June 14. 1906 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



505 



great deal of empty comb, and if the colony is very popu- 

 lous, the honey will be scattered over a great area in the 

 super and will be ripened readily, but little of it will he 

 capped, until they ascertain that the crop is coming to an 

 end. In such circumstances the more or less capping of the 

 honey will depend most probably on the temperature. If it is 

 low, the bees will concentrate their stores over the cluster 

 and will more readily seal a part of the filled combs. If the 

 temperature is high, and the hive very populous, the honey 

 will remain scattered over a greater area and less of it will 

 be sealed. 



The temperature has a great deal to do with the be- 

 havior of the bees, and it is probably owing to its action that 

 bee-keepers differ in their opinions as to the actions ot the 

 bees. In Northern latitudes, where the nights are cool, the 

 question of retaining the heat in the hive has a much greater 

 influence on success than in localities where the great ques- 

 tion is how to keep the temperature of the brood-nest and 

 of the supers low enough so that the combs may not break 

 down. So we can not lay down any rule that will serve 

 for all climates, as to whether we may expect the bees to 

 ripen all their honey before any of it is sealed, or whether 

 they may seal it as fast as ripened. It is a good thing to 

 err on the safe side, and wait until a great portion of it, 

 at least, is sealed, before attempting to remove it. But in 

 any case where there is doubt as to the sufficient density 

 of the honey, it is well to keep it in an open vessel in a warm 

 room — in as hot a room as you may have — during the re- 

 mainder of the summer. 



The late Chas. F. Muth — who was an authority on honey, 

 because he produced so much of it and bought and sold hun- 

 dreds of tons of it — was in the habit of ripening his honey 

 regularly, by storing it in tanks, covered with a cloth, in an 

 attic. Honey harvested in June or July was thus kept by 

 him until early in September, when it was put in retailing 

 packages, and would granulate almost immediately after- 

 ward. 



Our method has been to remove the honey only when it 

 is ripe, as far as we can judge, and it is only in very rare 

 instances that we have made any mistakes. Cool, wet sea- 

 sons are the most dangerous. But we have harvested hun- 

 dreds — I might almost say thousands — of barrels of honey 

 which was barrelled at once and rolled into a dry cellar, 

 and did not see the light again until it was prepared for re- 

 tailing, in i Ictober, when we found it almost invariably per- 

 fectly solid, with a regular grain of granulation, resembling 

 butter. 



I see that lately a number of our European experiment- 

 ing apiarists are discussing the density of honey, and great 

 differences are shown as to its condition when first har- 

 vested. I believe many people have but very remote ideas 

 as to the great differences in density of honey fresh-gath- 

 ered in different countries, under different degrees of heat, 

 and with different hygrometric conditions. Stating how 

 much water fresh honey contains would be as impossible 

 as stating how much rain-fall may be expected during any 

 one month in anv locality. Hamilton, 111. 



iji 



Pollen— How Use to Best Advantage 



BY G. M. DOOLITTLE. 



EARLY pollen," has a musical sound to all bee-keepers, 

 and when you ask one as to the time of year that the 

 bees first begin to gather pollen in his locality, he is 

 all attention, and will tell you the earliest period he ever 

 knew the bees t< i bring in the small loads, which are the 

 harbinger of brood-rearing. But ask the average bee-keeper 

 from what source this pollen comes, and four out of five 

 can only guess at the matter, and that guess twice out of 

 three times will be, "from willow." 



This guess may be right in some localities, but in this 

 locality the first pollen comes from what is more commonly 

 known as "skunk cabbage," from the smell the plant emits 

 when the leaves are bruised, and from the cabbage appear- 

 ance of its growth when it has arrived at maturity. But in 

 early spring there is nothing to be seen of this cabbage 

 growth; just a gnarled, pointed, reddish-colored hood, that 

 rises about 2 or 3 inches out of the ground, inside of which, 

 rising on a stem, is a little ball of flowers about as big as a 

 marble, and this ball of little, short flowers are very rich in 

 pollen. The hood has on one side, a slit or crevice in it, 

 ofttimes hardly large enough for the bee to squeeze in, and 

 as the ball of flowers fills the hood to within about bee- 



space all around, the bee which works on skunk cabbage for 

 pollen gets covered more or less all over with the yellow 

 dust, so that it makes her appear almost a laughable object 

 as she runs into the hive. I have seen this dust from a 

 thirty-second to one-sixteenth of an inch thick on the back or 

 upper side of the abdomen of bees when they are entering 

 the hives, though this is the extreme. 



