1920 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



271 



screens taken from the bottom and 

 the bodies set on the bare ground. 

 The screens on top were covered 

 with tarred felt and on that earth 

 heaped. That same night a heavy 

 rain storm ensued, but the soil be- 

 ing porous, the location a hillside, 

 and the ground very dry, no harm 

 was done. The bees went immedi- 

 ately to work, and during the suc- 

 ceeding three weeks stored consid- 

 erable honey and built up into good 

 colonies. This history brings them 

 to the first of July, 1919. Then all 

 sources of nectar failed, so far as 

 surplus is concerned. From that 

 time until May 18, 1920, the bees have 

 lived from hand to mouth, starved or 

 been fed. I lost some bees by star- 

 vation on May 16. They had been 

 shut up by stormy, cold weather for 

 three days and did not have suffi- 

 cient stores, even for that short time. 

 Usually, here, the 16th of May marks 

 the beginning of our heaviest honey 

 flow, the bees having begun to swarm 

 in April. This year a late frost after 

 Easter cut ofT the meagre supply of 

 nectar and caused the bees to tear 

 down their queen cups and kill all 

 their drones, .\bout half my colo- 

 nies had enough stores, with what 

 they could find, to pull through with- 

 out feeding. The weak and deficient 

 ones I have fed steadily. They are 

 now the strongest and since the 18th 

 of May have been storing some 

 honey from horsemint, which is in 

 full bloom, but because of drought is 

 secreting little nectar. Our early 

 mesquite bloom and gaillardia 

 (Texas marigold) bloom were fail- 

 ures for the same reason. In addi- 

 tion to drought, we have had much 

 cold and windy weather this spring. 

 Take it all in all, this has been the 

 worst season for bees that I have 

 ever experienced, and my experience 

 began fn 1871. 



Austin, Texas. 



The above letter is interesting, es- 

 pecially from the statement that the 

 change of location "seemed to invig- 

 orate" the bees. Our correspondent 

 ascribes it to change of climate or 

 of elevation. But we have seen sim- 

 ilar "invigoration" when we moved 

 bees only 20 or 30 miles. The emi- 

 nent teacher, Mr. Demuth, asserts 

 that there is a great deal in the "col- 

 ony morale." We believe he is right 

 and we believe also that moving bees 

 to new fields has a beneficial efTect 

 upon them. The above letter is an- 

 other testimonial in that direction. — 

 Editor. 



BEE NOTES 



By Rev. A. A. Evans 

 A Starvation Swarm 



Some years ago a dear, good friend 

 of mine related to me a curious bee 

 experience. It was a cold, bleak 

 spring, and his solitary stock was 

 all empty of food stores. He vvas 

 aware of this, and determined to give 

 them some candy, by and by. My 

 friend is one of that class which 

 thinks tomorrow is as good as today, 

 and there is a saying that "tomorrow 

 never comes." At any rate, the feed- 

 ing, which should have been done at 

 once, was put off. During a morning. 



swept by a northeaster, and a tem- 

 perature almost Arctic, to his amaze- 

 ment he saw what looked like a 

 miniature swarm; the bees came out. 

 wandered aimlessly in the bitter wind 

 for a minute and then settled in a 

 l)enunibed knot some distance from 

 the hive. "Now," says my friend, 

 "after that you must give up those 

 pretty ideas about the foresight and 

 intelligence and good sense of the 

 bee. When I opened the hive I 

 found the queen and a small bunch of 

 l)ees left, with just a few ounces of 

 honey; for they were not quite with- 

 out, you know; no, not without, or I 

 should, of course, at once have fed 

 them; a little honey was left. But 

 could anything be more improvident, 

 more fatuous, more idiotic, than to 

 swarm on a cheerless March day, and 

 in a world bare and flowerless?" 

 Gallant Gentleman 

 Then I explained to my friend that 

 this was what beekeepers call a 

 "hunger swarm," which occurs not 

 normally, but sometimes when bees 

 discover there is not enough food to 

 last them until the flowers- come 

 again and nectar is obtainable. There 

 is just the chance that by the aban- 

 donment of the hive by a portion of 

 the colony, the rest, with the queen, 

 can live on in safety, and what he 

 had seen was the rare, pitiful occur- 

 rence of bees sallying forth to die in 

 order to save the rest of the stock. 

