129 



For the American Bee Journal. 



My Swarm Catcher. 



m. s. SNOW. 



I will here give a description of the 

 swarm-catcher that I have used for 

 years. It will serve the purpose of catch- 

 ing natural swarms, or in case of 

 " swarming out,' 1 which they will often 

 do, even if they are given a card of un- 

 sealed hrood. I had three try it last 

 season ; they seemed to eat up all the 

 eggs in the comh and hroke up keeping 

 house, making preparation to leave, and 

 probably would, had it not been for the 

 catcher. 



Bees hived acainst their will. 

 Are of the same opinion still— 



providing they have a nice hollow tree 

 picked out; It is a nice thing where 

 there are many bees kept and allowed to 

 swarm naturally, for it keeps them all 



Journal of Horticulture. 



separate. I have had as many as live or 

 six in use at one time, making it unnec- 

 essary to climb trees, cut limbs, or dig 

 them out of brush ; they are caged and 

 under control, and can be hived at leis- 

 ure ; no hurrying or sweating around 

 for fear they will leave. 



It is simply a light frame with handles, 

 the sides and top covered with mosquito 

 bar. Of course the hives must be on 

 the ground, and so arranged that the 

 catcher can be placed over them. All 

 are welcome to use it, as there is no 

 patent on it. If the bees have quite a 

 start before it is placed over the hive, 

 those outside will cluster back on the 

 catcher, and seem to be anxious to get 

 in. Queens are not so liable to be lost 

 as when they swarm all over the yard; 

 she climbs up the screen and joins the 

 bees in one corner. I have had them 

 start comb on the top-bars, when left 15 

 or 20 minutes before hiving. 



Osakis, Minn., Jan. 20, 1880. 



New Plan of Giving Artificial Pollen. 



FRANK CHESHIRE. 



Some experiments with condemned 

 bees, which I take to be in their re- 

 sults exceedingly instructive, I will now 

 recount. On September 19th I placed 

 A% lbs. of bees in a large and well-pro- 

 tected hive, in the frames of which 

 narrow guides only were provided. The 

 first two days they took 4 lbs. of syrup, 

 but afterwards for 7 days they were 

 provided each evening with a til ed 

 bottle containing 3 lbs. 11 ozs. of syrup. 

 They built comb of great evenness and 

 whiteness, which now more than half 

 filled the hive, yet the queen laid but 

 few eggs. The reason, upon theoretical 

 grounds I was convinced, was lack of 

 pollen. Very little at this date could 

 be found in our neighborhood, as the 

 land is mostly under cultivation. If 

 the pinch for pollen was already felt, 

 how was the greater difficulty of pro- 

 viding sufficient for early spring breed- 

 ing to be met ? I placed trays of pea 

 flour (pea flour I first pointed out as a 

 fine substitute for pollen, since it stands 

 in the front rank as a flesh-former) near 

 to the hives, sprinkling chaff over the 

 pea flour, as is now generally well 

 understood, to give the bees a standing 

 place while gathering it on o the hairs 

 of the thorax. 



A colony of Italians that had fed 

 from these same trays in the spring 

 started at once, and carried it in heavily, 

 but my newly arrived blacks seemed 

 unable to learn the nature of the boon 

 offered them, only an occasional bee 

 loading itself. I now reflected that the 

 pollen of anemophilous trees — i.e., trees 

 fertilized by the wind— is not sticky, so 

 that the wind soon separates it from its 

 anthers and blows it on to the adhesive 

 pistils of its flowers ; while the pollen 

 of entomophilous trees — i.e., trees 

 fertilized by insects— is stickey, and so 

 can the more readily be made into pel- 

 lets by the different species of bees, 

 and added, as an experiment, to my 

 pea flour a small quantity of pounded 

 sugar to increase its adhesiveness. It 

 was now perhaps loaded more easily 

 and quickly by the Italians, but the 

 blacks, as before, listened not to my 

 wooing. The problem to be solved took 

 this form : We can give sugar without 

 asking our bees to leave their warm 

 cluster to take it, but artificial pollen, 

 even if accepted, needs the bees to quit 

 the hive and expose themselves often to 

 a temperature so low that many must 

 perish ; while the weather, when nitro- 

 genous food is essential, may be such as 



