226 



THE AMERICAN BEE-KEEPER 



October, 



THE 



Bee -Keeping World 



(GERMANY. 

 A certain humorous Avriter says in a 

 German bee .iournal that queen bees 

 sometimes suffer Avith seasickness; 

 particularly the long-tongued vai'ie- 

 ties are subject to the disease, for af- 

 ter they have endui'ed the voyage they 

 usually have lost the formerly-pos- 

 sessed quality of producing long- 

 tongued workers. 



A great deal has been written in 

 past years of "how to obtain and re- 

 tain prolific and productive bees." 

 Lehzen says in Centralblatt the rule 

 used to be, in order to have good luck 

 with bees to either commence bee- 

 keeping with a strayed-off swarm, a 

 boughten swarm, or one stolen. He 

 advises to buy only strong colonies 

 with fertile young queens of a bee- 

 keeper whose colonies have freely 

 swarmed. In Northern Germany a 

 colony is considered productive when 

 it casts sv.-arms during May or the 

 early part of June and again in buck- 

 wheat time or during the heath blof)m. 



Lehzen thinks in-breeding detriment- 

 al to the general prosi)erity of an api- 

 ary, and would not buy bees from an 

 isolated yard on this account. He 

 wants no bees that have been win- 

 tered on sugar or have been stimulat- 

 ed with it, as bees are weakened by 

 being obliged to invert so much cane 

 sugar. He considers honey the only 

 lu-oper food for bees, buckwheat honey 

 being the best. 



In order to keep the apiary in a 

 prosperous condition he wants combs 

 renewed often. Heath bee-keepers, he 

 says, take no bees into winter with 

 combs older than one year. He also 

 wants queens renewed frequently, ad- 

 vises to kec]) a number of young 



(piecns on hand during the honey sea- 

 son. To prevent in-breeding he would 

 purchase from distant parts young 

 swarms. In the province of Hanover 

 he claims 4()<>,<i00 swarms are for sale 

 every year, Avhich would answer the 

 purpose perfectly. If it should be 

 found necessary to feed the bees, su- 

 gar may be fed in the fall, but never 

 in the spring. Bees should be disturb- 

 ed as little as possible. 



To increase the activity of and the 

 profit from bees, Lehzen advocates 

 moving into buckwheat or heath sec- 

 tions, claiming the moving itself hav- 

 ing a beneficial influence upon the 

 bees; he explains this by his observa- 

 tions of bees producing larger quanti- 

 ties of formic acid during the excit- 

 m^nt while being moved. 



■*A good bee-hive ought to meet the 

 re(iuiremcnts of the bees above all 

 things." says C. Peters in Centralblatt. 

 "It should be simple in construction 

 to enal)le the apiarist to perform his 

 work in the least possible time, and 

 to secure best results from the bees 

 in general. The hive must be suitable 

 for the locality in which it is to be 

 used. Different localities might re- 

 quire different hives." 



Maertens says in Centralblatt: The 

 bee .iournals are full of discussion 

 about scientific questions which neith- 

 er interest nor benefit the common 

 honey-] )r()dncer; thinks .c is time that 

 practical ([ucstions come to the fore- 

 ground particularly of how best to dis- 

 iwse of the i)roducts. 



K. l>iithc. one of the most noted bee- 

 keepers and manufacturer of hives, 

 said before a bee-keepers' conveniion, 

 that he ol>tained from his l)est hive 

 371/2 pounds of ])uckwheat comb-honey. 

 A young bee-keeper in Nordholz, td 



