36 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURB 



What Would You Do in This Situation? 



I had 150 colonies, spring count. I don't know 

 how old a queen is in the lot except one or two. 

 That doesn't speak well for a beekeeper, but that 

 is the size of it, and what I want to do is to get on 

 the right trail this comin™ season. 



Our honey-flow starts here about the last week in 

 .June ; but fruit-bloom comes about six weeks earlier, 

 so there is a dearth between fruit-bloom and any- 

 thing else, tho as a rule there are lots of swarms 

 issuing during fruit-bloom. I am mentioning this 

 so you will know conditions here. 



Out of the 150 I have lost fifty, mostly from 

 American foul brood, and I have brought all home, 

 put them in a corral with a windbreak on the north, 

 east, and west. I have rendered all the diseased 

 combs and charred the hive-bodies, tops and bottoms. 

 I have nearly a hundred nice extracting bodies with 

 drawn comb, and several with full sheets of founda- 

 tion. All are eight-frame hives. 



Now, I want to buy one hundred queens next 

 spring, and I want to know when is the best time 

 to get them. What should be done — make nuclei or 

 put them in the old colonies ? I want at least fifty 

 new colonies, and I also want a honey crop. As I 

 said, I don't know which queens are old and which 

 are young, and I should like some advice from the 

 more experienced as to just what they would do. 



Albuquerque, N. M. R. E. Piffley. 



[Presumably you have about a hundred colonies 

 left. There will probably be a further shrinkage of 

 15, leaving you 85. Twenty-five of this number, 

 the weaker ones, should be devoted to increase, 

 leaving a balance of 60 good colonies for the pro- 

 duction of honey. It is not profitable, usually, to 

 try to run for increase and honey from the same 

 colony ; and hence we would make the divisions as 

 proposed. With the 25 you should be able to in- 

 crease to 50; and if you have had some experience 

 you can make an increase of 15 up to 50. Stimu- 

 lative feeding should be practiced by feeding half 

 a pint of syrup daily. Young queens should be sup- 

 plied to the colonies split up into nuclei for the 

 purpose of increase, but don't split to more than 

 half — two colonies from one. 



The 60 or 70 colonies run for honey should be 

 made as strong as possible. Be sure to use only 

 strong colonies, devoting all the weak ones or medi 

 um-strength colonies to increase. When a colony in 

 an eight-frame hive is strong enough, put on an 

 upper story and add combs and raise two or three 

 frames of brood from below. If you run for ex- 

 tracted honey, you will tier up ; but you should keep 

 all brood below the second story and as the season 

 advances, confine it to the lower story by means of 

 perforated zinc. 



If you are sure your extracting combs are free 

 from disease you can use them ; but watch all colo- 

 nies very' closely where they are placed, as the dis- 

 ease may break out again. 



Get your queens of some reliable breeder at the 

 time you make increase, and introduce them to full 

 colonies and nuclei, following closely the directions 

 furnished by the queen-breeder. By contracting for 

 a hundred queens you will be able to get a reduced 

 price, altho the queens may be sent to you in lots 

 of ten at a time. Don't divide until settled warm 

 weather comes on. If you do it too soon you may 

 lose a lot of good brood. — Ed.] 



BEES EIGHT MILES FROM THE HIVES. 



I believe the letters in late numbers of Glean- 

 ings regarding the distance bees will work from the 

 hives do not reach the limit. When I began taking 

 Gleanings in the eighties, a man on the coast of 

 Washington wrote that he found his Italians eight 

 miles from the hives. The bees were on an island 

 a mile from the shore, the island five miles from 

 the mainland, and the bees were found working in 

 the swamps two miles from the beach. The owner 

 of the bees had the only Italians in that part of the 

 state. 



At another time I read in Gleanings of a man 

 in Wisconsin who followed a line of Italians seven 

 miles and found them across a river in Minnesota. 

 Again, a man in the northern part of New York 

 followed a line of bees six miles and they went over 

 a mountain to the tree. 



When " Rambler " was keeping bees in Califor- 

 nia, near Redlands, he stated in Gleanings that 

 his bees did a paying business working on tha 

 orange-orchards five miles from the hives. 



I believe good Italians will work three and a half 

 or four miles from home if they cannot get honey 

 nearer. 



New Hampton, N. Y. E. D. Howell. 



Aster Stores Candy Solid 



Aster honey in this locality is not good winter 

 feed. If capped over and well ripened it candies 

 solid in the combs. If not capped, the sugar in 

 the honey granulates and leaves a thin liquid in the 

 cells which will sour and make the combs damp. It 

 comes mostly from a small white aster about eigh- 

 teen inches high which branches out a good deal. 



Simple Cure for Bee Paralysis 



Paralysis has been the means of reducing our 

 crop to a considerable extent in two or three of our 

 yards for the last few years, gradually getting 

 worse. At first we paid but little attention to it ; 

 but the number of colonies affected steadily grew, 

 and the severity of the disease seemed to increase 

 from year to year. We tried setting the hives up on 

 stilts so that the affected bees would fall out and 

 not return. Some have used a tin (five-gallon can 

 or the like), to be buried just in front of the en- 

 trance with the top on a line level with the alight- 

 ing-board. This caught the bees unable to fly; but 

 this year we hit on a plan that seemed to be en- 

 tirely satisfactory. 



With the other plans the bottom-board has been 

 left on, and the sick bees fall on that and not at 

 once away from the combs. Our way now (and it 

 has been entirely effective in curing every colony 

 treated this year) is simply to remove the botbom- 

 1 oard from the hive; get an empty body, old box, or 

 anything that will hold the hive and colony up a 

 foot or so from the ground, and set the hive minus 

 the bottom-board on it criss-cross or any way so 

 that there is plenty of space for all infected bees and 

 dirt to fall away. We tried this on a great many 

 sick colonies this year without nnich faith ; but the 

 results were indeed surprising. From many of these 

 such colonies as formerly we would expect but little 

 if any surplus from, we harvested nearly a normal 

 crop of honey. Of course they must be treated be- 

 fore the force is too badly gone. We left them in 

 this condition until along about October 15, when 

 ready to fix the yards up for winter. 



It now remains to be seen if the disease reappears 

 in the spring. If it does, this plan at least saved 

 the crop of honey ; and if it does as well each year 

 it will be sufficient. What was the reason that we 

 got honey from all those paralytic colonies ? 



It seems to be a disease that, to a certain extent, 

 comes and goes, eases up for a time, and then grows 

 worse again. We changed the queens in a few 

 colonies, but also treated them as above, so the ex- 

 periment was valueless so far as the requeening is 

 concerned. 



I don't know how general this disease is; but I 

 do know that it has been the means of reducing 

 our crops a good many thousands of pounds during 

 the last few years. In this locality this is a thing 

 that can not well be overlooked. 



Spokane, Wash. H. E. Ckowtheb. 



