DECEMBER 15, 1912 



797 



OUEENLESS COLONIES GATHERING POLLEN 

 Fermented Comb Honey, and Honey Fed to Bees 



BY R. F. HOLTERMANN 



On page 705, Nov. 1, appear some items 

 ill connection with the above subject. I 

 may not knovp what I am talking about ; 

 but for years this subject of pollen-gather- 

 ing and queenless colonies has been before 

 me. I have had beekeepers tell me that 

 they knew their colonies were all right be- 

 cause they were all bringing in pollen. If 

 there is any thing in this I should like to be 

 enlightened. I have not yet learned to dis- 

 tinguish queenless colonies by any such 

 method ; and, to be quite frank, I never ex- 

 pect to tell a queenless colony in that way. 

 With all the bees I have, and robbing going 

 on at every opportunity in my locality in 

 the fall of the year, I do not examine every 

 colony at that time to make sure it has a 

 laying queen. Next spring, however, un- 

 less that spring is an exception to other 

 springs, I expect to find some colonies dead 

 or nearly so, and the evidence of a queen- 

 less condition last fall will be pollen-clogged 

 combs, indicating that the bees gathered 

 pollen, and did not have larvae to feed the 

 pollen to, and that it had, therefore, ac- 

 cumulated in the combs. I find no excep- 

 tion to this. Does this not then prove con- 

 clusively that queenless colonies do gather 

 pollen'? Of course I do not now refer to a 

 colony so long queenless that the bees are 

 all old and with more than one foot in the 

 grave. 



FERMENTED COMB HONEY. 



The fermentation of comb honey may re- 

 sult from honey-dew which, before being 

 gathered, had the germs of fermentation in 

 it. I had one experience which I am not 

 anxious to have repeated ; and if there are 

 such stores in the brood-chambers, unless 

 the winter is of such a nature that the bees 

 can fly frequently, the bees are likely to 

 contract dysentery, 



FEEDING HONEY BACK TO BEES. 



In view of the prevalence of foul brood, 

 and since no beekeeper can be absolutely 

 positive that there is no germ of foul brood 

 in his apiary, is it wise to feed honey to 

 bees? I think not. In extracting, the hon- 

 ey from one colony is so mixed with that 

 of many others that it does not take many 

 diseased colonies in an apiary to make all 

 the extracted honey more than dangerous 

 to feed back. I have no personal experi- 

 ence in this direction ; but I could name 

 some well-known beekeepers who contami- 

 nated almost their entire apiary by feeding 

 back diseased honey when, of course, this 



was entirely outside of their expectation 

 and object. 



More, the feeding of honey excites bees 

 much more than feeding back syrup, and 

 they are more inclined to rob. Henry 

 Alley, on this latter ground, roundly con- 

 demns feeding honey to stimulate nuclei, 

 etc., in queen-reai"ing. I also venture the 

 opinion that, on account of the added ex- 

 citement, there will be less of actually ripe 

 stores in the combs when the bees get down 

 to normal from feeding 20 lbs. of stores 

 with honey in them than if "they contain 

 sugar syrup, and that with an equal per- 

 centage of water in them. Lastly, there are 

 no better winter stores than sugar syrup 

 made from the best granulated sugar and 

 water with a teaspoonful of tartaric acid 

 dissolved in a cupful of water and stirred 

 into the syrup when the latter begins to 

 boil. Why, then, venture honey? 



Brantford, Canada. 



THE QUALITY OF THE QUEEN 



What Assures Success in Beekeeping ? 



BY MAJOR SHALLARU 



If I were asked what assures success in 

 beekeeping I would say the quality of the 

 queen. The queen first, the queen second, 

 the queen third, and every time. Given 

 good queens and bad management, you will 

 get honey ; given bad or indifferent queens 

 and goocl management, you might get hon- 

 ey- 



THE HIVES NOT SO IMPORTANT. 



In my opinion the shape, make, or condi- 

 tion of the hive, always provided that it is 

 large enough to give the queen and bees 

 sufficient room for breeding and storing, 

 has very little to do with the matter. I have 

 a lot of old uniDainted hives in use which 

 have sun-cracked and opened in all direc- 

 tions, and the bees fly out practically any- 

 where they like. Visitors say, " You need 

 new hives badly." 



Well, last season I discarded several hun- 

 dred of the old fellows, and put in some 

 new painted tight good hives, and the bees 

 in them are not coming on as well this 

 spring as the others in the old ventilated 

 hives. Nearly all of my hives are standing- 

 out in the sun, and in summer it is a mighty 

 hot sun. The bees fan at the cracks of the 

 leaky hives, and keep them much cooler 

 than the new hives can be kept. Always 

 remember that all my new hives have tight 

 bottom-boards, as I find them more handy 

 to move about than the loose ones. Going 

 into winter the old leaky hives look bad; 



