July, 1917 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



I 



c 



LJf 



DOUBT there 



being a 



spring in the 

 past 50 years 

 \vith so few days 

 iu which bees 

 could fly. I us- 

 ed to think that 

 d i s e u raging, 



but have come to think it an advantage for 

 colonies that need building up. If the 

 weather is so backward that white clover 

 does not bloom till the middle of June in- 

 stead of the first, it gives a backward colony 

 that much longer time to get ready for the 

 haiTest. " But," you say, " if bees cannot 

 get out to gather, they will not build up." 

 Beg pardon; observation thru many years 

 has brought me to believe that in seasons 

 when bees can fly only once or twice a Aveek 

 they will build up as well as if they could 

 fly every day, provided they have abundant 

 stores in the hive. You see a week of bad 

 weather in spring does not stop brood-rear- 

 ing; and then if a day comes for the bees 

 to fly, they'll keep on for another week. 

 But in a season like this, one must look out 

 for starving colonies at the beginning of 

 the clover-flow. [Your experience is al- 

 most an exact duplicate of ours. We be- 

 lieve we have never had so much breeding 

 in our apiaries as we have had this past 

 spring even tho we have had so many bad 

 days, chilly to cold, with rain and even snow, 

 with only occasionally a good day when 

 bees could fly. The bees used up their 

 stores at a tremendous rate so that many 

 of our colonies at this date, June 7, are on 

 the verge of starvation ; and we have had 

 some time of it in watching every colony, 

 especially the big ones, at our outyards. 

 Clover is going to come on late but is look- 

 ing good. Practically all of our colonies 

 will be in fine trim to catch the crop if it 

 comes. This has been a year when we have 

 been able to equalize the streng-th of colo- 

 nies by giving the weak ones hatching brood 

 from the strong, and giving to the strong 

 combs of sealed stores from the weak. The 

 plan has worked out well, and practically 

 everj' colony will be in shape for a crop. 

 The strong colonies bred so heavily that they 

 would have been too strong, and would 

 have swai'med prematurely. As it is, we 

 have taken off the " gilt edge " of the big 

 ones and put " pep " into the laggards. — 

 Ed.] 



G. M. DoOLiTTLE says, p. 440, that in 

 certain circumstances there will be little 

 difficulty in getting the bees to go into 

 the sections " provided the supers were on 

 the hives a week or so before this rush 



STRAY STRAWS 



Dr. C. C. Miller 



1 



^^^^^^^^^ 



TU 



531 



oomes." Now, 

 what good can it 

 do to give the 

 bees a lot of 

 room to keep 

 warm a week or 

 so before they 

 need it for stor- 

 ing? Well, I 

 don't know that I can fully explain the 

 matter; but I know that Doolittle is dead 

 right, and that it's better to have supers 

 on a week too early than a day too late. 

 The old rule (a rule still given by some) 

 was to give supers when bits of white wax 

 were put by the bees on the top-bar and 

 upper part of the oomb. That's a good 

 rule not to follow. The crowding that 

 makes bees secrete wax and deposit it where 

 it is not needed is practically certain also 

 to turn their minds toward swarming. 

 They seem to say, " We're too crowded here ; 

 we've got to get out of tWs and go where 

 we'll have more room." The point is that 

 when bees begin to plaster wax promiscu- 

 ously they're already in the surplus busi- 

 ness; and wlien in default of your having 

 provided surplus room, if they have de- 

 cided that swarming is the way out, it's too 

 late to get them to change their minds. 

 Possibly there's something in the notion 

 that they should get acquainted with the 

 surplus room a little before they're ready 

 to use it. At any rate it's a safe thing to 

 follow Doolittle and give sections a w^eek or 

 so before they are actually needed. 



" Produce More Honey to Relieve Sugar 

 Shortage " is the rather startling headline 

 over an article, apparently editorial, in 

 The Practical Farmer, p. 198. It starts 

 out by saying : " Honey is better than 

 sugar. It is more easily digested. It can 

 be used in place of sugar or syrup." Isn't 

 it fine to see a thing of that kind in a pure- 

 ly agricultural paper? It will do more 

 good tliere than in all the bee-papers in the 

 world. [The same slogan — ^honey instead 

 of sugar — is being sounded in the daily 

 press, thanks to literature sent out by the 

 Department of Agriculture, Washington, 

 D. C. For this we believe we are indebted 

 to the energies of Dr. E. F. Phillips, one of 

 the most active and energetic men in the 

 whole Department of Agriculture. — Ed.] 



W. J. Sheppard, British Bee Journal, 

 120, says that if 1%-inch spacing instead 

 of 1^2 results in more swarming, " the rea- 

 son would be that the latter spacing permits 

 of freer ventilation between the combs." 

 That's very imporiant if true, and it's pos- 

 sible it may be true. He thinks narrower 



