

 on May 23. The quantity of nectar and 

 the short blooming period were also a dis- 

 appointment. So the season of 1913 must 

 pass into history as a failure so far as a 

 honey crop is concerned in southern Cali- 

 fornia, with the fact remaining that we 

 must not expect a crop from wild flora when 

 our rainfall has been much less than ten 

 inches, with a goodly portion of that falling 

 late in the rainy season. 



I will give the weights of my scale colonv 

 for a period of two weeks, a part of which 

 time was the warmest during the month of 

 April, and will show the weather variations 

 by the amount gathered each day. Previous 

 to the time I began taking weights we had 

 several days of fair weather. (By fair 

 weather I simply mean days when it was 

 sufficiently warm for the bees to fly very 

 freely during the greater part of the day. 

 We have had many days that were clear; 

 but a cold wind and a low temperature 

 made short days and difficult fl^ang the pe- 

 culiarities of this season.) Before placing 

 this colony on the scales the bees had stored 

 some honey in the extracting-super, which 

 also contained a quantity of brood in addi- 

 tion to that in the well-filled brood-chamber. 

 (The hive was overflowing with bees.) The 

 queen was put below an excluder, and a 

 super of extracting-combs was placed be- 

 tween the two. The following are the daily 

 gains: April 16, Y^ lb.; 17, 2 lbs.; 18, 1/2; 

 19, 51/2; 20, 21/2; 21, 634; 22. 61/4; 23, 834; 

 24, 91/2; 25, 10; 26, 73/4; 27, 8; 28. 61/2; 

 29, 71/2 ; 30, 21/2 ; May 3, 31/2- The varia- 

 tions to this point are due almost entirely to 

 weather conditions. The above figures are 

 gross amounts, no allowance being made for 

 evaporation during the night, which varied 

 largely according to the quantity gathered, 

 and was from 1/2 to 3 pounds. 



