250 



Gleanings in Bee Culture 



temperature ranging from 15 below to 30 

 above. 



You have ordered a tested queen for that 

 queenless colony that has only two or three 

 frames of bees; and the question is whether, 

 by proper feeding and keeping warm, you 

 can save it and get it strong for the harvest. 

 May be. It is possible that it may give you 

 the biggest yield of all your colonies. But 

 it is a good deal more likely that neither 

 bees nor queen will live to see the harvest. 

 If that colony is queenless in March, most 

 likely it was queenless long enough before 

 it went into winter quarters so that all the 

 bees are old, and will die off too rapidly in 

 spite of any thing you may do. Nine times 

 in ten — perhaps ninety-nine times in one 

 hundred — the most profitable thing to do 

 with a colony that goes queenless in fall or 

 early spring is to break it up. 



SOWING SWEET-CLOVER SEED 



The Unhulled Germinates Just as Quickly as the 

 Hulled if Sown Early 



BY R. L. SNODGRASS 



On page 7.30, Dec. 1, Frank Coverdale ad- 

 vises sowing sweet-clover seed any time dur- 

 ing the summer between early spring, say 

 April 1 and the last week in July. He also 

 claims that unhulled clover does not come 

 up as readily as the hulled. Now, I think 

 if he will take some of the unhulled and 

 hulled out of the same lot or sack, and plant 

 it, he will find that it comes up just as read- 

 ily as the hulled. 



My experience has been that neither one 

 will come up the first year in time to do 

 well unless it is sown as early as February 

 1 or in March, so that it may freeze a few 

 times before it is warm enough to germinate. 



If the seed is put through a good sweat be- 

 fore planting, or if it is stacked before thrash- 

 ing, and left long enough to go through a 

 good sweat, it will germinate very well; but 

 the safer plan is to sow about February 1, 

 and not before; for if sown earlier there is 

 danger of warm weather that may bring it 

 up, and then hard continuous freezing, 

 which will heave it out. 



At this writing we have had several days 

 of damp rainy weather, and any amount of 

 sweet clover has come up from the seed, 

 only to perish. This applies to both the 

 while and yellow (biennial) varieties. 



When I cut my crop of yellow-sweet-clo- 

 er seed the weather was very dry, and at 

 least 50 or 60 pounds of seed per acre was 

 shattered out. I then plowed up this ten- 

 acre field and sowed to buckwheat on the 

 8th of August; and now with all this sweet- 

 clover seed turned under there could scarcely 

 a plant be found that came up, and we had 

 plenty of rain too. 



I secured from this field 40 bushels of yel- 

 low biennial-sweet-clover seed, and later 75 

 bushels of buckwheat, which never does 

 very well here, and especially on thin land. 



Now, I think it a good plan to plow up a 



field every other year, and sow to something 

 else. Buckwheat can be planted; and after 

 that, winter wheat can be put in, or oats in 

 the spring; but don't seed too heavily, as it 

 may smother the young sweet clover in the 

 spring. By taking this precaution, the clo- 

 ver does much better, grows more rank, and 

 a more even stand is obtained. After a 

 good thick stand, one can not expect to 

 have a seed crop the next season, as the seed 

 crop smothers out all the young plants; con- 

 sequently it is a good plan to put in some- 

 thing else in the spring or fall, for both a 

 seed and bloom crop is impossible every 

 year. If, by using the harrow, it would 

 come up from the seed which scatters ofT in 

 the fall, then we could have a seed crop ev- 

 ery year, and it would not be necessary to 

 plow it under so often, but it will not. 



The yellow variety comes up much earlier 

 than the white — about the 15th of June; and 

 the seed that scatters off that early will not 

 come up either. I think this proves plainly 

 that the seed has to go through a "sweat" 

 or freeze to cause it to germinate. 



If Mr. Coverdale or any one else can tell 

 me just how^ I can obtain a good stand and 

 bloom crop every year I shall be very much 

 obliged. 



Augusta, Kansas. 



FEEDER MADE OF FOUR MASON JARS 



BY FRANK BAKER 



I had to do some feeding last fall, so I de- 

 vised a feeder which I like very well. I 

 took a honey-board of >2-inch lumber 16x20 

 inches, the same size as the ten-frame hive, 

 and cut four holes for Mason jars with per- 

 forated caps, either one or two quart. A 

 good colony will take down four or five 

 quarts in a night. A hive body should be 

 set above the board to hold the jars in place, 

 and to keep robbers away during the day. 



Enid, Oklahoma. 



