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GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



3] 



EDITORIAL 



IN MANY STATES sweet clover is classed 

 among the noxious weeds; and until quite 

 recently the law in 



Help Prevent 



, Early Cutting of 



! Sweet Clover. 



several States was 

 such that road su- 

 pervisors might en- 

 ter a farmer's 

 fields and cut sweet clover that he himself 

 had sown. Even now the supervisors in 

 many places are ordered to cut it along the 

 roadsides and vacant lots before it blooms. 

 Gleanings has often regretted the unnec- 

 essary waste caused by the cutting of sweet 

 clover before blooming, and has urged bee- 

 keepers to use their influence in having such 

 sweet-clover laws repealed, and to prevail 

 on city councils to allow sweet clover to 

 grow till after bloom. We have received 

 several letters from different ones who have 

 succeeded in getting their city councils to 

 allow sweet clover to remain until after 

 blooming. 



E. D. Burnham of Champaign, Ills., who 

 in 1918 was county food administrator for 

 his county, found the road commissioners 

 willing to let the sweet clover come to 

 bloom. He wrote us stating that, as a re- 

 sult of the action taken in regard to the 

 conservation of sweet clover, one beekeep- 

 er who had ten colonies of bees extracted 

 an average of over 124 pounds. All this 

 shows that it is decidedly worth while for 

 beekeepers to bring before the proper 

 authorities the constantly increasing im- 

 ])ortance of sweet clover as a honey plant 

 and to exert their influence for the repeal 

 of all objectionable sweet-clover laws. 



ao^ctfz 



WHILE THE PAST winter was very hard 

 on bees, the heaviest losses occurred in the 

 spring months, par- 

 Losses Greater ticularly in March 

 than at First and April. The 



Reported. G o v e rn m ent re- 



ports likewise show 

 heavy losses all over the country and then 

 add: "The winter's experience provides 

 ample proof of the efficiency and economy 

 of adequate winter protection;" and they 

 might have added that extracting close and 

 the inability to get sugar were very import- 

 ant contributing causes in the great morta'- 

 itv of bees thruout the countrv. 



The package men report that the demand 

 for bees is the greatest they have had in all 

 of their experience. Colonies and whole api- 

 aries of bees are bringing high prices. 



How far this general shortage of bees, due 

 to winter and spring losses, will affect the 

 total amount of honey in the United States 

 can not at this time be determined. In 

 many sections of the East, clover is show- 

 ing up the best it has for years, and, if 

 there had been bees to gather the crop, 

 there would have been a big yield of clover 

 honey. There may be anyway, as late re- 

 ports from the East tell of bees' having 

 built up exceedingly well during late May 

 and early June. 



EXPERIENCE IS beginning to show that 

 bees sent in combless packages where the 



light is excluded, 

 Exclude the go thru in better 



Light. shape than in the 



usual open wire- 

 cloth cages. A two- or three-frame nucleus 

 box, wire-cloth top and bottom, containing 

 frames of foundation, is better than an 

 ordinary wire-cloth cage, provided that the 

 nucleus has a wooden cover about an inch 

 above the wire cloth on top to shut out the 

 excess of light. The main point is that the 

 sides of the case should be closed with wood. 

 Thousands of pounds of bees have been 

 shipped from the South to the North this 

 last spring. The weather was so cool most 

 of the time that practically all the ship- 

 ments went thru in good order, regardless 

 of whether light was excluded from the 

 package or not; but this was because the 

 weather favored. If these same shipments 

 had been made in hot weather, the bees in 

 the open-wire cages, we believe, would have 

 suffered severely. 



WE WISH to emphasize what we said in 

 our last issue that beekeepers all over the 

 country, north. 

 Warning, south, east, and 



west, should re- 

 serve enough combs of good honey for win- 

 ter stores out of their surplus, as there is 

 evevy probability that sugar will not be 

 available this fall for winter food. To say 



