October, IQ07. 



American l^ee Journal 



Those who are so unfortunate as not 

 to have such combs must resort to sugar 

 syrup or candy. 



A nucleus with 4 frames of brood the 

 third w-eek in August ought to have no 

 trouble in building up for winter, and 

 in this locality they would be pretty 

 safe as to rearing queens, but it would 

 have been much better if there had been 

 a sealed cell to give to each nucleus. 

 Of course there is always some risk 

 as to young queens being lost, and in 

 your peculiar climate there may be un- 

 usual loss, but let us hope for the best. 



It is not certain that your heavy mor- 

 tality in the winter was due to the jars 

 and slamming. Bees will stand a lot 

 of noise and jarring overhead, especially 

 if it be somewhat regular. 



Swarm Settling on a Sister's Face 



While Miss Richards, of Mabe, Corn- 

 wall, was watching her bees, a swarm 

 suddenly settled on her face and neck. 

 Fortunately, she had courage enough to 

 allow them to remain undisturbed, and 

 eventually the bees were successfully 

 drawn off and hived, without having 

 caused the slightest injury to iVliss Rich- 

 ards. I thought an incident so unusual 

 and so illustrative of the lady's cour- 

 age would be worth recording. — British 

 Bee Journal. 



A Sister's Experience In South Africa 



Harvesting Sweet Clover Seed 



Those readers who favored me with 

 orders for seed of yellow sweet clover 

 may be interested in seeing how we 

 gather it at our house. All the help 

 we can get from the men-folks is the 



At Marian Hill, one of the sisters 

 from the cloister was trying to capture 

 a wild swarm which a Kaffir woman 

 had told her about. She thus tells the 

 story according to Unterfr. Biene : 



"***** Alas, with lightning 

 speed and great noise and confusion 

 came the whole swarm flying upon me. 

 I had the feeling as if great hail-stones 



POUNDINC, Ul'T bWEKT CulVliR SEED 



mowing. I get one of them into the 

 field when I think it is ready, preferably 

 while the clover is damp or wet, so 

 that the seed will not shell so much as 

 it does when dry. It is then allowed 

 to lie on the ground for a few days 

 to finish ripening, when the girls and I 

 go out with the buggy canvas to get the 

 seed. We go in the morning, while 

 the clover is damp with dew, and load 

 up a good pile which we leave till to- 

 wards evening. It is now thoroughly 

 dry, and yields very readily to the feet 

 and sticks of the harvesters. 



Day after day we do this until the 

 crol> is in. I like to get the seed off the 

 ground even if no one wants it, for if 

 left on it seeds itself too heavily. Treat- 

 ed as we do, a field gives good results 

 year after year. 



(Mrs.) A. L. Amos. 



Comstock, Neb. 



had fallen from the sky upon my face. 

 I shook my head, but it was no help, 

 the swarm hung fast. Apparently they 

 had first settled on my frontlet, for the 

 swarm was very heavy, and lay thick 

 upon my face, and hung down like a 

 beard over my breast. There I stood, 

 blind, deaf and dumb. Head and neck 

 behind the veil were covered solid, so 

 that I could no longer move my head. 

 Directly I felt a difficulty of breathing, 

 and tried to open my mouth to get a 

 little air, but immediately the bees tried 

 to get into my mouth, so I was obliged 

 quickly to close my lips again. At 

 first I could get some air through the 

 nose, but the bees crept also into the 

 nose-holes. So I was obliged to look 

 forward to a fearful death-struggle. 



"The sister with me didn't know how 

 to help. I took a memorandum book 

 from my pocket and wrote on it that 



she should run to the mill, some 10 

 minutes away. Trappists were there at 

 work, and she should bring a queen 

 from Brother Caspar who kept bees. 

 After a long time I finally succeeded in 

 getting the bees onto the scapulary; 

 from there I shook the swarm into the 

 swarm-catcher, and ran away, glad to 

 escape from death. If I had undertaken 

 a struggle with the bees, and resisted 

 the attack, they would certainly have 

 killed me." 



The sister relates that only a few 

 bees stung her; but they scratched her 

 face with their claws, and with their 

 little tongues and jaws had picked and 

 bitten her, and especially burrowed con- 

 tinually into her' eyes. 



Wintering Queens the Third Winter. 



E. W. Alexander having advised not 

 to try wintering a queen the third win- 

 ter, Dr. Miller raises the question wheth- 

 er there is not a difference caused by 

 locality, strain of bees, or something. He 

 has had in his hives the past season 24 

 queens that had passed their third win- 

 ter, and says: 



"I don't see but they average fairly 

 with others, some of them the best. 

 I don't believe longevity in bees is ap- 

 preciated as it should be. If six weeks 

 is the average life of a worker in sum- 

 mer (lately the tendency is to discount 

 that a little), and if it takes to the field 

 at 16 days of age, then- a worker that 

 lives 48 days instead of 42 ought to 

 gather 23 percent more than the aver- 

 age. Even if it lives only a day more 

 than the average, it ought to gather 104 

 pounds for every 100 pounds gathered 

 by the average bee. If a strain of bees 

 has queens that last three years and do 

 good work, and another strain has 

 queens that are good for only 2 years, 

 would you not naturally expect that 

 there would be a difference in the ages 

 of the workers from the 2 queens? And 

 how will you encourage long life in the 

 workers any better than by favoring 

 long life in the queens? The thing is 

 worth thinking over." — Gleanings, 1128. 



Vitality of Queen's Eggs. 



J. L. Byer says, in Canadian Bee 

 Journal, that one of the best known and 

 most successful apiarists "claimed that 

 if a comb was inserted in the brood- 

 nest in the fall, when the queen was yet 

 laying, and then taken out again as soon 

 as eggs had been deposited, these eggs 

 would develop the following spring if 

 the comb was put in a hive again. The 

 comb could be stored any old place, 

 at a zero temperature would not hurt 

 the eggs in the least." 



Longevity of Bees. ^ 



Mr. Beuhne says we can't have short- 

 lived queens and long-lived workers. 

 Roughly speaking, he requeens every 2 

 years, but his extra-good queens are al- 

 lowed to live as long as they will, and 

 by breeding from such queens he se- 

 cures longer-lived workers. H. L. 

 Jones says he has a very yellow queen 

 6 years old that is doing good work 

 still. — Australasian Bee-Keeper, 232. 



