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GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



May, 1920 



c 



Grace Allen 



LJ 



SE V E E A L 

 times it has 

 looked as 

 tho this spring 

 would surely be 

 a Terrible Warn- 

 ing. After some 

 warm bright 

 weather, brood- 

 rearing getting 



nicely started, peach trees all a glowing 

 pink, pears snowy white and plum petals 

 drifting down the scented sun-lit air, most 

 woefuf things have happened; days of cold 

 rainy weather, with frosty nights and dan- 

 ger of chilled brood; danger, too, of some 

 colonies starving — colonies that were just 

 on the ragged last edge of winter stores 

 and beginning to depend on what they could 

 gather; then sun and warmth and bees fly- 

 ing again; then a three-inch rain; more sun 

 and flying bees; then on Easter Sunday 

 a wind coming suddenly, swiftly, piercingly 

 out of the west, and the mercury falling 

 heavily from 74 to 28 degrees. We had 

 no monopoly on that storm — it was wide- 

 spread. It has been a narrow escape for 

 many bees — and perhaps some didn 't escape. 

 Certainly there have been losses this winter 

 and spring at one period or another by 

 starvation. The only colony we lost went 

 by that route in February. The winter it- 

 self having been very mild, most of the 

 loss will have been from starvation — or 

 queenlessness. 



All our own queens came thru the winter, 

 tho at an early examination I thought for 

 a few minutes that we had one queenless 

 colony. In one cell after another, the tiny 

 eggs were thrown in on one another, in most 

 unqueenly fashion, looking for all the world 

 as tho they had been carelessly tossed in — 

 some on the bottom of the cells, some on the 

 sides, some on one another, some on unsus- 

 pecting little larvae. "Laying workers," I 

 moaned, yet withdrawing the accusation al- 

 most as soon as made, to change it to a ques- 

 tion. For in contrast to the scattering here 

 and yon over the comb usually indulged in 

 by laying workers, this brood space was 

 properly compact, and the part that was 

 sealed was flat like any normal worker 

 brood. Even while I puzzled over the mat- 

 ter, right across the comb the queen came 

 walking, as tho to reassure me. "Very 

 well," I told her, "I see you are here. But 

 why do you treat your eggs this way?" The 

 next examination showed nothing unusual. 

 She had corrected her disorderly habits. 



There was another colony, however, that 

 surely disjjlayed a failing queen. She was 

 not only a laggard in laying, but the sealed 

 brood lay largely in the humpy, bumpy, 

 lumpy uneveness of worker-cells built up to 

 accommodate drone brood. This queen was 

 at the State Fair last fall for a week, with 

 her nucleus of three-band blue-ribbon Ital- 

 ians—how are the mighty fallen! Probably, 

 tho, that proud, uncomfortable week didn't 

 do her any good. 



Beekeeping as a Side Line 



S 



W e wintered 

 almost entirely 

 in story -and -a- 

 half hives, and 

 brood - rearing 

 usually, tho by 

 no means al- 

 ways, begins in 

 the upper story. 

 Several queens 

 at the time of the first general examination, 

 March 27-29, had only two, three, or four 

 shallow combs of brood. In other colonies 

 the brood ran into four or five combs in 

 each chamber, one colony having reached 

 the proud distinction of eight full-depth 

 combs pretty well filled. That was the colo- 

 ny where, looking first into the shallow, I 

 found nothing but honey, eight of the little 

 combs being still sealed solid. Then down 

 below, the hive was being filled with brood. 

 A fine colony, that, to develop into a surplus- 

 producer, if given ample room — into an 

 early swarmer, if unwatched. 



While we were looking thru one colony 

 during that first examination, as Mr. Allen 

 drew out a comb from the opposite side of 

 the hive, my breath suddenly caught. I had 

 had a swift glimpse of many sunken, per- 

 forated cells. They were not, however, cells 

 of brood, but of honey. That is, they had 

 contained honey; but now, tho part of the 

 capping, having been merely punctured, still 

 remained in place, the honey had been; 

 drained out and the cells were dry and 

 clean inside. 



" There was a Boy ; ye knew him well, ye Cliffs 

 And islands of Winanderl " 



So began Wordsworth a certain narrative. 

 And so I begin — there is a pair; ye know 

 them both, ye sideline-reader-folk of Glean- 

 ings. They are — of course — sideline bee- 

 keepers. Until two years ago their bees 

 were all in their own backyard, on their 

 own green grass, under their own peach 

 trees. They read and talked among them 

 and walked and sat among them. There 

 they hung their hammock and set their 

 wicker rocking chairs; there, invariably, 

 they took their summer guests. But because 

 the man worked in an office five and a half 

 days in the week, often they worked among 

 their bees on Saturday afternoons when 

 their neighbors to the west chose to gather 

 on the shady side of their house, close — oh, 

 most unfortunately close, to the open bee- 

 hives. The results depended upon condi- 

 tions. But quite too often some nice friend- 

 ly neighbor would be seen running wildly 

 away, head ducked, arms flapping, and gen- 

 eral signs of distress evident. Because they 

 never complained, the sideline pair felt par- 

 ticularly uncomfortable. "We just can't 

 increase much more," the man declared. 

 "Evidently not," was the sighed admission. 

 ' ' Anyway, this isn 't such a very good lo- 

 cation," he comforted. "It certainly 

 isn 't, ' ' she agreed. ' ' We might move the 



