February, 1920 



G T. E A N I N G S I N B E K CULTURE 



B FROM NORTH, EAST, WEST AND SOUTH 



In Ontario "^^^ past month in On- 



tario has boon quite 

 cold, with little snow here in York County. 

 "Within the last few days we have had some 

 snow; but automobiles are yet to be noticed 

 once in a while, plowing thru the roads and 

 spoiling the sleighing. But, I guess, gaso- 

 line as a motive power for traveling is about 

 done for this winter — anyway, after Jan. 10 

 auto traveling seems a bit out of season 

 here. From the beekeepers ' viewpoint, we 

 shall be glad to see a continuous mantle of 

 snow on mother earth for the next 10 weeks, 

 as lots of snow generally means good win- 

 tering of the clover. As repeatedly mention- 

 ed in these columns, cold weather is often 

 not nearly so great a factor in the winter- 

 ing of bees outside as some other conditions 

 local to certain sections. While we have had 

 little snow here in York County, and hives 

 are exposed to the winds at all times, at the 

 yards in Simcoe County there has been 

 much snow for six weeks past. A letter 

 from a good friend near our bees up there 

 says that packing cases have been covered 

 for some time, and all one can see is mounds 

 of snow in the rows of the apiary. Now, 

 while the weather has been quite a lot cold- 

 er there than here, yet one can easily guess 

 where the bees have been the more com- 

 fortable and where they are apt to winter 

 the better. At these yards in Simcoe County 

 the snow has in different seasons covered 

 the bees for over three months, and, aside 

 from one or two getting entrances blocked 

 each year with dead bees, they have always 

 wintered splendidly. Our entrances are 

 one-half inch deep by five in width, and if 

 always assured of a good snowfall I should 

 make them larger instead of smaller. How- 

 ever, I am not satisfied with the long, nar- 

 row entrance on account of the danger of 

 clogging with dead bees during a long-con- 

 tinued confinement, and we think of making 

 deeper bridges between the inner hive and 

 the packing case, having a narrow upright 

 outside entrance instead of the present style. 

 That would allow bees to get quite deep on 

 the bottom-boards and yet the entrance 

 would not be clogged. This system is used 

 largely by many of our best beekeepers, and 

 its advantages are quite evident. It may be 

 argued that more packing would overcome 

 the difficulty, but our experience emphatical- 

 ly says, "no." In years when we have had 

 little snow up north (and that has happened 

 twice since we had bees there), we had no 

 entrances clogged. The trouble happened 

 when hives were completely covered with 

 snow and had enough of Nature's "pack- 

 ing" to make all the protection for which 

 the most enthusiastic advocate of lots of 

 packing would wish. More than than, the 

 entrances had not been clogged with snow, 

 as a large opening is always thawed around 

 the entrances of the hives. Very small en- 

 trances in outdoor-wintered colonies may 



be all right where constant attention can 

 be given, but I would not care to risk them 

 in ail apiary that we do not see from Oc- 

 tober till next April — and that is the con- 

 dition we are up against in different yards. 



Last week I was in Toronto, and, as usual, 

 I made inquiries from honey dealers as to 

 how our product is moving. I was disap- 

 pointed to find the universal complaint that 

 honey is having a very slow sale. In the 

 face of facts indisputable that nearly all 

 other lines of food products are moving 

 higher all the time, and the demand for 

 them is very firm, it is time for us to inquire 

 just why honey is having such a slow sale. 

 Lack of export is given as one of the main 

 reasons, but our crop last year being quite 

 light should easily be handled by home con- 

 sumption. What would have happened if 

 our crop had been on a par with that of 

 1916? Perhaps it would have moved more 

 freely with a restricted crop; but if such a 

 thing had happened, and the home demand 

 had been as slow as now reported, certainly 

 there would have been a break in prices. 



One of the interesting talks given at the 

 last convention of the Ontario Association 

 was that of Wm. Agar about beekeeping in 

 New Ontario. In the spring of 1919 Mr. 

 Agar accepted the position of apiary in- 

 spector for one of our southern districts, 

 and, having only nine colonies of bees in 

 New Ontario at a point about 350 miles 

 straight north of Toronto, he decided to let 

 them go on the let-alone plan for the sea- 

 son. He left quite early in the spring, and 

 without any attempt to equalize in any way 

 he simply piled supers of drawn combs on 

 each colony. Seventy supers, 10-frame Lang- 

 strpth size were piled on the nine colonies. 

 I forgot to mention that Mr. Agar had pre- 

 viously sold the rest of his bees, but had 

 all these combs left on hand. The first two 

 supers were placed crosswise on the brood- 

 nest side by side, a strip being nailed on 

 each super at the side so as to close up the 

 space that would have been left. Then two 

 more were put on top and so on — an average 

 of eight supers to each colony, all given at 

 once (May 20) and no excluders used. He 

 did not get back to New Ontario till Sept. 

 15. Two colonies had done nothing — -per- 

 haps they had superseded queens and simply 

 built up — at any rate, they had no honey in 

 supers and just enough for winter. In the 

 other seven hives conditions were good 

 enough to please anybody. After leaving 

 each colony a super of capped honey for win- 

 ter use, in addition to some in brood-nests, 

 from the seven colonies he extracted 1,725 

 pounds of fine honey. Allowing for the 

 seven supers left with the bees, the surplus 

 .stored would average nearly 300 pounds per 

 colony, and they were never looked at from 

 May 20 to Sept. 15. All things taken into 

 consideration, is not this a record? 



Markham, Ont. J. L. Byer, 



