Junk, 1920 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



FROM THE FIELD OF EXPERIENCE 



liow to feed back to have the unfinishecl sections 

 fini.slied up. I !nn sure it works well for taking 

 conih honey. 



The operation is performed simply by raising all 

 the combs that contain brood above the queen-ex- 

 <'luder, putting empty or honey-filled combs in 

 their place in the brood-nest below the excluder, 

 and hiving the swarm back. If the queen with the 

 swarm is old, it pays to supersede her with a queen- 

 cell. If she is strong and good, just let her alone. 

 The manipulation may be performed either before 

 or after the swarm issues. You give room for all 

 the bees to work by tiering up if the season is good; 

 if not, the bees will surely fill the upper story as 

 fast as the brood hatches out, and in the poorest 

 season, I am sure of one set of combs well filled. 

 If the season is good, I am sure of a paying crop. 



When hiving back in this way there is no dis- 

 turbance. The brood above the excluder assures the 

 bees with perfect safety of perpetuity. Bees never 

 get uneasy at swarming time when they have brood 

 in the hive, whether above the excluder or below 

 it I pay no attention to the cells above the ex- 

 cluder. The young queens destroy the cells in 

 the usual way, and the surviving young queen is 

 finally destroyed by the workers, if they have a 

 queen below the excluder. I leave all the combs on 

 the hive till the honey harvest is over, and then deal 

 with them as surplus combs. In a warm season, I 

 leave them with the bees to keep them free from 

 moth worms till fall. In fact, I winter my colonies 

 in two-story hives. I would not exchange a plain 

 Langstroth hive, so modernized as to tier up with 

 a square joint, for any other hive. After trying all 

 sorts of frames I prefer the Langstroth hanging 

 frame to any other. They give me less work to 

 handle them. 



You are at liberty to write anything you wish 

 about my system. When a good honey season comes 

 and my apiary has the ".swarm craze" I would 

 liave to just give it up if I could not apply my 

 brood-raising system. With it I can control the 

 craziest apiary on earth and take a paying crop of 

 surplus honey. G. W. Demaree. 



a " to ^ C M lo 



THE LAND OF THE COLD MIT 



Calitomia Not Appreciated. Believes the South 

 the Center of Modern Beekeeping 



Your correspondent Mrs. Puerden has 

 adopted California for her own. She calls 

 it "mine." I, for one, will not contest 

 the adoption. She is welcome to it. 



I notice that in her article no mention is 

 made of beekeeping. Here lies the ex- 

 planation of her glowing eulogy. I feel 

 sure that the favorable impression she car- 

 ried away is due to her having never men- 

 tioned the word, beekeeping. Had she done 

 so, she would have met a cold eye, a finny 

 hand, and a gulped-down growl, "Here's 

 another of 'em! ' ' 



California doesn 't like beekeepers. You 

 may have a round trip in your pocket, but 

 suspicious California doesn't know it. Api- 

 culturally speaking, it is the land not mere- 

 ly of the cold mit, but of the freeze-out. 



I am a British member of the craft who 

 made the long journey for the purpose of 

 seeing something of the famous apiaries of 

 that State and studying their methods. I 



attended meetings and conventions and 

 heard some interesting discussions, but dis- 

 covered a certain absentmindedness when I 

 hinted that I should like to visit apiaries. 

 I went so far as to write to one of the best- 

 known beemen, asking permission to visit 

 his yard, but the letter was not answered. 



It seems to me that the gold diggers of 

 '49 have gone into the bee business. They 

 h;ive discovered a good thing; they are first 

 in the field; they don't quite know how 

 much gold there is; but they are determined 

 •to share it among as few as possible. 



But who is to say when the "saturation 

 point ' ' has been reached in any given bee 

 locality? I had no opportunity of studying 

 conditions nor of listening to experiences, 

 but it struck me that California was pre- 

 eminently a field for intensive bee culture. 

 Where one gets two great flows, such as 

 orange and sagebrush, intensive methods 

 offer greater possibilities than in districts 

 where a long even flow is usual. But, so far 

 as I could gather, enormous numbers of 

 colonies with low individual records are the 

 rule, or extensive as opposed to intensive 

 beekeeping. I should be greatly interested 

 to know what could be achieved by ruthless- 

 ly intensive methods in the way of feeding 

 back honey, uniting before the flow, etc., 

 in an orange orchard. I venture to think 

 that the result would show that nervousness 

 about overstocked areas is unfounded. 

 ' ' Saturation point ' ' is still a long way off, 

 even with slap-dash, extensive methods. 



Altho a Uttle disappointed at my Cali- 

 fornia tour, I feel that I have already dis- 

 covered some important facts. The true 

 home and center of modern beekeeping is 

 now the Old South. How many Americans 

 know this? Of Europeans hardly any. 

 Californian statistics give a false impres- 

 sion. More carloads of extracted honey may 

 appear in their agricultural schedules, but 

 the last words in queen-rearing, race im- 

 provement, bee-transportation, and the finer 

 points of apiculture come from the leading 

 men of the South. Alabama, Texas, Missis- 

 sippi, and Georgia are now the region where 

 the student can learn more of beekeeping 

 than perhaps in any other part of the 

 world. You will find that the reputation of 

 the Southerner for courtesy and hospitality 

 is no false one. That he is a lazy, shiftless, 

 unenterprising sort of person may, of course, 

 be verified in the advertising columns of 

 Gleanings and the almost unbelievable vol- 

 ume of business that lies behind them. 



As for California, I give, devise, and be- 

 queath it, together with all its dusty, tired 

 palm trees, scrimmaging cafeterias, and real 

 estate free lunches, to Mrs. Puerden. 



Fitzpatrick, Ala. John H. Protheroe. 



[In back Gleanings are several references 

 to Stancy Puerden 's husband. Therefore, 

 in this article we have taken the liberty of 

 changing "Mr." to "Mrs." — Editor.] 



