752 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE: 



BEESiEEPMG IN CALIEOENIA 



P„ C, Chadwick, Medlandg, CaL 



A recent trip from San Francisco down 

 the San Joaquin Valley gave me an insight 

 to that vast fertile region where the bee 

 business will increase faster, perhaps, than 

 in any other part of the State within the 

 i:cxt feAV years. 



* * * 



The editor thinks it may be better to 

 recommend the old cage-introducing method 

 instead of smoke " for a while yet." That 

 is the conclusion I came to last autumn aitcr 

 I had lost some fine queens for which I had 

 paid out the cold cash. This year I had bet- 

 ter success with the smoke method, but am 

 not yet ready to i^ronounce it infallible. 



* •* iS 



Indications are that nearly all colonies in 

 this part of the Slate will go into winter in 

 excellent condition. The main object now 

 should be to leave plenty of stores to allow 

 the bees to breed up quicklj^ in the spring, 

 for the probabilities are that the spring 

 flow will be short and sweet ; at least that is 

 usually the ease following a good season. 



* * * 



The picture on pages 634-635, is worth a 

 year's subscription to any lover of pictures, 

 and especially to those who are lovers of 

 both pictures and bees. If there is any one 

 thing I am a lover of it is pictures; and a 

 magazine with plenty of illustrations is far 

 ahead of a plain copy. Take the National 

 Geographic Magazine with its pages rich 

 with the finest of pictures, and you have 

 one that is hard to beat. 

 » * * 



Sugar advanced 100 per cent in one 

 week; flour advanced the same week, while 

 wheat declined. Pastries sweetened with 

 honey advanced "according to the advance in 

 sugar, but honey is merely holding its own 

 in price, Avith the danger that the game of 

 slaughter across the Atlantic may cause a 

 temporary decline. Why should not honey 

 advance as well as sugar, when honey is 

 used to sweeten much of our pastry? 



* * « 



The following quotation from Mr. A. F. 

 Wagner, of Imperial Co., appealed to me 

 as being of especially sound sense. " One 

 word more, and this for inspectors : Don't 

 put too much dependence on your judgment 

 as to whose yards should be inspected and 

 whose not. You may be mistaken. Foul 

 brood is inside of the hives, and you will 

 find it where least expected." Mr. Wagner 



is light. Every colony in the county should 

 be inspected, regardless of its owner's 

 standing, and this is the only way we can 

 hope to eradicate disease. 



The beekcei^ers of Minnesota, Wisconsin, 

 and Iowa have organized a co-operative 

 association. Unless the beekeepers there 

 are ditferent from those in California, the 

 organization will not last long, unless they 

 stand by the association. The farming class 

 are very hard to keep together in a mutual 

 co-operative business. I know this by past 

 exi^erience, in that one time I was a mem- 

 ber of an organization of potato-growers in 

 the Kansas River Valley. Things went 

 along very nicely for awhile; but a few 

 gTowers came to the opinion that they knew 

 more than the heads of the association, and 

 they actually sold for more than the asso- 

 ciation could secure for them, which was, 

 after all, only a plan of the buyers to dis- 

 rupt the organization. It worked, too, and 

 the growers were soon at the mercy of the 

 dealers as before. The mere fact that a 

 beekeepers' organization concludes to han- 

 dle its own production should not be a sign 

 that they are expected to "bull" the market 

 to the limit, but more a sign that they are 

 concentrating the marketable output of the 

 producers at a point where the buyer can 

 secure quickly and easily what is needed 

 for his trade at a fair price, and yet have 

 the producers all receive a fair price. 



Another thing that an organization should 

 keeja in mind is the guaranteeing of the 

 cleanliness of their product. I dislike to 

 say revolting things about beekeepers; but 

 it is a fact that there are some of the slop- 

 piest, dirtiest, most unclean methods used in 

 some of our California apiaries — not as a 

 rule, but it crops out here and there over 

 our domain. A woman's kitchen can often 

 (and generally) be judged by the tidiness 

 of her kitchen dress, and it is largely so 

 with the appearance of our beekeepers. 

 Think of taking a big spoon to scrape the 

 larvae off the strainer so the honey can get 

 through! or an open tank standing under 

 the extracting-house with holes in the floor 

 large enough for beans to drop through! 

 Well, both of those conditions have been 

 noted in the past, and I dare say they are 

 still to be found. This is not a very good 

 advertisement for California honey, but 

 such men do not deserve to sell their pro- 

 duce at any price. 



