798 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



Conversations w^ith Doolittle 



At Borodino, New York. 



DOES LOCALITY MAKE THE DIFFERENCE? 



" In Gleanings for October 1 the writer 

 of Notes from Canada does not seem to 

 agree with you regarding the rearing of 

 bees with reference to the honey harvest. 

 He apparently bases his ideas on ' our local- 

 ity/ as he expresses it. But I, for one, have 

 great faith in friend Byer, and wish that 

 you would give some further information 

 on the subject." 



There certainly must be a difference in 

 localities, for I note on p. 670, Oct. 1, that 

 Mr. Byer says that it makes him hustle to 

 get otf his basswood honey before buck- 

 wheat comes on. In this locality, buckwheat 

 is usually sown from the 4th to the 10th of 

 July, and basswood usually begins to bloom 

 from the 5th to the 10th of July. Except 

 in long-drawn-out seasons, the flow from 

 basswood lasts from ten days to two weeks. 



In this locality Carniolans, Syrians, 

 blacks, and most hybrid bees begin to breed 

 to excess as soon as the harvest of white 

 lioney opens. Up to that time they do not 

 have much more than half the brood that a 

 ten-frame hive will accommodate. A good 

 strain of Italian bees will have at the same 

 time nearly, if not quite, the maximum 

 amount of brood for the season. As the 

 season advances they will still hold about 

 the amount they had up to the middle of the 

 harvest of white honey, when the queen 

 will cease laying any longer at the outside 

 of her circle of brood, confining herself to 

 the cells vacated nearer the center. In this 

 way we have little honey stored in the brood- 

 combs till the last half of the nectar yield, 

 and not then only as the brood has matured 

 from the outside cells. The other races of 

 bees keep on increasing their brood until 

 the sides and ends of the hive are reached. 



Many would have us believe that the sum 

 and substance of beekeeping depends on 

 keeping all queens employed at egg-laying 

 to their fullest capacity. Queens, in any 

 well-regulated apiary, are among the small- 

 est part of the expense incurred. Labor, 

 liives, and combs go toward making up the 

 larger part of the expense. Bees, when they 

 come on the stage of action at just the right 

 time, are very valuable; but eggs are of no 

 value only as they tend in the direction of 

 producing these valuable bees required in 

 the field at the time of the honey harvest. 

 Eggs cost practically nothing; but as soon 

 as the bees begin to perfect them toward 

 other bees, then they begin to cost; and if 

 this perfecting is going on to any great 

 extent at a time when the perfected product 



is placed on the stage of action, either be- 

 fore or after their presence in large num- 

 bers is needed, we not only have the cost of 

 their rearing to pay for but the cost of the 

 stores they consume afterward as well. A 

 beekeeper willingly stands this expense at 

 any time when the production of the indi- 

 \idual bee is greater than its consumption. 

 But I can see no object in doing this at any 

 other time, simply that colonies may be 

 " always strong/' or that the extra laying 

 capacity of any queen may be gratified. 



Let me illustrate: Twice I tried the 

 Syrian bees, and three times the Carniolans. 

 In each case the bees would have brood to 

 the amount of about three or four full 

 Langstroth combs at the commencement of 

 the white-honey flow, wliile the Italians had 

 seven or eight frames full. By the middle 

 of the flow the former would have brood in 

 every one of the ten frames to the amount 

 of about nine full combs, while the Italians 

 would have the same amount as when the 

 flow began. When the flow of white honey 

 ceased, the Italians would have from 70 to 

 100 sections filled, and brood to the amount 

 of five or six frames, or sufficient in both 

 bees and lioney for winter, if the fall flow- 

 ers should fail. The others would begin to 

 swarm near the close of the white harvest, 

 and keep it up till ten days after the floAV 

 had ceased. Twenty poorly filled sections 

 were the best I ever got from any of the 

 five different lots tried ; and, with one excep- 

 tion, all had to be given combs of sealed 

 honey from the Italians to carry them 

 through the winter. It took nine-tenths of 

 all the honey these bees gathered to perfect 

 these bees reared out of season. 



If I had used dummies, as given in the 

 article Mr. Byer objects to, confining those 

 S.vrian and Carniolan colonies to just what 

 brood they did have, when the flow from 

 clover and basswood began, they would have 

 given the amount of honey consumed (by 

 that extra worse-than-useless brood reared) 

 in the sections, and I would have had some- 

 thing to show for my labor, but nothing 

 like that given by the Italians. 



Now, as I have said many times before, 

 let each know his locality and govern him- 

 self accordingly. If colonies "always strong" 

 do best in a certain locality, that is what 

 one should work for; but from my multitu- 

 dinous correspondence through the last 

 forty years I know that the rearing of bees 

 with an eye to the harvest "draws the prize" 

 in more localities than in Central New York, 



