586 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



J. E. Crane 



SIFTINGS 



Middlebury, Vt. 



Shall we try to eradicate sac- 

 l)i()od as well as foul brood from 

 our yards of bees by the destruc- 

 lion of combs and brood? 



In Japan they call white clover 

 ''Jesus grass" because it was intro- 

 duced by an American missionary. 



*■ * * 



If a wire imbedder is kept hot over an 

 oil-stove it works much better, especially 

 if the foundation is cold. 



* * * 



Our friend Holtermann reminds us, page 

 310, April 15, that when looking for queens 

 we should keep our minds right on what we 

 are doing, even if we have to keep saying 

 mentally all the time "queen, queen, queen," 

 as tho we were ti-ying to call her out from 



her hidingplaee. 



* * * 



G. C. Greiner, page 312, April 15, tells us 

 how to get bait sections that, when filled, 

 will be in no way inferior to sections filled 

 by the most approved method. This is the 

 formula : Let them be drawn and filled, and 

 taken from the hive, extracted, and cleaned 

 up by the bees as soon as possible, and then 

 stored in air and dust proof compartments 

 until wanted. Good! 



* * * 



T wonder if there is any business other 

 than beekeeping so stimulating to the mind 

 and that leads one to be so interested in 

 everything about us — plants, flowers, other 

 insects, birds, animals, and even soils and 

 climates! No need to go to the movies, nor 

 to read stories to find something interesting. 

 The book of nature is a very interesting 



book. 



« * » 



liouis H. Scholl says, page 390, May 15, 

 (hat this spring has alforded a most con- 

 vincing experience in favor of a divisible 

 brood-chamber. Here, he says, was the 

 .same old condition, of nearly twenty years 

 ago, and for which reason he adopted a 

 divisible hive. The question arises in my 

 mind whether it will pay to make changes 

 in our hives to suit conditions that do not 

 come oftener than once in twenty years. 



" Favorable spring for bees," says the 

 editor, page 382, May 15. "While the 

 spring is a little late, and fruit bloom has 

 been delayed, the conditions were never bet- 

 ter for bees." Well, I should say so! Our 

 bees are swarming two weeks ahead of any- 



thing T have ever before knoww. Dande- 

 lions must get a good deal of credit for it, 

 for they are getting to be a great help dur- 

 ing Maj', stimulating brood-rearing and 

 giving bees a chance to fill unoccupied 

 combs with honey. 



We are under obligation to Arlie Prit- 

 ohard, page 298, April 15, for his experi- 

 ments on white rats and toads. We know 

 that it sometimes happens that what will 

 poison one thing will be harmless to another. 

 Sheep will eat with impunity aconite — a 

 deadly poison to man. We may not, how- 

 ever, conclude from these experiments that 

 all creatures that eat live bees are immune 

 to their stings. A lady of my acquaintance 

 was bothered with skunks feasting on her 

 bees. She set a trap, and caught the of- 

 fender. She said she thought she would 

 give Mr. Skunk all the bees it wanted and 

 left it in the trap in front of the hive. 

 But when the sun was up, and the bees had 

 a fair show, it did not take them long to 

 kill the skunk. 



LET SWEET CLOVER KILL OUT THE WEEDS. 



My good friend Byer, page 349, May 1, 

 objects to sweet clover because it sometimes 

 comes up in meadows where it has once 

 been sown. The same objection might be 

 raised against alfalfa, as I see more or less 

 of that growing in meadows where farmers 

 have tried to raise it, and the plants that 

 persist in remaining in the soil appear as 

 Jiard and worthless as dried-up stalks of 

 sweet clover when left till time timothy is 

 fit to cut. Formerly the sweet-clover seed 

 sown was one-half hard seed that would not 

 germinate the first year. Now it is easy to 

 buy scarified seed that will practically all 

 grow the first season and prevent the later 

 growths. There is yet much to be learned 

 about the cultivation of this plant, and its 

 greatest value may be in pastures where it 

 will not harm the crop of timothy, but 

 will produce two or three times what the 

 pastures are now producing. Mr. Byer 

 speaks on the same page of hundreds of 

 acres of limestone formation about Brock- 

 ville, used mostly for pasturage, that paint- 

 brush has run over and ruined. Suppose 

 this were sown to sweet clover. It would 

 doubtless kill the paintbrush as that plant 

 has killed other plants, and furnish more 

 feed than they ever produced before, be- 

 sides enriching the land so it will get better 

 from year to year, rather than pooi'er as in 

 the past. 



