OCTOBKR, 191' 



GLEANINGS IN B E K CULTURE 



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GLEANED 



E. R. 



LJ 



M. T., Georgia. 

 — 1. On June 

 5, 1916, I in 

 trotweed a n 

 Italian queen (or- 

 dered from a queen- 

 breeder) to a colony 

 of blacks. I looked 

 for her in a few 

 days and didn't find 

 her then ; but when 

 I examined about a month later I found !o's of 

 Italians and plenty of brood. I looked ai;ain in 

 about another month, and found what looked to be a 

 black queen, altho I was not sure about it. Then 

 tiefore Ion? I noticed that the Italians seemed to be 

 decreasing instead of increasing; and now, a little 

 over a year after introducing the queen, there are 

 still quite a lot of Italians, but the majority of 

 them are as black as I ever saw. As the drones 

 hatched in this hive are black, I've decided that 

 they must have allowed a black queen to emerge 

 from a cell started when I introduced the other 

 queen, and destroy her. Do you think this is 

 right ? If so, why did they accept her and then 

 allow another hatch to destroy her ? 



2. In this locality, where bees fly practically 

 every day thruout the winter, do you think it 

 would do any harm to leave the shallow extracting- 

 supers on the hives during the winter ? Would the 

 bees cluster in. them with no brood in them ? 



3. My ten-frame hives measure 14% inches, 

 inside. If I take out one frame and leave only 

 nine, would they be spaced too far apart? Even if 

 it didn't reduce swarming, wouldn't it make the 

 frames easier to manipulate? 



A. 1. Your theory about the young vir- 

 gin of a former mother supplanting the in- 

 troduced queen is probably correct. It very 

 often happens that when a queen is intro- 

 duced the cells that may have started in 

 the meantime will be allowed to develop and 

 hatch out a virgin. If she, by good fortune, 

 is able to elude the old queen while she is 

 young and weak she will later on be more 

 than a match for the older queen and may 

 kill her. This is what probably happened to 

 the Italian queen that you introduced. 



It is hardly possible that the Italians 

 which you found in the hive a year after- 

 ward were the daughters of the Italian 

 queen that you introduced. Bees get mixed 

 more or less, going from one hive to another. 

 If your black colony was near an Italian 

 colony, or even if it was quite remote from 

 one or mare Italian colonies, you would be 

 almost sure to find some Italian bees among 

 your blacks and some blacks among your 

 Italians. 



2. We would advise you to leave on the 

 extracting-super, but take out the frames 

 and fill it with packing material. In the 

 South it would be a great advantage to have 

 top protection. 



3. Fourteen and three-quarter inches for 

 nine frames would be a little wide — little 

 more than 1^ inches; l^^ inches from center 

 to center is supposed to be the limit of good 

 practice in the spacing of frames; 1% or 

 1% from center to center will do very well 

 in the production of extracted honey when 

 the combs are shaved down afterward by the 

 uncapping-knife. 



A. E. A., Michigan. — Which is the better honey- 

 plant — white clover or alsike ? 



BY ASKING 



Root 



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787 



A. Acre for 

 acre, alsLke is 

 far superior to 

 white clover. 

 One field of 20 

 acres of alsike 

 will take care of 

 an apiary of 50 

 colonies very 

 iiict'ly, providing there is white clover in the 

 locality to back it up. We have observcil 

 over and over again that yards in the im- 

 mediate vicinity of fields of alsike clover 

 will yield much more honey per colony than 

 those yards having only white clover and a 

 great abundance of it._ 



T. W. B., Pennsylvania. — A fruit-peddler driving 

 by my place claims that my bees stung his horse on 

 the common highway, that the horse became un- 

 manageable to the extent that the fruit was scat- 

 tered up and down the road. He claims damages, 

 and says that if I do not settle he will bring suit. 



A. If you can show that this was the 

 first account of any horse being stung, and 

 can prove by reliable witnesses who have 

 been in the habit of going by your place that 

 their horses or teams have never been stung, 

 the fruit-peddler could not recover damages. 

 If the peddler can show that you were 

 negligent or careless when his horse was 

 stung, then he might get a judgment in his 

 favor. In any event, the amount would not 

 exceed the value of the fruit plus the dam- 

 age, if any, to the rig. Cases like this have 

 come up before, and the courts have held 

 that bees are not a nuisance per se; that 

 moreover they are useful to man, and as such 

 their owners cannot be held liable for occa- 

 sional occurrences like the one mentioned, 

 provided, of course, the owners were not 

 negligent or careless when the accident oc- 

 curred. 



S. T. G, Ohio. — During this year I notice that 

 cherries are much more abundant near the bees in a 

 large eight or ten acre cherry-orchard than on those 

 trees more remote. 



A. During some seasons the increase in 

 the amount of fruit in the immediate vicin- 

 ity of the bees is apparent. When the spring 

 is backward and cold at the very titne the 

 trees, are in bloom, bees will not go further 

 than is absolutely necessary, and will visit 

 only those trees near at hand, and particu- 

 larly on the leeward side where the wind 

 does not strike the trees. It has been 

 demonstrated over and over again that a 

 tree fully pollinated, whether cherries or 

 anything else, will stand wind or cold better 

 than a tree not pollinated; hence it has 

 come to be more and more the practice to 

 scatter the bees over the entire orchard in- 

 stead of putting them in one concentrated 

 lot in the center of the orchard. 



H. C. T., New Hampshire. — For winter feeding, 

 which is better — an inside or outside entrance 

 feeder ? 



A. If the weather is cold, the inside 

 feeder is preferable, altho not so handy. 

 The Boardman-Mason jar entrance feeder 

 may be used, however, until freezing 



