GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



Dr.C.C.Mi..erl STRAY STRAWS I Marengo. 111. 



J. L. Byer, p. 349, says sweet- 

 clover honey is very much inferior 

 to alsike or white clover. May be, 

 if pure. Here it gives a vanilla 

 flavoi- to clover honey that is de- 

 lightful. Too much of that -flavor 

 might be objectionable. 

 R. F. WixON, p. 363, when settled weath- 

 er comes, swaps an outside brood for an 

 inside one, repeats it a week later, and in 

 another week puts an empty comb in the 

 center of the brood-nest. Now, I wonder 

 what makes the difference; is it locality, 

 bees, or what? If I should do that it would 

 give a bad set-back. For the bees of them- 

 selves have all the brood they can cover, and 

 spreading can cause only delay, unless it be 

 chilled brood. Are there some bees that fail 

 to have all the brood they can cover unless 

 tlieir combs are spread? 



When J. E. Crane finds a colony with 

 larvpe in queen-cells, and the queen is old, 

 he removes her and kills cells, kills them 

 again 8 days later, and 8 days later still 

 gives a virgin, p. 359. That leaves the 

 colony 24 days or longer without egg-lay- 

 ing. I wonder if that time might not be 

 safely sliortened. How would it do to give 

 a laying queen instead of a virgin? That 

 makes only 16 days without eggs. Allen 

 Latham, p. 363, gives a ripe cell at removal 

 of queen. But he does that before cells are 

 started, and sometimes the colony swarms 

 later. I have generally had success by 

 caging or removing the queen, killing cells 

 at the same time, killing them again ten 

 days later, and freeing or returning the 

 queen. If a young queen were given in 

 place of the old one at the end of the ten 

 days, not one in a hundred swarmed. 



I've always said that beekeeping could 

 never be on a stable footing so long as there 

 is no law against planting another apiary 

 right beside you. In some of the states of 

 Australia you can make sure that no one 

 shall have an apiary within two miles of 

 yours by paying annually about $20.00. 

 Worth it, too,* isn't it? 



Later. — Since writing the foregoing, 

 comes Gleanings, May 1, in which J. L. 

 Byer says, p. 349, he never expects there 

 will be on this continent a law defining 

 where a man can plant an .apiary. Why 

 not? Aren't there just as good brains here 

 as in Australia? And if satisfactory re- 

 strictive laws can be made there, they can 

 be made here. All that is needed is for 

 beekeepers to say they want such laws. 



Some day they will; for it is not for the 

 interests of either producer or consumer to 

 have beekeeping such an insecure business. 

 I'm satisfied that there are now three times 

 — may be ten times — as many beekeepers as 

 there were forty yeare ago, who would like 

 to see beekeeping on a solid basis. 



Gardner B. Willis, p. 156, describes 

 what is undoubtedly the work of the larvse 

 of a bee-moth, a much smaller affair than 

 the common bee-moth, Galleria mellonella. 

 A cluster of three or four bees, fully ma- 

 tured and fully colored, will be seen con- 

 stantly wriggling in their cells, unable to 

 get out. Dig down to the bottom of the 

 cells and you will find the small larvae of 

 what Cook calls the " Wee " bee-moth, 

 Ephesta inter punctella, and Sidney Ollift", 

 in A B C and X Y Z, calls the lesser bees- 

 wax-moth, Achroea Grissella. I've seen it 

 but a few times in my life, and 1 think it 

 amounts to little in this region, altho it may 

 be worse elsewhere. 



An Illinois correspondent had a strong 

 colony in a two-story ten-frame hive (20 

 frames in all) which went into winter with 

 78 to 80 pounds of good honey by actual 

 weight. March 14, fiew strongly; April 1, 

 all dead. No honey in upper story ; 45 

 pounds in lower story ; combs clean ; all 

 bees (about 10 quarts clinging closely to 

 combs, even to those in lower story which 

 had honey in them. Query: What was the 

 trouble? A plain case of starvation. The 

 cluster was in the upper story, and when 

 the honey in that was consumed it was too 

 cold to leave the cluster, and the honey in 

 the lower story might as well have been a 

 mile away. But how about those bees that 

 were on the combs of honey below? When 

 a colony starves, some of the bees in their 

 death-struggle crawl away from the cluster, 

 apparently only desiring to die elsewhere, 

 and may be seen hanging in peculiar fash- 

 ion to the entrance and front of the hive. 

 In this case they had strength only to get 

 down to the sealed honey, but no strength 

 to gel the honey. Likely enough the disas- 

 ter might not have happened if in the fall 

 the two stories had exchanged places. [We 

 do not know why this is true; but bees 

 when starving will separate themselves 

 fiom tlie main bunch in small clusters. We 

 have observed this time and time again in 

 bees that have come in eombless packages 

 from the South. If the candy has run short 

 tliere will be little bunches of bees detached 

 from the main cluster. — Ed.] 



