272 



GLEANiINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



April, 1917 



A. 



I. ROOT, 



c 



Ur 



want to 

 make a lot of us 

 mad by telling 

 about that con- 

 troversy with 

 the express peo- 

 ple, p. 216, and 

 then not giving us the outcome? 



C. Stimson, p. 61, gives a valuable item 

 as to the value of minerals in honey. Bee- 

 keepers need stirring up about it, and then 

 it should get into all periodicals aside from 

 bee journals. 



Sometimes you have one or more combs 

 heavy with pollen, and hardly know what is 

 the best disposal. Try distributing them in 

 your extracting-supers and see how nicely 

 the pollen will gradually disappear. 



" After two weeks it " [the nurse-bee] 

 " takes up the duties of a regular field-bee," 

 p. 208. Is that "two weeks " given as a 

 round number without giving the exact 

 number of days, or has it been concluded 

 that the orthodox "16 days" is too long? 



Mary says, p. 116, that the aimless dis- 

 cussion in women's clubs can't compare with 

 a beekeepers' convention. Well, Mary, do 

 you women have subjects so full of interest- 

 ing by-paths, ever alluring from the main 

 track? Anyway, I'd like to hear a conven- 

 tion of beekeepers, all women, if they can 

 talk as well as you, that is, provided you 

 talk as interestingly as you write. 



G. M. Doolittle, p. 116, says a rent in a 

 veil pinned and puckered into a protuber- 

 ance will be attacked by bees because fuzzy. 

 Yes, bees dislike fuzzy things ; but that pro- 

 tuberance is also blacker than the rest of the 

 veil, as you will see in a photo of it. I've 

 seen bees for hours following the glass head 

 of a hat-pin on my assistant. Was it be- 

 cause the glass ball was black or fuzzy ? 



F. Whiteside says that for 20 years he 

 has kept his bees successfully, packed in 

 clamps containing 8 hives each, 4 hives in a 

 close row, and another row, back to back. 

 They are packed in dry sawdust, cedar or 

 pine, all the year round. To handle the in- 

 side hives he must stand in front of the 

 entrance, but he likes it better than to have 

 fewer hives together. It certainly seems 

 less labor. 



Mrs. Allen, p. 195, reports unusually 

 severe freezing, and says : " An exam- 

 ination on January 30, when the bees had a 

 good flight, showed less brood in packed 

 hives than in unpacked." That might be 

 because greater heat was generated by 



STRAY STRAWS 



1 



Dr. C. C. Miller 



^=^^^^^^ 



TU 



the bees in the 

 center of the 

 brood-nest in the 

 unpacked hives, 

 the gi-eater gen- 

 eration of heat 

 being due to the 

 greater cold 

 surrounding the 

 brood-nest; for the greater the cold sur- 

 rounding the brood-nest the more the bees 

 stir up the fire inside, just as in our houses 

 the greater the cold the bigger fires we keep. 



" During early spring," says J. E. Crane, 

 p. 126, " 1% might be best, but later 11/2 is 

 quite as good or even better," for spacing. 

 Early spring is the time when gi'eatest heat 

 is needed. Isn't it just possible that 1% is 

 too close to allow enough bees to keep up 

 the heat ? There's a nut for Dr. Phillips to 

 crack. 



" A COLONY of bees can produce only 

 about half as much comb honey as they 

 could of extracted," p. 206. The general 

 teaching has been two-thirds as much comb 

 as extracted, and I think the " half-as- 

 much " idea comes from Canada. I'm more 

 inclined to the old belief, altho I'd rather 

 believe the new ; but is there not some 

 way that we can have some definite knowl- 

 edge about it? The puzzle might be re- 

 ferred to a certain Dr. Phillips. 



P. C. Chadwick, p. 194, your en- 

 terprising 13-hour search did not prove 

 that bees mix pollen on the same trip. 

 Neither did it prove that they do not. 

 I saw one bee do the trick. (Didn't take 

 me 13 minutes.) But I think that was 

 the only time in my life, and I suspect it 

 is a. very rare occurrence. I doubt that a 

 bee ever mixes two kinds of pollen if 

 either of the plants is in considerable 

 quantity. But in what we call a dearth 

 a bee is so anxious for nectar that it may 

 visit jolants of different kinds on the same 

 trip. 



R. F. Holtermann, page 105, says: 

 " If the beekeeper is isolated from other 

 bees so that there is a range of, say, two 

 miles in every direction, and if he is in a 

 good locality, I doubt whether it pays to 

 split up an apiary of 200 colonies." Like 

 enough he's right, but I wish we could know. 

 Even if he's right, there remains the ques- 

 tion whether there might not be more money 

 in 190 or some smaller number. Remember, 

 too, that, to give him control of " twO' miles 

 in every direction," there must be no bees 

 within four miles. Such places " in a good 

 locality "—I wonder if there's one within 

 a thousand miles of here. 