Then the hood protects and keeps the bee warm when 

 at .work on skunk cabbage, so that they will gather pollen 

 from this source when it would be too cold to gather pollen 

 from the trees, were the willow in bloom at this time. I 

 have known bees to get pollen from this source as early as 

 March 10. but it is more often from the 10th to the 15th of 

 April before any pollen is obtained here in central New 

 York. 



Following skunk cabbage comes the soft maple, from 

 which the bees obtain pollen of a reddish tinge; and 2 or 

 3 days later the elm blooms, from which a liberal supply is 

 obtained, if the weather is fine. This gives the bees a great 

 start at brood-rearing, and an advance which is rarely checked 

 by all the unfavorable weather which may come thereafter. 

 However, in occasional years, we have a severe freeze just 

 at the time all these early pollen-producing flowers are about 

 to open, which spoils the whole, and in such years it is up- 

 hill business for the bees till the willow and hard maples 

 bloom, when large quantities of pollen are usually obtained. 



As I said to start with, early pollen is something that 

 all bee-keepers are joyful over, but in some localities, later 

 on, bees store so much pollen in their combs that it seems 

 to those not as familiar with the inside workings of the 

 hive as they might be, that some device for removing this 

 pollen would be of great benefit to them, for at a bee-con- 

 vention some years ago I heard offers as great as $25 from 

 a single person for some plan to remove pollen from the 

 combs. 



Some advise putting these combs of pollen into tepid 

 water and soaking a week or so till the pollen becomes soft 

 and mushy, when the combs are to be put into the honey- 

 extractor and the pollen ad water thrown out. Others ad- 

 vise making combs containing much pollen into wax, and 

 then work the wax into comb foundation to put into the 

 hives for the bees to draw out into comb again; but all such 

 advice seems to me to be a damage rather than a help. 



In this locality wet get large quantities of pollen — prob- 

 ably as much as is gathered in any place in the United 

 States — yet I have never soaked or melted up a single comb 

 on that account, neither did I ever have any thrown out 

 by the bees, as others claim they have, unless said pollen had 

 become moldy. 



With me there are two different periods in which the 

 bees store much more pollen than is worked by the nurse- 

 bees into chyme for the young brood. One is during the 

 bloom of hard or sugar maple, and the other during white 

 clover bloom. I have had combs of pollen gathered from 

 the yield during hard maple which weighed as high as 4^4 

 pounds. At such time as this I work as follows : 



Whenever the bees gather so much as to crowd the 

 queen, I take it away for the time being and place empty 

 combs in its stead. If there come a few rainy or windy 

 days at this time I find that this pollen is all exhausted, so 

 that the cells are once more empty or filled with eggs, as it 

 takes large quantities of food for the numerous brood at this 

 season of the year. After apple-bloom there is little for the 

 bees to work on, and the surplus of pollen is all soon used 

 up, and more needed, when I set back that which was re- 

 moved, and thus brood-rearing is kept up more effectually 

 than by feeding syrup, honey, or any other plan of stimula- 

 tive feeding, providing there is plenty of honey in the hive, 

 which there generally is, if bad weather has not cut short the 

 vield from the apple-bloom. 



I consider plenty of pollen in the combs during the 

 period of scarcity between apple and clover bloom of great 

 advantage, as it keeps brood-rearing going on without a 

 break till the honey harvest arrives. 



The pollen gathered during white clover is treated dif- 

 ferently from that gathered earlier. The early rarely ever 

 has honey placed top of it, while that from clover is placed 

 in the cells till they are nearly ; | full, when the cell is filled 

 with honey and sealed over so as to preserve it against a 

 time of need the next spring, or before bees can gather 

 from natural sources in the early part of the year. During 

 the summer, as I find combs o ntaining much pollen in this 

 preserved state, they are hung away in the room for storing 

 combs; or, if it is so early that the wax-moth is trouble- 

 some, they are stored in upper stories over weak colonies of 



