DSCKMBKK, 1917 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



917 



pense into eonsidevation will have a sad 

 day of reckoning later on. We do not con- 

 sider the expenses figured too high. The 

 following articles show something of the 

 extra work entailed this last season. — Ed.] 



DRONES KILLED OFF IN MTD-SUMMER. 



After spending over a qnavter of a cen- 

 tury in the queen-rearing business I find 

 that to name all tb? difficulties over which 

 wo have no conti^ol would be about im- 

 possible. 



Texas is called a land of sunshine and 

 flowers, and so it is if weather conditions 

 are favorable. But how often is our sun- 

 shine dimmed by a dark cloud from the 

 east that hangs over our little nucleus yards 

 till nearly every ray of hope is blasted and 

 all our work brought to naught ! About 

 this time orders are piling up, and bee- 

 keepers are kicking because of delayed ship- 

 ments. Finally the clouds roll away and 

 the sun shines once miore, finding us weeks 

 _or perhaps a month late on ordei-s. 



By this time the correspondence is ex- 

 cessive; and as all of our day time is taken 

 up with the bees, we send as many replies as 

 1 Dssibl^ at night. When daylight comes 

 again there are a thousand thing's to be 

 done — cag^s to prejaare, ci'ates to make, 

 nuclei to make, and cells to care foi*. 



As we have several hundred nice virgins 

 ready to mate, we anxiously await a still, 

 fair afternoon such that the young queens 

 ran take their flight; but, alas! the south 

 wind is blowing, and for days and weeks it 

 will continue to blow. Last April we had 

 b;it very few queens mated, as the wind 

 blew a perfect gale nearly the entire month. 



Along in May we began to fill orders 

 pi'etty fa.'sf, but were soon hopelessly behind. 

 About file middle of May tlie drouth struck 

 i!s; in fact, it struck us a year before then; 

 l)nt it Avas only last May that we began to 

 feel it seriously. It continued to grow 

 steadily woi-se. The flowers ce?jsed to 

 bloom — no nectar, no pollen — bees loafing 

 around the entrances of the hives like a lot 

 of drummei-s waiting for a belated train — 

 nothing to do but wait. 



Finally I noticed the bees killing the 

 drones, and was, therefore, obliged to make 

 my drone colonies queenless to save the 

 drones. The queens almost ceased laying, 

 the colonies weakened, while the nuclei 

 swarmed and all mixed together. As the 

 bees gradually consumed the little stores 

 they Iliad, they grew daily wiealaer 'and 

 weaker until we were compelled to resort 

 to feeding. 



To sum it all up, unfavorable weather 

 was the main cause of our ditFiculty in 



queen -rearing. Plenty of good queens at 

 the right time would stop 75 per cent of 

 the ciomplaintls. The bee-shipper ds de- 

 pending on the queen-breeder for queens 

 to go with his packages. The queen-ljreed- 

 er is unable to supjjly him, hence liis cus- 

 tomers are impatient over the delay. With 

 eHficient help, still clear days, and with nec- 

 tar-yielding flowers, the honest industrious 

 queen-breeder ca)i turn all the frowns to 

 smiles. 



The man wlio embarks in the queen-rear- 

 ing business to get rich quick will find him- 

 self floating ai'ound in the wrong canoe 

 before he sails very far. Some yeare ago 

 I made up my mind to quit commercial 

 queen-rearing and go into honey produc- 

 tion. But one year was all I could stand, for 

 T had a lingiering love for my old job, and 

 the next spring found me back in the queen 

 business. C. B. Bankston. 



Buffalo. Tex. 



Three packages of bees cleated togrether for ship- 

 ment.' 



DISrOURAGIXG SEASON FOLLOWED BY SURPLUS 

 HONEY-FLO'W FROM CORN. 



The season just closing has been, for 

 southern beekeepers, most peculiar as well 

 as difficult. Our colonies at the beginning 

 of last winter were heavy with stores and 

 fairly strong in bees. In our locality 

 queens cease laying about Nov. 15 and be- 

 gin again in January. As a rule, our cold- 

 est weather comes in February. Last win- 

 ter we had no extremely cold weather, and 

 February- 15 saw our two-story ten-frame 

 hives overflowing with bees, just at the 

 swarming - point. Four-frame nuclei, of 

 which we winter several hundred, were in 

 the same condition. We could easily have 

 disposed of a hundred pounds of be3s with- 

 out missing them. 



Evei-ything seemed favorable for an early 

 spring. Willows, oaks, and fruit-trees be- 

 gan to bloom. Then the weather turned 

 cold, with chilling winds from the north- 

 west; bees leaving their hives were so chill- 

 ed tliev could not return, and vast numbei-s 



