584 



American Hee Journal 



July, 1907. 



wise one. I£ the bee-keepers of Mis- 

 souri will now give him their hearty co- 

 operation, he will doubtless be able to 

 rid the State of foul brood in due time. 

 We congratulate the bee-keepers of 

 Missouri upon the success in securing 

 their new law, and also upon the ap- 

 pointment of Mr. Darby as inspector. 



The Address of A. J. King, formerly 

 editor of the Bee-Keepers' Magazine, 

 (long since e.xtinct), is asked for by one 

 of our readers. Who can tell us? 



ilR. Benton's Se.^rch for New Bee- 

 Races. 



The following letter has been received 

 by the editor of Gleanings : 



U.viTED States Dep.^rtment of Agriculture, 

 BuRE.\u o? Entomology. 



Washington, D. C, May 29, 1907. 



Mv Dear Sir: — I am in receipt of your let- 

 ter of May i6th, asking for information con- 

 cerning the results of tile trip by Mr. Frank 

 Benton, in search of new races of bees. 



I regret that I am unable to give you a 

 report of this trip, since the Bureau of En- 

 tomology has received no such report from Mr. 

 Benton, and he is no longer connected with the 

 Bureau of Entomology-. The information which 

 we have on the subject is a verbal statement 

 from Mr. Benton to the effect that he found 

 very few bees, and was unable to ship any of 

 them to this country. The tone of his state- 

 ment concerning them would indicate that they 

 are not desirable. Respectfully yours. 



G. L. Marlatt, 

 .4cthig Chief of Bureau. 



Inspectors of .\pi.\ries' Report. — Un- 

 der date of July i, 1907, Dr. E. F. Phil- 

 lips, who now has charge of the bee- 

 keeping interests of our Government at 

 Washington, D. C., wrote as follows : 



Dear Mr. York : — Under separate 

 cover, I am mailing you a copy of Bul- 

 letin No. 70, "Report of the Meeting 

 of Inspectors of .-Apiaries, San Antonio, 

 Tex., November 12, 1906." This bulletin 

 is for sale by the Superintendent of 

 Documents, Government Printing Office, 

 Washington, D. C, for 15 cents. Stamps 

 are not accepted in payment. 

 Yours very truly, 



E. F. Phillips, 

 In Charge of Apiculture. 



The Report referred to contains 80 

 pages and cover. It is a most interest- 

 ing pamphlet, and should be in the 

 hands of every bee-keeper who wishes 

 to have the latest word concerning dis- 

 eases of bees. Send a 15-cent money 

 order or coins for a copy as directed by 

 Dr. Phillips. 



How Far Do Bees Go For 

 Nectar? 



BY C. P. DADANT. 



I have noticed both Mr. Chambers' 

 and Mr. Byer's articles on the above 

 subject (pages 279 and 393) and I desire 

 to add my experience. When anv one 

 of us thinks he knows, he should' hesi- 

 tate about telling others that they are 

 wrong, for different conditions produce 

 diffei^ent results, and what proves cor- 

 rect in one spot is incorrect in another. 

 Mr. Chambers himself, who says it is 

 "all bosh" about bees going such short 

 distances for honey, shows us that cir- 

 cumstances alter conditions, and that in 

 some cases bees may not go much over 

 a mile, for he says: "During all these 

 years the closest watch has failed to 

 show any great flight of bees towards 

 the sumacs on the east, .only a mile and 

 over." 



I believe the man who claims the 

 longest distances of travel for his bees 

 is Mr. Doolittle. If I am not mis- 

 taken, he says they will go as far as 8 

 miles. I do not feel like calling Mr. 

 Doolittle's or Mr. Chambers' ideas "all 

 bosh," for I. believe that thev speak 

 the truth, but I think the distances trav- 

 eled by bees depend entirely upon loca- 

 tion. I know, as Mr. Chambers says, 



that bees will travel farther in one di- 

 rection than in another. This is caused 

 by several things, in my opinion: The 

 direction of the wind, its velocity, the 

 shape of the ground (whether plains or 

 hills), the amount of obstacles, timber, 

 streams, houses, etc. ; and, lastly, the 

 number of honey-plants along the way 

 to the distant pasture. 



