734 



Gleanings in Bee Culture 



Can a Bee Fly Backward ? 



A few days ago as I was coming in with a load of 

 hay a bee met me and proceeded to investigate. It 

 tumbled down in the hay; but after a minute's rest 

 it rose and hovered over a bunch of dried flowers. 

 It Ivept about three inches above the hay, and at a 

 spot not over a foot from my knee, so I could ob- 

 serve it closely, and I am sure it was not touching 

 or holding to any of the hay, yet it remained mo- 

 tionless (relatively) except for the buzzing of Its 

 wings, the motions of which were not very rapid. 

 In fact, It reminded me of a hawk floating in the 

 air over one spot, and flapping Its wings slower 

 than in ordinary flight. The point Is, my team 

 was moving at a brisk walk; and as the bee's head 

 was toward the rear of the load it must have been 

 flying backward ; and as it kept its distance of 

 about three Inches above the hay while the team 

 went 100 or more feet on level ground, it did not 

 " slide " down and back either. So we must con- 

 clude that what a bee ordinarily does and what It 

 can do are different things. Not only did this bee 

 fly backward on a level, but it seemed to do it easi- 

 ly; and when it finished its Investigation It turned 

 with a sharp buzz and left us behind. 



LOCALITY. 



Locality is one of the biggest words in the bee- 

 keeper's vocabulary. Much that we read Is misin- 

 formation for us because nine writers out of ten do 

 not allow enough for its influence. Every apiarist 

 must know his own location, and use this knowl- 

 edge as a sifter of all that he reads. For a long time 

 I thought Wesley Foster's conditions at Boulder, 

 Col., ought to approximate mine here at North 

 Platte; but I keep getting rude jolts of diflference. 



To bring It closer home, just across the river 

 (Platte) from me Is a man who harvested this year 

 a lot of honey with a distinct pink tinge, such as I 

 never saw before. A few miles to the west the hon- 

 ey is all the regulation water-white alfalfa and 

 sweet-clover. While I got over 800 lbs. of Spanish- 

 needle honey, and the people in this locality "howl" 

 for it. in both section and chunk form, it would 

 have been a mistake to extract it. If I had been in 

 some locality where the bees are often confined to 

 their hives for months at a time it would probably 

 have been a mistake to leave it in the brood-cham- 

 ber for winter stores; but in this locality the bees 

 get a flight nearly every week. They are doing well, 

 and I think the honey is the best yet, as it does not 

 granulate as badly in the hives as sweet-clover- al- 

 falfa does. 



YOUNG QUEENS. 



The pressure of opinion seems to be so strongly in 

 favor of year-old qvieens that even Dr. Miller does 

 not try to stand up against it, but simply says that 

 the bees have sense enough to attend to that In his 

 locality. I find that in six of my best colonies three 

 had two-year-old queens, one a three-year old (clip- 

 ped, so I know), and two had one-year-old queens. 



NO NEED OF PREVENTING ALL SWARMING. 



The only system 1 have any use for is the Demaree 

 or Allen, and I don't use that very much. No 

 'slaughter of the innocents," and no cumbersome 

 manipulation for me. In my locality I have had no 

 trouble so far In keeping swarming down to 10 or 15 

 per cent, and I would rather let them swarm that 

 much than to break my back. Of cour.se, there may 

 come a year that will fool me. 



My methods? Nothing new; shade in the heat of 

 the day; plenty of ventilation, and when they get 

 full below I bait them up into a 5-5^-lnch frame su- 

 per with a few shallow extracting-combs, or, what 

 I think better, a few nice new unfinished combs, 

 started at the close of the flow the fall before. As 

 soon as they have made a good start In earnest on 

 these, I put on a section-super; then when this is 

 well started the frame-super (bees and all) goes on 

 to a sulker If I have one, and I generally find it is 

 irresistible. As 1 use only two or three bait-combs 

 in the first super, the other frames have only nar- 

 row starters, and, when filled out, these sell as 

 chunk honey in the frame. The customer cvits it 

 out and gets sixteen ounces to the pound, net 

 weight, and that's irresistible too. 



