.ir\i:, I'J'Ji) 



O h K A N I X n S T N RE K C U T, T U R E 



345 



c 



SUCH an ill- 

 p r o 111 i s i n ji' 

 spring! Oiii' 

 disastrous perioil 

 has followed aii- 

 otlier, ever since 

 that iin - easier - 

 like Easter Sun- 

 day when the 

 wind rose and 

 the thermometer fell and the whole earth 

 shivered thru her garment of peach bloom 

 and plum petal. During the cold dark 

 days following, while the bees could not get 

 out to the blossoms, we wondered anxiously 

 about conditions in those quite too light 

 hives we had moved a few weeks before. 

 On the first possible day I went thru them. 

 Hive after hive had not an ounce of honey, 

 some of them actually not a cell. In some 

 cases the bees themselves were quite evi- 

 dently weak, crawling around pitifully on 

 dry empty combs. In several hives they had 

 begun dropping to the bottom-boards. In 

 one colony more than half of them had al- 

 ready dropped off, and the great heap was 

 shutting off all ventilation, so making even 

 more certain the death of their still surviv- 

 ing comrades. Almost despairingly I gave 

 these worst ones a little honey from colonies 

 not yet so despairingly depleted, tho by no 

 means able to spare it, being decidedly short 

 themselves. Then we bought sugar. One 

 hundred pounds doesn't go far, j^et with it 

 we undoubtedly tided about 20 colonies over 

 a critical period. It meant giving them at 

 least a chance for survival. A few days 

 later apples and cherries came into promis- 

 ing bloom, and a day or two of good weather 

 meant another chance. But after two good 

 days of nectar-gathering, came cyclonic rain 

 and storm and every blossom was dashed 

 off. Another cool rainy spell, and again we 

 bought sugar and fed — paying $23.00 for it, 

 by the way, where it had cost $18.00 a week 

 before. Now (May 7) black locust is in 

 bloom, fully two weeks late, and again wea- 

 ther conditions are unsettled, with the bees 

 getting far less than a full chance at the 

 nectar during these days so dark and cloud- 

 ed. Worst of all, white clover is coming 

 into bloom on time, and the bees are in no 

 wise ready for the flow. Brood-rearing has 

 been so seriously checked that most hives 

 had no more brood on the first of May than 

 at the end of March. Unless the clover has 

 an extended blooming period, there will be 

 little or no surplus honey. To avoid disap- 

 pointment, I, for one, am counting on none. 

 (And secretly hoping to be mistaken!) 



But there are many beekeepers who face 

 even a worse situation than ours, as they 

 have actually lost a heavy per cent of their 

 colonies. While ours are seriously weaken- 

 ed, we have saved all but the one that per- 

 ished in February. Even beekeepers like 

 Mr. Buchanan, who practice leaving more 

 than enough stores, have felt the severity 

 of this spring; yet their bees have, of course, 

 been able to come thru this experience far 



Beekeeping as a Side Line 



ILJ 



Grace Allen 



^=S^^^^^5^ 



LJ 





ahead of others. 

 In our own little 

 home yard there 

 was a wealth of 

 honey in each 

 hive, and there 

 conditions are 

 now more nearly 

 normal. We real- 

 ly extracted 

 more closely there than in the country yard, 

 too, but there was a sufiScient flow during 

 the late summer to keep up brood-rearing and 

 also to allow an accumulation of stores; so 

 when the fall flow proved so disappointing, 

 there was no shortage. We really thought 

 we had left ample out in the country yard, 

 but were evidently depending too much on 

 that elusive fall flow. As winter came on 

 we realized that those hives were too light, 

 but conditions were such that we decided 

 to risk it. Now we are paying the penalty 

 — an unusually heavy one, as this is an un- 

 usually bad spring. Hereafter, when extract- 

 ing, we shall act as tho there were to be no 

 fall flow at all; then if there is, there can 

 be another extracting. 



High winds make tragic conditions for our 

 bees. We have all seen them coming in, 

 wind-tossed. One day lately I watched them 

 far some time; there may not have blown a 

 tremendous wind, yet it was what the 

 bees and I would call a very windy day. 

 Heavy with nuggets of golden pollen, or nec- 

 tar from the orchard blossoming to the west, 

 they were buffeted roughly about as they 

 curved swiftly down to the entrances, many 

 of them landing on the ground and crawling 

 wearily about seeking the entrance. Some 

 of the hives had been set on bricks, and 

 often the bees wasted valuable minutes, di- 

 rectly below the entrance, crawling back un- 

 der the hive between the front bricks. So 

 I left off my lazy watching, to fix them 

 up some improvised runways from the 

 ground to the alighting boards. These may 

 not be worth while for the big jjroducer to 

 bother with, but certainly the sideline bee- 

 keeper ought to provide every hive with 

 boards slanting from the ground to the en- 

 trance, unless he has wide alighting boards. 

 Between the objects of the backlotter and 

 those of the big producer there stretches a 

 wide difference. The backlotter may have 

 obtained his first hive by accident, and con- 

 tinued with it because of a wakening inter- 

 est ; or he got it for honey for his table, in 

 the same spirit as he got his Ehode Island 

 chickens or his onion sets or his Golden Ban- 

 tom seed corn; or he got it just for the sheer 

 unadulterated delight of a fascinating out- 

 door hobby. Probably both the honey and 

 the pleasure form the double-barreled object 

 of most sidelincrs. Part of them will say, 

 "Oh, I keep bees just for the fun of it — 

 and then we like the honey, too"; and the 

 rest will say, ' ' We 're such a honey-eating 

 fandly, wo like to raise it ourselves, and 

 have a little left over to give to our friends 

 and neighbors, too — and then we enjoy hav- 