Some 20 years ago, Mr. Root request- 

 ed several bee-keepers who had for a 

 long time kept out-apiaries, to write 

 statements of their experiences with 

 bees located at different spots under the 

 same management. The replies of 

 France, Manum and myself, with dia- 

 grams, were published in Gleanings at 

 that time, and have been since partly 

 reproduced in the "A B C of Bee-Cuf- 

 ture." I am sending a new diagram 

 which will show my reasons for believ- 

 ing that bees do not usually travel over 

 2 miles in search of honey. 



Perhaps it is as well for me to say 

 at once, that there is nothing in the 

 statement that we must despise a race 

 of bees that are not good for a crop 

 of honey 3 miles or more from them. 

 We h,-tye imported fully one-half of 

 the Italian bees that have produced the 

 present American stock. We have tried 

 Carniolans, Cyprians, etc.. and we have 

 found no difference in their ability to 

 travel. In fact, the ability to travel 



depends upon the wings, and the large 

 leather-colored Italians that we prefer 

 are as strong of wing as the best. 



At the North of the map the reader 

 will see an apiary marked "Champeau." 

 We harvested our best crops at that 

 place, owing to the moist lowlands east 

 of it. The "Liegerot" apiary, a little 

 over 2 miles west of it, and located on 

 the shore of the river, never gave more 

 than half as much honey, under a man- 

 agement in every way identical. The 

 river cut half of its pasture away. We 

 have no bees there at present. 



The "Milliken" apiary is now our best 

 apiary for yield, excepting the apiaries 

 at the south end, which are on the edge 

 of the low, swampy lands of the river. 

 The reader will notice^ that our home 

 apiary is just about 3J4 miles west of 

 it. and. although our bees fly mainly in 

 that direction, they have never been 

 able to harvest as good crops as at this 

 apiary. 



Notice a dot southwest from our 

 home apiary. There was a small apiary 

 there a few years ago, and when the 

 Spanish-needles on the low islands be- 

 low Hamilton were in bloom, the bees 

 of that apiary invariably made progress 

 on the Spanish-needle honey when our 

 home bees did nothing. That honey 

 was only a little over 2 miles away, but 

 it was across hills and hollows, and 

 timber-land, and the bees evidently did 

 not go that far. 



The "Byers" apiary is on high land, 

 some distance from any damp waste 

 lands, and has yielded nothing worth 

 mentioning, except from the white clover 

 pastures around it. It has been first- 

 class for the white clover crop, for most 

 of its surroundings are pastures. 



The "Villemain" apiary is now in the 

 hands of a man who formerly worked 

 for us. It is adjacent to about 500 acres 

 of islands, and gets quite a crop from 

 that every year. But during one sum- 

 mer when those islands were pastured 

 to excess after a heavy flood of the 

 Mississippi, the bees in that apiary lit- 

 erally starved, while those of the "La- 

 met" apiary, and of the "Sack" apiary, 

 which are next to the immense swamps 

 of the river, were yielding abundantly. 

 The "Villemain" apiary is only 4 miles 

 from the nearest of those, and only 3^2 

 from the edge of the swamps; but as 

 Mr. Byer puts it, "it might as well have 

 been 20 miles away, as far as practical 

 results were concerned." But if instead 

 of hills and hollows between the two 

 there had been an uninterrupted valley, 

 with fields of flowers attracting them, it 

 is possible that the bees would have 

 gone the 4 miles and into the swamp- 

 land. I have no doubt that the bees 

 at the "Lamet" apiary go 2 or 3 miles 

 in a southwest direction for honey, since 

 their pasturage is wedge-shaped. 



.\nother apiary within a half mile 

 gives about the same results. But the 

 "sack" apiary, on the edge of the widest 

 bottom-land, gives most positive results 

 every season. In 30 odd years we have 

 had but two failures of the fall crop 

 there. .\t that place we get only about 

 a half crop of clover honey, for their 

 pasture is half bottom-land that grows 

 no clover at all. Another apiary about 

 a mile south vields similar returns. 



