May, 1917 



GliEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



359 



I 



c 



ur 



AGREE with 



R. F. Holter- 



mann that a 

 sliaHow exti'act- 

 ing'- frame is a 

 first - class nui- 

 sance — see page 

 251, April. ^I 

 know it is claim- 

 ed bees will begin storing sooner in a shal- 

 low super; but if the beekeeper will raise 

 a comb or two of brood into the super when 

 l)ut on. there will be no trouble about bees 

 storing honey in it if there is honey to be 

 had. 



* * * 



I thought I had outgrown nursery 

 rhymes ; but one as clever as found on page 

 279 stirs up my old iutei'est in those quaint 

 old rhymes that go back so far into the 

 liast. 



I cong-ratulate Mrs. S. Wilbur Frey, for 

 she tells us on page 254 that she has never 

 failed to get a good crop of honey, and 

 this after thirty-two years at the business. 

 Not many beekeepers can say as much. 



* * * 



I believe Stancy Puerden is right, as a 

 rule, in placing honey on the outside rather 

 than on the inside of cornm.eal muffins in 

 cooking; but yesterday at my son's table 

 I believe I ate the finest brown bread I 

 ever tasted. Honey instead of molasses 

 was used for sweetening. Try it. 

 » * * 



On page 251 the editor predicts a bright 

 future for beekeej^ers, and bids us fake off 

 our hats and shout. Perhaps it is as well 

 to shout now as at any time; b&sides, we 

 may feel more like it now than in August 

 after excessive drouth or moisture has cut 

 our crop short, and we are buying eight- 

 cent sugar with which to winter our bees. 



* * * 



Dr. Miller gives two goklen rules for 

 building up weak colonies in the spring that 

 should be Avorth lots of money to beginners 

 — page 256, April. Here they are : " Al- 

 ways help first those that need the least 

 lielp, leaving the vei*y weakest to be helped 

 last;" and ''Never reduce a strong colony 

 to less than four brood." The whole story 



in a nutshell. 



^ ^ # 



It was refreshing to see those dandelions 

 on the cover page of Gleanings for April 

 1 — preceding by a month or more those on 

 lawns and in fields ; but why — oh why ! — did 

 the artist place the head with maturing seed 

 below the blossoms, when nature places it 

 away above the flowers? As the seed ripens, 



SIFTINGS 



J. E. Crane 



3 



^^^^^^^P^=f 



%j 



the stalk leng-fh- 

 ens until it is 

 two or three 

 tiini s as long as 

 when in bloom. 

 This is so the 

 wind may gently 

 lift the seeds 

 from the mother 

 plant and carry and plant them in some 

 ncAv field that more may be. Nature is 

 very thoughtful. A pious Hebi-ew would 

 say God instead of nature, and it does us 

 no harm to think that way. 



* * * 



Bees appear to have wintered well. In 

 our home yard of 185 colonies wintered on 

 summer stands we have found but three 

 dead colonies. One of these was queenless, 

 and another had clustered on one side of 

 the brood-chamber but could not get the 

 honey on the other side, and stan^ed. Bees 

 were confined to their hives about four and 

 a half months. Anotlier had clustered on 

 new white combs. 



* * * 



C. D. Cheney prophesies good things of 

 extracted honey — page 293, April; and the 

 best of it is he is doubtless right. I re- 

 member very well D. W. Quinby, of New 

 York, writing to the American Bee Journal 

 more than foi-fy years ago, begging the 

 beekeepers to refrain from, sending much 

 extracted honey to the city, as there was 

 Hftle demand for it. Surely the world 

 keeps moving. 



* * * 



Says file editor, page 252, " The dande- 

 lion's one good excuse for existence is found 

 in its great sen-ice to the honeybee in pro- 

 ducing abundant pollen. It produces little 

 or no honey." This may be true at Medina ; 

 but Medina is not the whole world by a 

 long chalk. If the editor could come to 

 Vermont and see hive after liive crammed 

 wifli dandelion honey the last of May I 

 believe he would be as much surpi-ised as 

 C. P. Dadant was last August to find dan- 

 delion honey on the table for breakfast. 

 During the last few years I believe the 

 dandelion has given us more honey than any 

 otlier plant aside from the clovers. Bless- 

 ings on " Root's Roses !" 



But Avhen we find the bees moving it u]i 

 into the supers to make room for the queen 

 I sometimes think it possible to have too 

 much of a good tiling. The honey is a 

 rather dark amber, and not very bad-flavor- 

 ed when well ripened. It granulates, how- 

 ever, soon after being gathered, when ex- 

 tracted, and makes mischief when stored in 

 sections. 



