538 



June 20, 1907 



Spring Feeding of Bees 



BY EDWIN BKVINS 



I have read with considerable inter- 

 est the articles by Mr. Scholl and Mr. 

 Dadant, relating to the spring feeding 

 of bees and the best kind of feeders to 

 use at that season of the year. Mr. 

 SchoU's arrangement has advantages 

 over the other fteders mentioned by 

 him, but my objection to it is that, like 

 the others, it takes the bees too 

 far from the brood-nest. This may not 

 be true to any great extent of the 

 division-board feeder, but I object to 

 its use for the same reasons as given 

 by Mr. Scholl. I want a feeder which 

 can be placed right over the cluster of 

 bees, which, in spring, is right on the 

 brood ; I want no space but a bee- 

 space between the tops of the frames 

 and the bottom of the feeder ; and I do 

 not want any bees to be made to crawl 

 up the outsides of any feeder in order 

 to pet feed from its open top. 



There is no feeder so satisfactory to 

 me as a modified Hill feeder. The 

 make-shifts for the Hill feeder, men- 

 tioned by Mr. Dadant, will not do at 

 all for the man who has many colonies 

 to feed, as they take up so much time 

 in preparation for use. The quart Hill 

 feeder is the one I have been using, 

 but I object to it on account of its 

 depth, which prevents packing around 

 and over it sufficiently close to prevent 

 escape of heat from the brood-chamber. 

 A feeder, with recessed and per- 

 forated cover, half the depth and with 

 greater diameter than the Hill feeder, 

 is all right. Where to get the ready- 

 made shallow atmospheric feeder does 

 not yet appear. Not every tinner has 

 the machinery to form the cover out of 

 a solid piece of tin. Any tinner could 

 cut the regular sizes of the Hill feeders 

 down one-half too small in capacity. 

 I want a feeder to hold not less than 

 one quart, and incidentally I will say 

 that I use no Hill feeder without en- 

 larging a few of the perforations with 

 the point of a wire-nail. This, per- 

 haps, is not necessary where feeders 

 are new, but with long use it will be 

 found an advantage. Probably in or- 

 der to get the required form of the Hill 

 feeder, I shall have to get my supply 

 dealer to order some from the factory 

 where the Hill feeders are made. 



The use of the Hill feeder in its pres- 

 ent form has enabled me to feed 100 

 colonies of bees since the middle of 

 March more satisfactorily, I believe, 

 than I could have done it with any 

 other f eider, but a shallower Hill 

 feeder would have saved me some work, 

 and, I think, have been better for the 

 bees, because I could have made the 

 packing a little tighter above them in 

 many instances. 



Mr. Dadant's caution about using 

 rusty feeders may be all right for those 

 who feed when the weather is so cold 

 that the bees will not take down the 

 feed without leaving them on for sev- 

 eral days. I have fed in rusty feeders 

 many times in the fall, and have never 

 had a case of dysentery amongst my 

 bees. If the feed is given warm, and 

 the quilt and cushion are tucked down 

 closely around and over the feeder, the 

 feed is always taken within a few 

 hours after giving, if the perforations 



American T^ee Joarnaij 



are all clear. Sometimes a large num- 

 ber of them get clogged, and hence the 

 use of the hammer and wire-nail. 



I will add here what may be a benefit 

 to some. I put supers of varying 

 depths on all of my hives in October. 

 These supers are sometimes the ones 

 used for 4'4 sections, sometimes half- 

 depth extracting supers, and some- 

 times full-depth hive-bodies. 



I will also add, though not pertinent 

 to the subject, that I place 2corncobs 

 about an inch apart across the top-bars 

 of every hive. Over these, and cover- 

 ing the whole surface of the frames in- 

 side of the super, is placed a piece of 

 heavy burlap, and above this is placed 

 a gunny-sack, or any sack made of 

 cheap material, partly filled with chaff 

 from the straw-pile after the thrashing 

 is done. 



When I wish to give feed in an at- 

 mospheric feeder, all I have to do is to 

 raise the back end of the cushion and 

 the piece of burlap below with one 

 hand, and shove in the feeder with the 

 other. It is done so quickly that the 

 bees do not realize what is going on 

 until all is over. 



In the deep supers the feeders can be 

 covered very well to prevent the escape 

 of heat, but not so satisfactorily in the 

 comb-honey supers; hence I devised 

 a shallower feeder that can be packed 

 around and above easily in any saper, 

 and does not call for very much move- 

 ment among the bees in order to obtain 

 the feed. 



