1904 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



1101 



Bl:tKEEPrN& AMONG THE KDCKIH 



A prominent dealer in honey and supplies 

 advertises in Gleanings ' ' white and yellow- 

 alfalfa ' ' seed. Probably he means sweet 

 clover. All the alfalfa I ever saw had a 

 purple blossom. 



Regarding the small nuclei for queen-mat- 

 ing, let it be remembered that, while Mr. 

 Laws deserves credit for first bringing them 

 prominently before the public, he has not 

 claimed to be the originator of the systeip. 

 C. B. Bankston, I believe, was the one who 

 brought the " Swarthmore " idea intoj^this 

 practical shape and firsts described thej sys- 

 tem in print, j :^::^ T.™!!^ 

 ; WSL \^ 



Sweet clover is'^'probably so called because 

 of its sweet smell when in bloom, though it 

 might well be so named because of the 

 sweet smell of the dried plant or because of 

 the amount of nectar it produces. I believe 

 it was either the New Mexico or Arizona 

 experiment station that in one of its bulle- 

 tins referred to it repeatedly as "sour clo- 

 ver," explaining that it used this term be- 

 cause of the taste of its leaves as compared 

 with alfalfa. It seems to me that this at- 

 tempt to change the name of such a well- 

 known plant is entirely unwarranted and 

 useless, and can only lead to confusion. 



The statement quoted in the Review, that 

 the man who uses a bicycle to go to an out- 

 apiary has done a day's work before he gets 

 there, makes an old century rider smile. 

 Although I keep one or more horses all the 

 while, I prefer to use a bicycle whenever 

 possible. I am bee-inspector for Mesa 

 County, and have made all my inspecting- 

 trips on the wheel. Sometimes for a couple 

 of weeks together I have ridden from fifteen 

 to thirty miles nearly every day, inspecting 

 from 75 to 100 colonies of bees at a trip, and 

 the least tiresome part of the day's work 

 has been that spent on the wheel. I enjoy 

 it more, probably keep in better health for 

 it, and get more work done at less expense 

 for the taxpayers who foot the bills, than if 

 I used a horse. 



Some bee-keepers here, generally new- 

 comers from the East, have tried to winter 

 their bees in cellars. So far as I know, the 

 results have invariably been very unsatis- 

 factory. Colorado has an ideal climate for 

 wintering bees outdoors. No matter how 

 cold it gets at night, and it very seldom gets 

 as cold as in the majority of the Eastern 

 States, the sun generally shines during the 



day and warms things up so that the bees 

 can move around in their hives and locate 

 themselves properly with regard to their 

 honey supply. Days on which they can fly 

 are frequent. Good colonies, with plenty of 

 honey, almost invariably winter well, no 

 matter how open and dilapidated their hives 

 may be. Some protect their bees by pack- 

 ing in straw or otherwise, but generally the 

 only preparation for winter, if any is made, 

 consists in laying a piece of burlap over the 

 frames, allowing a slight upward ventilation. 



Complaint is frequently made that queens 

 shipped in from a distance do not prove to 

 be good layers. Doubtless their prolificness 

 is often injured by their long trip through 

 the mails. It would be a good thing for the 

 bee-keepers here if some queen-breeder 

 would locate in this part of the West. The 

 shortness of the season, compared with the 

 Southern States, might make it impossible 

 to raise as many queens in a season, but I 

 think there would be a good demand for 

 them, and that more queens would be used 

 here if they could be bought near home. In 

 one respect a breeder would have an advan- 

 tage over many localities. A short drive 

 from almost any part of this valley would 

 take one out on the desert out of reach of 

 any other bees, so that queens could easily 

 be mated to selected drones. 



The picture of the Alexander apiary, and 

 the figures relating to it, no doubt seem very 

 impressive to those who are accustomed to 

 only small apiaries at considerable distances 

 from each other. But apparently there are 

 few or no other bees in the neighborhood. 

 Here it is no uncommon thing for that num- 

 ber of colonies to be on practically the same 

 ground, with the range limited on all sides 

 of them. A circle with a radius of a mile 

 and a half, including my apiaries, contains 

 800 colonies, and for a considerable part of 

 its circumference the circle would touch the 

 desert, on which there is ordinarily no pas- 

 turage, while there are bees all around the 

 rest of the circle. At another place a circle 

 with a radius of three-fourths of a mile con- 

 tained over 700 colonies, with bees nearly as 

 thick on all sides. Another circle with a 

 radius of a mile and a half contained 1100. 

 An apiary within this circle averaged three 

 cases of comb honey to the colony, though 

 that was far better than common. When it 

 comes to considering overstocking, the 

 trouble is that few stop to figure on the 

 number of colonies that already occupy 

 practically the same location. 



Prof. A. J. Cook some time ago in the 

 American Bee Journal called the attention 

 of bee-keepers to what he considered good 

 locations in southern California because of 

 the amount of alfalfa grown there. I felt 

 sure that he was mistaken, because I had 

 investigated some of these localities myself 

 and found them unpromising. In a recent 