North Platte, Neb. Louis Macey. 



half a mile, unload, and return. If they are gone 

 from 13 to 15 minutes they are a mile away. They 

 will not often vary more than half a minute. As to 

 their resting, I am sure they sometimes do so, for 

 about once an hour a marked bee will fail to put in 

 an appearance, and will be absent about twice as 

 long. When a bee-tree is no more than 20 rods 

 away, the time used in going, unloading, and re- 

 turning, will not vary much between four and five 

 minutes. The distance the bee must crawl before 

 it can deposit its load causes some variation in the 

 time required for the trip. It takes much more 

 time for loading from flowers than from diluted 

 honey. Bees working on a buckwheat field a mile 

 away could not possibly gather and carry home 

 more than three loads per hour. 

 Jamestown, N. Y. J. W. Wilson. 



If Combs are Frozen, No Moths will Develop. 



In regard to the controversy relative to combs 

 and moths, p. 582. I would say that, if combs are 

 stored in an outside building, and subjected to a 

 winter's freezing, no moths will develop or hatch 

 In them the following summer unless the millers 

 come In contact with them and deposit eggs — at 

 least this is the case in this locality. There will be 

 no moth-millers here until they are developed 

 from moths hatched from eggs that are laid In the 

 brood-chambers late the preceding season before 

 the bees are taken to the cellar : and unless combs 

 are stored in an absolutely tight building, some of 

 these spring-hatched and developed millers will 

 sometimes find their way in and start a crop of 

 moths about July or August. 



EIGHT-FRAME SUPERS ON TEN-FRAME HIVES. 



In reply to .1. W. Lowry, of Texas, page 584, Oct. 1, 

 relative to using eight-frame supers on ten-frame 

 brood-chambers, I will say I have no trouble in 

 using them that way by setting the eight-frame 

 right on top of my wood-bound queen-excluders. 



Union Center, Wis. Elias Fox. 



Time Required by Bees to Make a Trip. 



As an old bee-hunter, I can say, in answer to the 

 questions of Mercie R. Williams, p. 602, Oct. 1, that 

 when bees are being fed and making regular trips, 

 it will take them 8 minutes to go from a third to 



Preventing Bees from Storing Pollen in Supers Con- 

 taining Bulk Comb Honey. 



I should like to work about ten colonies of bees 

 for bulk comb honey. I had two that I worked for 

 that purpose last season, using extra-thin founda- 

 tion of full size. In one I got nice white comb that 

 I could sell easier at 10 cents per lb. than I can sell 

 sections at 16; but in the other super there was 

 pollen mixed in so I could not sell it. Would a 

 queen-excluder prevent this ? 



I also wish to use extra-thin foundation for 4x5 

 sections. Can I put some in full size to fit exactly 

 all around, cementing with wax on all four sides'? 

 Would the bees commence work in the supers 

 sooner if I put two or more bulk-comb frames in 

 with the sections? 



Leonardsville, N. Y. C. L. Crandall. 



[A queen-excluder will help somewhat in keeping 

 pollen out of the supers; but prevention is better 

 than cure. Ordinarily the bees will store their pol- 

 len as near the brood as they can; and if you take 

 care to provide a couple of combs containing some 

 pollen on the outside of your brood-chamber, mak- 

 ing sure that there is empty space for more, the 

 bees are not so likely to show a tendency to take 

 the pollen upstairs. 



You can put full sheets of foundation in 4 x 5 sec- 

 tions in the manner you sugge.st; but we believe 

 you would get better results by fastening the foun- 

 dation at the top, and only two-thirds the way 

 down at each side of the section, rather than fas- 

 tening it all around. This saves some work, and 

 results in rather better honey, as bulging- is thus 

 prevented. 



Super work would be begun sooner if you used a 

 couple of frames for bulk comb honey as baits; but 

 we do not know that they would begin any sooner 

 than if you used unfinished sections for bait. — 

 Ed.] 



Large Italian Queen whose Eggs were Not Fertile. 



I once had a queen, only about 20 per cent of 

 whose eggs were fertile. I gave her brood several 

 times; but that did no good, so I gave the queen to 

 a neighbor and told him to try her. He killed a 

 black queen in a strong colony and introduced 

 mine, and he said very few of her eggs hatched. 

 She was an extra-large Italian queen. 



Walla Walla, Wash. C. A. McCarty. 



