344 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



October 



liisl Luii\ ciiliuu uf the (k'urgia State Beekeepers' Association, recently organizeil .il W . 



ordinance is legislation directed 

 against the owner of bees and not 

 against the bees themselves and 

 would not in any way control or elim- 

 inate the alleged danger and that 

 transient bees, vagrant swarms of 

 bees, wild bees, sweat bees and hor- 

 nets, which are uncontrollable, would 

 be and are more dangerous than the 

 domesticated bee which has received 

 care and attention from beekeepers. 



7. That bees in themselves are not 

 dangerous, and will not sting or an- 

 noy until attacked. 



8. It has been judicially determined 

 that the keeping of bees in the City 

 of Rochester is not a nuisance. — City 

 of Rochester vs. Taunton. Decision 

 of the Police Court held that the en- 

 actment of a similar ordinance within 

 the City of Rochester, which was in- 

 troduced by former Alderman Wil- 

 liam Baker, of the Tenth Ward, was 

 illegal and unconstitutional. 



To show you how rarely dangerous 

 bees are, I desire to call your atten- 

 tion to the fact that there are two 

 hives of bees immediately back of 

 the store on Spring Street, occupied 

 by Alderman Morgan, the introducer 

 of this ordinance, and yet I am quite 

 sure that he or no one else knows 

 about them being there e.xccpt the 

 owner. 



Passing from the legal phase of 

 this question, I desire to call your at- 

 tention to the fact that there are 

 about two hundred beekeepers in the 

 City of Rochester, representing abou-t 

 five thousand colonies of bees, and 

 they produce, as near as we can de- 

 termine, about one hundred thousand 

 pounds of honey, valued at about 27 

 cents per pound. Honey is the only 

 food produced which is completely 

 prepared without the assistance of 

 man, animal or other insect, and noth- 

 ing touches il in the process of secur- 

 ing it and ])reparing it for human 

 food except the bee. 



To destroy this immense amount of 

 food secured by these little insects 

 in the City of Rochester because one 

 or two persons werjs stung by bees 

 through their own acts, would be al- 

 most uncalled for, and it seems to me 

 a willful waste of food, which would 

 add to our already great burden of 

 the high cost of living. It is the elim- 

 ination of one food product which 



causes the increased demand for an- 

 other and the elimination of one hun- 

 dred thousand pounds of honey from 

 the City of Rochester would cer- 

 tainly mean an increased demand 

 upon sugar and a consequent raise 

 in the price of that commodity. 



Besides the loss in food, there 

 would be even a greater loss in the 

 poUenization of fruits, flowers and 

 vegetables, and little or no fruit, flow- 

 ers or vegetables could be grown 

 without poUenization, the greatest 

 method of which is the bee itself. Not 

 a hothouse used for growing cucum- 

 bers could succeed without bees un-. 

 less by the long and laborious process 

 of touching each little blossom with 

 a hair brush and thus pollinating 

 them. I suggest that you verify this 

 by asking Mr. Rudman, of Ironde- 

 quoit, or Mr. William Craig, of the 

 penitentiary, about the value of bees 

 in growing fruits and vegetables. 



I therefore, in behalf lof the bee- 

 keepers of Rochester as represented 

 in the Monroe County Beekeepers' 

 Society, ask that said ordinance be 

 disapproved of and its passage de- 

 nied. 



All of which is respectfully sub- 

 mitted. 



THE IMPORTANCE OF WINTER 

 STORES 



By J. H. Merrill, Apiarist* 

 Kansas State- Agricultural College. 



*Contribution No. 58 from the Ento- 

 mological Laboratory, Kansas State 

 .Agricultural College. 



1 received a letter from J. E. C^'ie 

 in May, in which lie made some ob- 

 servations on winter protection. In 

 Lis letter he makes the two following 

 statements: "With good winter 

 packing I have had, for nearly 50 

 years, satisfactory results, except 

 when my bees have had poor stores 

 from honeydew or other sources, 

 when even winter packing will not 

 save all of them." He further said 

 tliat "With early, well-ripened honey, 

 ; nd plenty of l)ees, a colony will stand 

 almost any kind of cold for a time, 

 but it pays, and pays well, to use 

 winter packing where it can be had." 



As reported on page 334 of the 

 .\merican Bee Journal for October, 

 1919, and also in the Journal of Eco- 

 nomic Entomology, pages 99 to 111, 



Vol. 13, No. 1, an experiment to de- 

 termine the best form for winter pro- 

 tection for bees is being carried on at 

 the Experiment Station of the Kan- 

 sas State Agricultural College. In the 

 articles above mentioned, the value 

 of a windbreak, the superiority of a 

 two-story over a one-story hive for 

 wintering, and the value of packing 

 are clearly shown. During the winter 

 of 1919-1920 this experiment was con- 

 tinued, and when, on the 19th of 

 May, the bees were weighed to -de- 

 termine which form of wintering had 

 ■ been best for them, some additional 

 factors were found to have entered 

 into the experiment that were not 

 present in the first two years work. 

 These bees were put into vvinter 

 quarters on Octber 4, 1919, with a 

 known amount of honey and a known 

 number of bees in each hive. Suffi- 

 cient stores were left in each colony 

 to carry them through any ordinary 

 winter, and up to the beginning of 

 the honey flow. On the Sth of April 

 the temperature at Manhattan 

 dropped to 5 above zero. This low 

 temperature was accompanied by a 

 heavy snow storm. As a consequence 

 of this unseasonable weather, the 

 flowers on which the bees would ordi- 

 narily depend for spring food, were 

 killed: consequently, they were forced 

 to exist on the stores which were left 

 in the hives in the fall. One colony, 

 between October 4 and May 19, con- 

 sumed 52}i pounds of honey, after 

 which it was fed two half-filled 

 frames of honey and 6 pounds of su- 

 gar. This will explain why some of 

 the colonies became short on stores 

 l)efore they were weighed in the 

 spring. . 



During the winter, daily weights 

 were taken and recorded. On the 

 19th of May, 1920, the number of bees, 

 the amount of brood, and the amount 

 of honey were again determined. 

 This date is two weeks later than the 

 one on which the bees were weighed 

 in 1918-1919, and each colony should 

 have shown several thousand more 

 bees this year on the 19th of May 

 than it did last year on the 4th of 

 May. In 1918-1919, the one-story un- 

 packed hive in the windbreak gained 

 313 bees, while the packed liive in 

 the windbreak gained 24,844, but dur- 

 ing 1919-1920, the one-story unpacked 



