GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



Dr. C. C. Miller, Marengo, 111. 



It is found that invertin, which causes 

 the inversion of sugar, is present not only 

 in the saliva of bees, but also in pollen.^ — 

 Schweiz. Bztg., 512. 



Wesley Foster^ you ask, p. 330, what a 

 beekeeper would gain over exjjress charges 

 by a parcels post limited to 11 pounds at 12 

 cents a pound. On a 1-lb. package he Avonld 

 gain 13 to 18 cents, according to distance; 

 on a 2-lb. package he would gain 6 to 11 

 cents. 



C. Calvert, you seem to think, p. 349, 

 that our eight-frame hives are too small, 

 and that a hive with ten Standard frames 

 is the most useful type. But the frames in 

 our eight-fram.e hives are 17%x9ys, and 

 your Standard frames are 14x8V2; so our 

 eight-frame liives really contain 96% square 

 inches more frame surface than your ten- 

 frame hives ! • 



You ASK, Mr. Editor, what's the matter 

 with manilla liive-tags? Curl up. Glad to 

 have you say they work well at Medina. 

 Perhaps I didn't fasten them on right. Have 

 just ordered another set to try again. How 

 do you fasten them on the hive? [Your un- 

 satisfactory experience with the first set of 

 manilla tags Avas doubtless due to the fact 

 that we first soaked the tags in linseed oil 

 after they were printed. Like yourself, we 

 found them unsatisfactory. Finally an en- 

 terprising Yankee suggested that we soak 

 them in boiling-hot paraffine. Tags so treat- 

 ed staled the weather very much better. But 

 even these will discolor in time ; but we have 

 some that have been in use for five years, 

 and we venture to say they will show the 

 numbers fully as well as any metal tags with 

 the figures painted in black. They are so 

 cheap that they can be replaced for less 

 money then it will take to fix up metal tags. 

 —Ed.] 



This year has been very unusual. Last 

 winter was the killingest winter I ever 

 knew. A good many trees and bushes were 

 killed root and branch (nearly all my roses 

 gone), and m.uch of the grass and clover 

 killed. Loss in some aj^iaries 75 per cent ; 

 in others, 100 per cent. Fed up to June 22. 

 Then a lightning change; cloA^er-bloom 

 seemed to jump out of the ground (in- 

 creasing ever since), and supers were put 

 on June 24. Within 24 hours honey was in 

 many supers. The flow began too late for 

 a crop, but — I don't know. [We have had 

 four weeks of honey flow, and white clover 



seems to be at its height. To-day, July 5, 

 the basswoods are just opening up. If 

 every locality had a flow like the one we 

 are having here, it would be the greatest 

 honey year on record. We never had so 

 much swai'ming in all our experience, nor 

 so much honey from colonies so weak that 

 they would be supposed to be doing well if 

 they even filled their combs. As it is, they 

 are filling the combs twice over, and the 

 queens would be honey-bound unless we ex- 

 tracted. — Ed.] 



•Desiring data as to distance required for 

 the isolation of a mating station, Frank- 

 Kleist marked 70 or 80 field bees with red 

 or yellow color early in the season when 

 forage was scarce. In the next fortnight 

 he made frequent visits to a field of Erica 

 carnea 2^2 miles away, and always found 

 his marked bees there. He repeated the ex- 

 periment when pasturage became j^lentiful, 

 and never found them further than a mile 

 away. A third experiment, after pasturage 

 was scarce, showed his marked bees again 

 21/2 miles away. But at this same time a 

 spot of good pasturage at a much shorter 

 distance was left unvisited by the bees, be- 

 cause to reach it they must pass over a 

 wooded hill. — Leipzg. Bztg., 66. This looks 

 as if bees do not from preference forage 

 more than a mile from home. [This con- 

 forms exactly to our own experience. We 

 have demonstrated over and over again at 

 our outyards that when bees can get plenty 

 of nectar within a mile or a mile and a half, 

 they will not go further; and why should 

 they? Usually a clover flow will give bees 

 all they can do within a radius of a mile and 

 a half ; and basswoods will take care of twice 

 the number of colonies within the same radi- 

 us. Or, to put it another way, the same 

 number of bees would not require more than 

 half the radius needed by clover. But when 

 forage close at hand is scarce, bees will go 

 two and a half and even three miles, pro- 

 viding the flight is over a level plain without 

 obstruction. A piece of wooded land Avill 

 often prevent bees from going even a quar- 

 ter of mile to a fine field of alsike — that is, 

 assuming that the woods are between the 

 bees and the field. When we furnish alsike 

 at half price to beekeepers within a mile of 

 our apiaries we make sure that the field to 

 be sown is i^ot the other side of a niece of 

 woods nor high hills. Taking it all in all, 

 our experience exactly coincides with that 

 of Mr. Frank-Kleist.-^ED.] 



