180 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



March 1, 1906 



teresting manner. His deductions may or may not be en- 

 tirely correct. He says : 



"When I was learning- about bees in that cold, bliz- 

 zardy State of Iowa, I recall looking into some hives in 

 January and found brood in a small circle about the size of 

 a silver dollar in the center of the cluster. I do not know 

 how often I did see brood in January and February in that 

 country, but it must have been several times. In this coun- 

 try you can find lots of brood in January most winters. If 

 it should be intensely cold the latter part of December and 

 on into January, there will not be many colonies breeding, 

 but if it is pleasant any time during the month for about 

 two or three weeks, or if the bees are in a warm, sunny, 

 sheltered place, almost every strong colony will breed more 

 or less. I have known them to breed a while and then stop, 

 again starting in the last of February or the first of March. 



"Weak colonies that have all they can do to keep up 

 heat for the maintaining of the cluster, do not breed so 

 early. Then, too, it makes a difference whether they are in 

 a warm or cold hive. I have both chaff and single-walled 

 hives, and the single-walled hive gets brood earlier. I think 

 the reason is the chaff-packing makes a sort of refrigerator, 

 and while in it the temperature is more steady, it is at the 

 same time a lower one, and the bees do not fly so frequently 

 nor so long, hence remain more dormant — perhaps I should 

 say semi-dormant, for I do not believe bees ever hibernate — 

 and so are slower to start brood. In the single-walled hive, 

 if exposed to the sun, the bees become active just about 

 every clear day, even though they do not get outside the 

 hive ; this hastens brood-rearing. They must breed to keep 

 up the colony. 



"Many contend that January and February breeding is 

 too early ; that if they could keep the bees till late in March 

 or the first of April before any brood is reared, it would be 

 better and save much stores. I have never agreed to this. 

 I prefer to have a warm January and February, and have 

 bees maturing in February and March. I do not know how 

 it is in all parts of the State, but here we have little breed- 

 ing in the fall after September, yet the bees fly often and 

 hunt around all through the fall and by mid-winter are 

 aged. I find it is often very hard to get a colony through 

 spring at all if some young bees are not ready to take the 

 place of the old ones by March 1, or nearly so. I count a 

 colony practically safe to pull through the spring if there 

 have been several square inches of brood hatched by March 

 1, with a few thousand more to hatch during the next few 

 days ; but if they have rested until March 1 to start breed- 

 ing, the old bees die off so rapidly that in a few days there 

 are not enough of them left to maintain breeding tempera- 

 ture, and they waste their strength and energies trying, but 

 to no purpose, and are extinct by the time the weather does 

 get warm enough to aid them. If they will breed in Jan- 

 uary and February these young bees can hold out till April 

 and May— even till June— and so keep the colony alive until 

 the weather is warm enough to enable a few bees to mature 

 brood." 



Beedom North and Beedom South 



It is pleasant to know that there are those who are suffi- 

 ciently interested in the welfare of this Journal to be on the 

 lookout for possible collisions, as witness the following : 



Mr. Editor :— Please watch carefully that " Southern 

 Beedom " and " Canadian Beedom " are not made too close 

 neighbors in the columns of the '' Old Reliable." That man 

 Scholl is always putting a chip on his shoulder to be 

 knocked off by some one fur- 

 ther north, and there's no tell- 

 ing- what might happen if he '' 

 should succeed in getting the 

 blood thawed out in the veins 

 of that frozen Canuck. 



Betwixt & Between. 



Thanks for the caution, 

 but have not the slightest 

 fear. No matter how many 

 chips are placed on the should- 

 ers of the Southerner, if you 

 watch closely you will always 

 see them accompanied by a 

 smile of the utmost good- 

 nature ; and no heart beats 

 more warmly for all men 



North and South than the heart of that same man whom 

 you are pleased to style a " frozen Canuck." 



Miscellaneous 

 Heips * 3 terns 



=\ 



j 



If Only It Were True!— The following paragraph 

 has been sent us by S. G. Kilgore, of London, Ohio, he clip- 

 ping it from the county newspaper : 



Profit in Bees. 



Dr. J. L. Gaudy, of Richardson Co., Nebr., gets as high 

 as 400 pounds of honey from a single colony, and he has 

 3000 colonies of bees, constituting the largest apiary in the 

 world. He owns 20,000 acres of valuable land, all of it rep- 

 resenting the invested profits of bee-keeping. He once 

 marketed 32,000 pounds of honey from 75 colonies, which 

 was over 400 pounds each. He plants large quantities of 

 catnip along the roadside and in other waste places, claim- 

 ing that it provides abundant bee-pasturage for 3 months or 

 longer. 



The foregoing is simply a condensation of a long arti- 

 cle published in one of the bee-papers several years ago. 

 Several months after its appearance a personal investiga- 

 tion was made by the editor of the bee-paper containing the 

 account, and he found that there was practically no founda- 

 tion for most of the statements. Of course, almost any bee- 

 keeper of experience would hardly believe that 32,000 pounds 

 of honey would be stored by a single apiary of 75 colonies 

 in one season. That has never been done, and probably 

 never will be. 



As to the catnip statement, there was very little of it 

 found in the locality mentioned. 



It is very unfortunate, indeed, that such paragraphs 

 should continue to appear in the newspapers, as they are 

 misleading. We fear that some people would be induced 

 to go into bee-keeping, thinking that there is a great for- 

 tune in it, only to be disappointed later. 



Mr. L. L. Andrews, of Corona, Calif., is the President 

 of the California Bee-Keepers' Association. Recently he 

 sent us two pictures of his apiaries. One of them produced 

 15 tons of honey in 1905. His total crop was 25 tons from 

 250 colonies, spring count. The honey was gathered from 

 orange and sage blossoms. He has had populous colonies 

 fill a 10-frame extracted super 3 times in 12 days during 

 the height of the orange-flow. He often moves to this loca- 

 tion in March, and keeps the bees there until about the last 

 of June, and then moves to the buckwheat and gets 2 or 3 

 extractings from that source. From many colonies he ex- 

 tracted 12 times, 5 years ago. His average for the season 

 of 1905 was 200 pounds of extracted honey per colony. 



Wild Buckwheat. 



Orange and Sage. 



(APIARIES OF L. L. ANDREWS.) 