 Bee nature and human nature can 

 come sometimes strongly into touch, 

 for is there not an echo of this in the 

 story of that "Gallant Gentleman," 

 Captain Oates. who. in the Antarctic 

 expedition of 1913, quietly walked out 

 into the blizzard? Starvation 



swarms may occur not only in the 

 famine days of spring, but following 

 on bad weather and honeyless weeks 

 of summer. There sometimes comes, 

 even in the height of the summer 

 season, a period of cold and wet, 

 which prevents honey gathering, and 

 the population of the hive being at 

 its greatest, the store of food rapidly 

 disappears. Then it may be a por- 

 tion of bees will emerge in rain and 

 wind only for the purpose of saving 

 the life of the hive. These are pos- 

 sibilities a thoughful beekeeper will 

 always have in mind. 



DISCARDED CONTAINERS 



By C. D. Cheney 



My attention has been painfully di- 

 rected to the menace accompanying 

 honey containers which are discard- 

 ed by housekeepers and others with- 

 out washing. 



This section has suddenly been at- 

 tacked by American foulbrood, and 

 no other explanation than the above 

 can be offered for the extent and 

 suddenness of attack; every yard has 

 it, and only since last July. My ob- 

 ject in writing is to suggest the bene- 

 fit which may be gained by a cam- 

 paign to get honey producers and 

 deakrs to place upon every con- 

 tainer the retiuest for the user to 

 "wash the container before discard- 

 ing." The expense would amount to 

 nothing compared with the benefit 

 to the bee industry wherever honey 

 is consumed. 



(Your experience is exactly in a line 

 with ours. We have already tried to 

 call the attention of the public to the 

 danger of contaminated honey to 

 beekeeping. 



In an editorial published in June, 

 1913, and reprinted in July, 1918, in 

 the American Bee Journal, we called 

 the attention of beekeepers to the 

 I)ad habit of wasting honey, as well 

 as other food. Not only in unwashed 

 containers, but in the remnants of 

 the table, honey which is thrown 

 away constitutes a danger, because 

 there is a chance of the bees getting 

 at this, second hand, and bringing to 

 the hive with it undesirable bacteria. 

 The very best-looking and best-tast- 

 ing honey may contain in it germs 

 which, absolutely harmless to hu- 

 man beings, would mean ruin to the 

 brood of bees. It is true that, in 

 most cases, honey is perfectly free 

 from disease. But in case of contam- 

 ination, the bacteria which cause 

 disease are so small that scientific 

 examination has often failed to find 

 them. It is therefore very import- 

 ant that no honey be thrown away, 

 whether from the plates of wasteful 

 consumers or from unwashed con- 

 tainers. — Editor.) 



HOOVERING THE WOODSHED 



By Mrs. Dora Stewart 



"Fit only for kindling,' was my 

 partner's verdict. We v^ere inspect- 

 ing an old woodshed that marred the 

 only attractive spot on the premises 

 we had just rented as an apiary head- 

 quarters. The monstrosity simply 

 must be eliminated, even if I had to 

 do it myself, for the space it occupied, 

 beneath a group of three black wal- 

 nut trees, was to be our summer par- 

 lor. 



Soon after, my partner having sus- 

 tained a fractured hip, it was indeed 

 "up to me" not only to cope with the 

 woodshed, but with little money and 

 no e-xperience, to grapple with the 

 problems of equipping our bee plant 

 as well, the most important item be- 

 ing an extracting house. 



But when spring operations began, 

 I found the cost of necessary materi- 

 als, lumber, canvass, etc., for even the 

 most modest of our plans, prohibitive. 

 Also, labor was at a premium. Six 

 hundred young men sent to France 

 from a town of only si.x thousand, had 

 had an economic effect. No one was 

 available, even to reduce the wood- 

 shed to "kindling." "Who wants fires 

 in warm weather?" .-Knd "winter was 

 a long way off." 



Be that as it may, the important 

 problem remained unsolved. Of what 

 earthly use would it be to spend one's 

 summer persuading bees to fill their 

 combs with honey, if we had no way 

 to get it out ? 



Armed with a hammer, the only 

 tool I had ever used, I went out to the 

 woodshed to think it over. After 

 pulling out a few rusty nails and 

 pounding in others, I gazed gloomily 

 at the extracting machinery piled un- 

 der the only water-proof section of 

 the roof. Uncle Bob (not really my 

 uncle, but a sort of community un- 

 cle, rich and untroubled by economic 



