March, 1920 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



HEADS OF GRAIN M mlffl DIFFRgKNT FTFTn<;i 



ficient here, I like the chaff hive and am 

 using it. That is why I secured my surplus 

 from fruit this year, as my colonies built 

 up early. A. E. Meserve. 



rorthuul, Ore. 



A Side-line City I am a side-line bee- 



Beekeeper keeper and take a 



great deal of pleasure 

 in the work, as I find it fills in admirably 

 with my professional work as a veterinarian. 

 The industry has received a setback in this 

 valley, during the last ten years, by the 

 advent of the alfalfa weevil; but sweet 



Mr. Pliilpott's back-lot apiary. 



clover is gaining in popularity here and, no 

 doubt, will be followed by an increase in 

 honey production. 



I have 25 colonies on my lot here, only 

 one block from the main street, and have 

 never had any complaints come to me for 

 keeping them. 



The stump shown in the illustration is a 

 section out of a poplar tree, in which a 

 swarm of my bees took up quarters a year 



Tlie stump hive. 



Hives in the Philpott apiary. 



ago last summer. I cut the tree down in 

 December during an extremely cold spell, 

 without trouble or injury to the bees, judg- 

 ing from the activity they showed last Sun- 

 day. " ' L. B. Philpott. 

 Provo, Utah. 



Thermometers for Mr. Byer, in .January 

 Bee Cellars. Gleanings, has done 



beekeepers a favor by 

 calling attention to inaccurate thermome- 

 ters, as, no doubt, some cellar-wintering 

 failures have been due solely to a higher or 

 lower temperature than indicated by the 

 thermometer used. 



The writer has had occasion to test ther- 

 mometers more or less every year for more 

 than 20 years, and has quite frequently 

 found some that vary 3 to 4 degrees at some 

 points of the scale. A thermometer may 

 register perfectly accurately at 32 degrees 

 and at 212 degrees, and still be wrong to the 

 extent of 3 or 4 degrees at some intermedi- 

 ate points of the scale. So the freezing- 

 point test, mentioned by Mr. Byer, only es- 

 tablishes one point on the scale, which 

 might be correct when most of the other 

 points on the same scale are wrong. 



The accuracy of a thermometer thruout 

 its length depends mainly on uniformity of 

 diameter of the bore. It requires great 

 skill to draw out a glass tube and leave a 

 perfectly uniform internal diameter. A 

 glass-blower who is very expert at the work 

 draws high wages and is not commonly em- 

 ployed on the cheaper grades of thermome- 

 ters. Yet only those thermometers accurate 

 between 40 degrees and 50 degrees Fahr. are 

 safe for determining cellar temperatures. 



Lansing, Mich. A. N. Clark. 



[Gleanings has been trying to obtain a 

 certified thermometer for degrees between 

 40 and 50 — not with the idea of making any 

 money but as an accommodation to those 

 who, having the welfare of hundreds of 

 colonies at stake, need accuracy to the frac- 



