62 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



Feb. 1 



Bee-keeping Among The 

 Rockies 



By Wesley Foster. Boulder, Colo. 



I certainly should like to have a winter 

 nest constructed as the illustrations Editor 

 Root shows in the January 1st issue. There 

 are plenty of empty cells in our combs, but 

 there is a lack of sealed stores arranged in 

 proper relation to the brood or clustering nest. 



Referring to what I have said regarding 

 retail packages for extracted honey, I will 

 add that the Mason jar is the most econom- 

 ical jar for honey, for the reason that it can 

 be used the second time. But it is not a 

 suitable jar for shipping, and fhe cap luill 

 not hold the honey so it will not leak. A 

 plain jar with a tight cap about the size of 

 the pint Mason jar is about the best size for 

 honey. Since taking the picture shown on 

 page 17, and writing the article, I have seen 

 honey put up in the tall thin bottles that 

 olive oil is so often sold in. These packages 

 hold six or eight ounces, and were marked 

 at 25 cts. On inquiry I found that many 

 customers thought they held as much hon- 

 ey as a pound comb of honey. The con- 

 sumer was paying from fifty to sixty cents 

 a pound for an average grade of extracted 

 honey! The glass bottle would cost as 

 much as or more than the honey it contain- 

 ed when bought of the producer. 



I have a two-frame nucleus, which, how- 

 ever, is but little smaller than the average 

 colony this winter, that I am wintering in 

 an observatory hive placed in our dining- 

 room window. They have an exit through 

 the sash and are shielded from the light ex- 

 cept when some one wishes to look at them. 

 They are a source of interest to the children, 

 and I am curious to know how they will 

 come through the winter. Their stores are 

 mainly sugar syrup fed to them in October, 

 half sugar and half water by weight. I no- 

 tice a few hard granules on the bottom of 

 the hive that they can not manage. There 

 is about a quart of bees, and from Nov. 19th 

 to Christmasday those bees ate just IGounces 

 of their stores. That is a trifle less than a 

 half-ounce per day. So far but very few 

 dead bees have been carried out, not over 

 fifteen or twenty, for their exit opens out up- 

 on our porch, and if any dead bees are drag- 

 ged out they are easily seen. A half-dozen 

 dead bees is all that I have seen so far. They 

 do not seem to be anxious about flying when 

 the weather is rough outside, even though 

 their hive is in a room that has a tempera- 

 ture of from 65 to 70 degrees Fahrenheit. 



4)- 



WHY COMB HONEY IS USED MORE THAN 



EXTRACTED IN COLORADO. 



Taking the markets of Colorado as a 

 whole, I believe that four pounds of comb 

 honey is eaten to one of extracted. There 

 are two main reasons for this, the first being 



that comb honey looks so much more at- 

 tractive on the table, and is more of a deli- 

 cacy, while the extracted honey seems more 

 of a syrup. The second reason is that peo- 

 ple fear adulteration; in fact, there are many 

 who hold this opinion against almost any 

 thing that one can say. Here is where we 

 must get in our house-to-house work, and 

 educate the people to the fact that there 

 need be little fear nowadays of adulteration 

 of bottled honey. We can do this by tell- 

 ing the housewife the methods and appli- 

 ances used in raising extracted honey. So 

 many think that, because extracted honey 

 is so reasonable in price, this is proof that it 

 is adulterated. A well-known writer un- 

 muzzled his ignorance by voicing this idea 

 not long ago in one of the large monthly 

 magazines. How prone we are to ascribe 

 wrong motives to the other fellow when the 

 fault lies in our own ignorance! 



THE CAUSE OF THE HIGH WINDS IN COLO- 

 RADO. 



The gray, level, buffalo-grass-covered 

 plains slojie away to the east of the Rocky 

 Mountains for five hundred miles. The al- 

 titude of this great plains region ranges 

 from five to six thousand feet at the foot of 

 the mountains down to two or three thou- 

 sand feet, five hundred miles east of the 

 Rockies. The whole area is semi-arid, and 

 the irrigated portions take in but little more 

 than the river valleys, which, when drawn 

 on a map in their comparative size, look 

 like small fine tracings or narrow ribbon-? 

 drawn across this great wide region. This 

 gray expanse draws the warmth of the sun's 

 rays on our bright days, which succeed each 

 other almost indefinitely during the fall and 

 winter. Now, as this plains region becomes 

 warm, the warm air rises, and the cooler air 

 from the mountains rushes down from the 

 snow-capped ranges and foot-hills and across 

 these plains at a terrific speed. If it were 

 not for the rarity of the air much damage 

 would be done; but this light air does not 

 exert the pressure that heavier-weighted air 

 does. However, many windows are blown 

 out of houses, roofs lifted, and, of more con- 

 cern to the bee-keeper, the covers blow off 

 the hives, the hives tip over, and piles of 

 supers left out are scattered in every direc- 

 tion. A single brick is not sufficient to hold 

 an average cover on unless the bees have it 

 firmly sealed. Colonies of bees that are 

 light in weight are often blown over. 



Now, this wind has some advantages, 

 for it does not begin till there has been a 

 snowstorm on the range for one or more 

 days. While this snowstorm has been go- 

 ing on in the mountains ttie plains have 

 been warming up from the many days of 

 bright sunshine. This brings about the 

 rush of cold mountain air from the snowy 

 peaks out to the plains. This wind will 

 blow from one day to two weeks, and will 

 drift the snow into the ravines and gulches 

 in the mountains, saving it in the deep 

 drifts till it is needed late in the next sum- 

 mer for irrigation. 



