722 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



little time later its character changed, and 

 the bees fell out of the hives and crawled 

 about the ground with swollen bodies. It 

 weakened the hives somewhat, but did not 

 do any serious damage. The following sea- 

 son it attacked the bees on the Hunter 

 River, 60 miles north of Sydney, and acted 

 much the same as the Isle of Wight dis- 

 ease in England. The bees swelled up and 

 tumbled out in heaps until there was a 

 bucket of bees under some hives. It wiped 

 Mr. Mich. Scobie's apiary of 150 hives 

 right out all but .15; but there was a sequel 

 to this, as the next season he bred up from 

 the 15 to 150 again, and took 9 tons of 

 honey. What price that, for good beekeep- 

 ing! 



Now it has a.ssumed another form, or, 

 rather, it has two forms. The bees will 

 liop about the ground in one case, but they 

 suddenly curl up and die in the other. In 

 the former they are a little swollen — not 

 much ; but in the latter thej' are not swollen 

 at all. I had been sitting under a tree 

 having my lunch, when a bee laden with 

 pollen fell on to the paper I was reading. 

 It curled right up as tho it had the cramps, 

 and died almost instantly. I have seen them 

 do the same thing on the road many times, 

 and have wondered if this was not partly 

 the cause of the disappearing disease which 

 we get here sometimes. 



You, Mr. Editor, say that the bees get 

 some sort of fungus, possibly with the 

 pollen. Perhaps you are right, and that 

 would account for the fact that one apiary 

 will get it while another two miles away will 

 be quite free. As I mentioned once before 

 in Gleanings^ I know of places here where 



the bees get paralysis every year at certain 

 seasons, while other apiaries only three 

 miles away are healthy. 



At the present moment I have one apiary 

 j^retty badly affected, while another not two 

 miles away has not a trace. At the same 

 time there is a fair flow of honey at the 

 latter, and plenty of good pollen ; whereas 

 at the former there is hardly any honey- 

 flow and hardly any pollen. 



I have knoAvn this disease for many years, 

 but it is so contradictory that I do not 

 profess to know much about it. We do not 

 pay very much attention to it anyway, as 

 it is seldom that all the hives are affected, 

 altho they once used to be; and if one hive 

 persists in the symptoms the queen is either 

 changed, or sometimes moving to another 

 apiary will effect a cure. As you say, our 

 bees have become largely immune to it. 



Glenbrook, N. S. W., Australia. 



[The writer of the foregoing is one of the 

 best-known beekeepers in Australia. The 

 reader who goes over these three articles 

 will be able to make his own comparisons 

 and determine whether he has anj' of the 

 troubles among his own bees. 



By referring to an editorial elsewhere on 

 this subject, it would appear that bee par- 

 alj'sis and Isle of AVight disease are not 

 one and the same disease altho some 

 of the symptoms are similar. The or- 

 dinary bee paralysis of the northern states 

 is not serious, and usually does not affect 

 more than one or two colonies. But there 

 has been a peculiar kind of malady that 

 struck apiaries in the Mississij^pi Valley 

 and the Northwest, and particularly in Ore- 

 gon that killed a good many bees. — Ed.] 



MANY CONDITIONS CONTROL THE DISTANCE BEES FLY 



BY J. E. CRANE 



P. C. Cliadwick, p. 149, Feb. 15, reports 

 that bees in southern California will go 

 from five to seven miles for nectar and do 

 very good business at storing honey, while 

 Mr. Baldwin, of southern Florida, has told 

 us that his bees would not go over a mile 

 for nectar. Both are reliable men. The 

 editor says the topography of the country 

 I'.as much to do with it — bees will fly further 

 in a hilly country than in a level one; also 

 the scent of nectar may be carried by the 

 wind. All of this is true; but they have 

 wind enough in Florida to carry the per- 

 fume of flowers a long distance. Doubtless 

 it makes a difference whether the wind is 

 blowing from the source of nectar toward 

 the apiary or in the opposite direction. 



Thirty or forty years ago we thought we 

 knew just how far bees would fly. I drew 

 circles around m.y yards on local maps to 

 show just the tei-ritory a yard would cover. 

 We know more about the subject now. Not 

 only does the topography of a section of 

 country and the direction of wind affect the 

 flight of bees, but several other conditions 

 have a bearing. I Avill first mention climate. 

 The climate of California is dry and brac- 

 ing; that of Florida is damp and hot. One 

 tends to industrj^, the other to inactivity. 

 Said a Californian to me in Florida a few 

 years ago, "What kind of climate is this? 

 In California we could walk six or seven 

 miles and just enjoy it; but here in Flor- 

 ida if you walk two miles you are all in." 