At this writing (June 6) the winter 

 packing around my hives has not been 

 removed, and will not be until weather 

 conditions are less provocative of swear 

 words. These conditions have pre- 

 vailed here most of the time since 

 April 1st. The supers with chafif cush- 

 ions will be left on every hive as long 

 as feeding is necessary. With frequent 

 rains and warmer weather I think there 

 will be some kind of a flow from white 

 clover in the not distant future. In 

 the meantime there will have to be 

 quite a liberal " flow " of granulated 

 sugar and water, half and half. My 

 colonies now are not in very bad con- 

 dition to take care of a honey-flow. 

 Leon, Iowa. 



The Bee's 



Antennae 

 Color 



Pollen 



BY PROF. A. I. COOK 



Mr. B , of Delaware, Ohio, asks me 

 to explain in the American Bee Jour- 

 nal how the bee finds the nectar in the 

 flowers, or how it is guided in its 

 search for what it desires. Of course, 

 the bee has eyes, and very remarkable 

 ones. All insects have the large com- 

 pound eyes, which are made up of 

 thousands of simple eyes in many 

 cases. Each of these simple eyes is 

 quite complex, being made up of sev- 

 eral parts, much as we find them in our 

 own eyes. They often have three sim- 

 ple eyes— or ocelli, as they are called— 

 which are well marked in all bees. 

 Thus we would expect that bees would 

 see well, and would use these eyes in 

 their quest for nectar, pollen, and 

 whatever they seek as they leave their 

 hives. We have reason to believe, 

 however, that bees are not so much 



guided by vision as we should expect. 

 We know when we move the hives 

 slightly how the bees will come down 

 to the old place for days. They seem 

 to be guided by sense of direction, or 

 habit, and not by direct vision. 



I have another case that seems to 

 show that their vision, rather than 

 sense of direction, guides in some 

 cases, but that it is often at fault. I 

 once lived in a house exactly like my 

 neighbor's, though the trees surround- 

 ing each were quite different. When I 

 would put honey on my back porch for 

 the bees my neighbor was annoyed by 

 swarms of bees on his similar and 

 similarly placed back porch. Tne bees 

 were obviously fooled, and returned to 

 the wrong house. Our company, and 

 that of our neighbor, often made the 

 same mistake. 



I have no doubt but bees see well, 

 and use their eyes to their great ad- 

 vantage, yet in the hive where they do 

 much work they can not be thus 

 guided, as the interior of the hive is 

 totally dark. I much doubt, however, 

 if bees do use the sense much in the 

 quest for nectar of flowers or other 

 sweets. 



Many insects like bees, ants, wasps, 

 moths, etc., have very delicately sensi- 

 tive organs of smell. The scent or- 

 gans are the antennae. Wherever we 

 find the antennae— the horn-like or- 

 gans appended to the head — well de- 

 veloped, we may be sure that the sense 

 of smell is pronounced. Male moths, 

 drone and worker bees, many beetles 

 and ants, have such antenna;. In all 

 such cases we may be sure that the in- 

 sects have need in their functional 

 activities to detect odors, that it may 

 be, in some cases, are entirely unper- 

 ceived by us. We have one large silk- 

 moth here, that when a female comes 

 forth from her cocoon, though the 

 room may be closed all but a slight lift 

 of one window, males often enter to 

 the number of 50 or 100. I have known 

 of just such curious entrances to rooms 

 twice in my life. I have known of one 

 case where a swarm of the male moths 

 were flying outside about the closed 

 windows of a room, when, upon exami- 

 nation, it was found that a female had 

 emerged from the cocoon inside. It is 

 authentically reported that in one case 

 males of these moths came down a 

 chimney through a stove, and into the 

 room from a stove-damper, when a 

 female had just come forth from its 

 cocoon in the room. If we approach 

 close to these moths we smell the pecu- 

 liar odor, but we must get close. Think 

 how wonderfully sensitive the nose (?) 

 of the male moths must be to detect 

 this outside the room with all the win- 

 dows closed ! 



Here in California we often note a 

 butterfly — Pyrameis cardui, or the this- 

 tle butterfly — going by countless thou- 

 sands in one direction. This migra- 

 tion often lasts for hours, or even for 

 days. In some cases we find that they 

 are going against the wind. The ex- 

 planation is not far to seek. There 

 are, without doubt, a thicket of thistles, 

 their food-plant, in some distant neigh- 

 borhood. The faint odor of the plants, 

 which we do not detect at all, is per- 

 ceived by the butterflies, and they are 

 impelled by a marvelous instinct to 

 seek the plants on which to lay their 



