GLEANINGS TN BEE CULTURE 



NOTES FROM CANADA 



J. L. Byer, Markham, Ont 



Clover apparently has wintered ward — many 

 well. With abundance of moisture 

 in ground prospects should be fair 

 for a crop of honey. Markets are 

 well cleaned up, so any crop ob- 

 tained should move off readily. 

 How the war will affect prices is 



an uncertain proposition. Practically all 



food products are going up in price all the 



time, and honey should hold present prices 



at least, even if it does not go up in propor- 



tion with other staples. 



Italian or Carniolan queens 

 will often remain quiet on the comb. Gen- 

 tly and deftly slip the thin-pointed shears 

 under the wings and cZip— that is all there 

 is to it. If at all nervous, practice on a 

 few drones first and you will be surprised 

 how easily the trick is done. How much you 

 take of the wings is a secondary matter. 

 I like to clip all wings off so that the queen 

 is Avell marked for future finding. Nothing 

 in the idea that a queen closely clipped is 

 apt to be superseded. 



At this date (April 10th) it is possible 

 to form a fair idea as to how the bees in 

 Ontario have wintered. I have received no 

 reports from cellar winterers; but, judging 

 from letters at hand, I think that outdoor 

 bees have wintered well wherever colonies 

 were very heavy with good stores last fall. 



Owing to the unusually warm January, 

 many colonies with young queens and lots 

 of empty comb available, reared brood ex- 

 tensively, with the result that stores were 

 u.sed up fast and the vitality of the bees 

 was used up as well. What little loss "we 

 had in our own yards can all be traced to 

 that cause, and this winter has once more 

 demonstrated that while the so-called "win- 

 ter nest" does no harm in more southern 

 localities, and may even be an advantage 

 (altho I much doubt it) here in Ontario it 

 is never a necessity and is often a decided 

 disadvantage to a colony. Proof abundant 

 along this line is furnished by the fact that 

 every colony contracted and made practi- 

 cally solid last fall by feeding is in simply 

 perfect condition this spring. 



* * * 



Good advice is given on page 263 as to 

 liow to clip a queen's wings. Women are 

 proverbially mote handy than men, and I 

 wish Mrs. Allen would try clipping the 

 (fueen's wings without even catching the 

 queen at all. I am as clumsy as the ordi- 

 nary man at least, yet in common with a 

 number of others that I know, I annually 

 clip nearly all my queens while on the 

 combs, without catching them and leaving 

 any odor that quite often causes balling 

 even with the most careful management. 



Get a pair of small curved surgical shears 

 — buttonhole scissors may do for a ladj'^, but 

 the finger holes are too small for a man's 

 fingers. Find the queen and rest one end 

 of comb she is on, on edge of hive and so 

 manipulate it that the queen is heading up- 



March was unusually cold here in On- 

 tario this year. During the first 24 days of 

 tlie month we had a temperature of 14 de- 

 grees below zero. Our bees had no flight till 

 the last three days of the month when con- 

 ditions were ideal for the bees to have a 

 perfect cleansing flight. After having not 

 seen the north apiary of 250 colonies since 

 last October, I took the train on April 5th 

 and found they had wintered perfectly 

 again. They were covered with snow from 

 early February till March 24th, so is it any 

 wonder I am quite strongly of the opinion 

 that snow rarely hurts bees? Here in York 

 Co. we had a heavy wet snow with wind 

 from southeast that sent snow right into 

 entrances of hives. Two days after it turn- 

 ed very cold, and remained that way for 

 three weeks. I shoveled this wet snow 

 away from the hives in three of the apia- 

 ries and left the other one as it was. Parties 

 in Ontario wrote me after the storm in 

 question saying that this snow if left would 

 do hai-m as it was so wet that, when freezing 

 came, entrances would be frozen and trou- 

 ble caused. However, when I went to 

 shovel the snow away from this one yard 

 about the last of the month, I found them 

 none the worse as every colony had a space 

 around the entrance where snow had melt- 

 ed. In fact, the bees were better by being 

 shut in, as, during the two weeks previous 

 to the time they were opened, we had bright 

 cold days and large numbers of the bees 

 came out daily in the yards that had clear 

 entrances. Such bees were of course lost 

 in the snow. While the great majority of 

 these bees wei'e no doubt old and about 

 ready to die anyway, the fact I wish to 

 make clear was that under such extreme 

 conditions snow did no harm. With warm 

 weather following the snowstorm, so late as 

 the month of March, then I would not want 

 to leave snow over hives any length of 

 time. 



