THE BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW 



S3 



to do much more than keep the rapidly 

 increasing- brood nest and larg^e popu- 

 lation of young- bees supplied with food 

 and attention. With such an undue 

 population of consumers on hand, the 

 queen has her own way, and her combs 

 become one mass of brood. The colony 

 which g-ains the proper balance of 

 population at an early date, on the con- 

 trary, has much reduced its brood nest 

 by storing- some honey and larg-e 

 quantities of pollen. This is the colony 

 that will give the heavy surplus, and 

 the other can never compete with it, 

 even thoug-h it have twice the popula- 

 tion. Mr. Simmins mig-ht also have 

 said that it was equally detrimental 

 for a colony to become too populous too 

 early in the season. The point is to 

 have the right proportion of workers, 

 j'oung bees and brood, at the opening 

 of the harvest. Our author proceeds to 

 give some of the reasons why the right 

 proportion is not reached early in the 

 season. The queen may be stimulated 

 to lay too late in the autumn, hence be 

 slow to begin in the spring. The hive 

 may be short of stores, or, on the other 

 hand, so overloaded that there is not 

 the room needed for breeding. Per- 

 haps the lack of protection in the spring 

 prevented the breeding so muchneeded. 

 Old queens are a fruitful source of 

 trouble in this direction. He would 

 retain no queen that had seen her sec- 

 ond summer. One way to provide that 

 the queen will use her best powers be- 

 fore the opening of tlie season is to 

 unite two stocks in August, if they are 

 not up to full strength. Another plan 

 is that of uniting two stocks about ten 

 days before the opening of the harvest; 

 thus providing that the number of 

 workers shall presently be in excess of 

 those required to attend the young. 



PLANTING AND MOWING HONEY PLANTS. 



Our author indulges in quite a lot of 

 theorizing in regard to planting for 

 honey, and what may be expected from 

 it. He assumes that white clover yields 

 ten pounds of honey per day, per acre, 



which I think is far, far above the 

 average. He then proceeds to theorize 

 that by cutting the clover so as to have 

 a few acres blooming at different 

 times, the season may be prolonged. 

 So far as I have been able to learn, a 

 plant thrown out of its usual time of 

 blooming does not furnish much honey. 

 I once had a field of alsike pastured to 

 make it bloom late, but there was not 

 much honey gathered from the late 

 bloom. Mr. Simmins would also sow 

 sweet clover and divide it up into 

 plots, cutting the different plots at dif- 

 ferent times in order to have different 

 plots in bloom at different times. 

 Even if the clover would yield honey at 

 these different seasons, there would 

 not be room enough on a 30-acre farm 

 to raise clover enough to amount to 

 anything in the way of surplus when 

 divided up into plots. I fear Mr. Sim- 

 mons does not realize the amount of 

 flower-blooming area that is necessary 

 to produce a crop of honey. One 

 rather amusing feature is that he 

 quotes Dr. Gaudy's catnip fields (?) in 

 support of what may be done in the 

 way of planting for honey. 



SOME RADICAL VIEWS ON FOUL BROOD. 



Mr. Simmins' views on foul brood are 

 decidedly the opposite of those of the 

 majority of thinkers and experimenters 

 on the subject. In short, as I under- 

 stand him, he does not look upon it as 

 a germ-disease, or, rather, he regards 

 the germs as a result of the disea.se 

 instead of the cause of them. I am not 

 positive that these are his exact views, 

 in fact, he does not make it positively 

 clear in regard to exactly what his 

 views are on this point. He does be- 

 lieve, however, that foul brood has its 

 origin in a way that is different than 

 most of us have been led to believe. 

 He says "The origin of foul brood is 

 found in a fementing mass of neglected, 

 dead, animal matter and excretions, 

 combined with the presence of a 

 weakened colony, breeding and feeding 

 amongst, and warming up to blood 



