GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



JuLV, 1920 



FROM NORTH, EAST, WEST AND SOUTH 



In Southern California ^he Caii 



■*• torma Hon- 



ey Producers ' Co-operative Exchange has 

 secured the services of C. E. Millspaugh as 

 general manager, who is one of the most ex- 

 perienced honey men in the We'st. He has 

 for 15 or 20 years been dealing in honey 

 and other California products, and brings 

 to the Exchange a ripe experience along 

 these lines. For several years past he has 

 been with The Los Angeles Honey Co., 

 (Hamilton and Menderson), and previous to 

 that time he was in business for himself. 



Beekeepers hereabouts have been excep- 

 tionally busy for months and especiaUy 

 those who practice migratory beekeeping. 

 All of those who move from the oranges 

 to the sages have been working overtime 

 getting their apiaries moved. Help is hard 

 to get and hard to keep, but one finds many 

 men interested in the business, who always 

 come and who want to work and get what 

 experience they can, hoping eventually to 

 get into the game for themselves. Most of 

 those, who ship in from other States, have 

 shipped one or two carloads to their north- 

 ern locations, but some have already moved 

 out all of their bees. One large shipper, 

 whom I saw loading, had a refrigerator car 

 already iced. It was a warm day, and the 

 bees were making considerable noise. He 

 said, "Oh, you little fellows, you will get 

 cooled off when the car starts and this ice 

 begins to get in its work. ' ' This man ship- 

 ped in refrigerator cars last year, and says 

 that he hardly lost a bee. To get the 

 orange honey and make increase ready to 

 ship north is the great problem. Your cor- 

 respondent believes that it can be done 

 profitably, and that it will continue to grow 

 as a business. The high prices of supplies 

 does not interfere with some of these sh'p- 

 pers having the very best of everything. 

 It certainly looks fine to see a carload of 

 500 ten-frame Langstroth hives, all exactly 

 alike and fitted in like peas in a pod. 



On the night of May 1, unknown parties 

 entered the apiary of F. A. Alexander near 

 Ferris, Eiverside County, and took away 

 with them 20 colonies of bees together 

 with a capping - melter, a gasoline stove, 

 supers, foundation, etc. Many beekeepers 

 report losses of from one to seven or eight 

 colonies. It may be a well-organized band 

 of robbers or only someone wanting to get 

 a start in the business. Stealing is gett'ng 

 to be a menace to the keeping of out- 

 apiaries. At a recent meeting of the Eiver- 

 side County Beekeepers ' Club, a committee 

 was appointed to devise ways and means 

 whereby a plan can be worked out to appre- 

 hend these vandals. A system of marking 

 all hives, frames, and equipment was sug- 

 gested. It was also suggested that an or- 

 dinance be framed making it unlawful for 

 anyone to move bees without first having 

 a permit from the county inspector. Such 



permit should give the name of the owner, 

 the number of colonies to be moved, and 

 the location to be moved to. A uniform 

 law for the State embodying these points 

 might help in catching the offenders. 



Extracting the honey at the apiary and 

 bringing it to the home place the same 

 day is being practised by several beekeep- 

 ers this year. I run it into a small tank 

 and then into five-gallon cans. These are 

 brought home in the evening and the honey 

 emptied into tanks, where it remains for 

 ten days or two weeks to clarify properly. 

 At the end of this time, it is put into cans 

 ready for the warehouse or shipment. One 

 beekeeper has a one-ton tank on his truck. 

 His pump from the power extractor puts 

 the honey into the tank. When he arrives 

 home a pump forces it from this tank to 

 one in the yard. This avoids all handling. 

 Work can he made easy in a wa}', if we 

 only know how to go about it. 



The decoy-hive fellows have been very 

 busy this year, and one can see an old box 

 or hive tucked away in a tree almost any- 

 where. Considering the amount of swarm- 

 ing reported, there have not been as many 

 catches in this way as one would suppose. 

 A large per cent of swarms caught have 

 been found hanging to trees and bushes. 

 Are swarms more inclined to enter old hives 

 or boxes some years than others? One year 

 I put out about 30 decoys and caught 25 

 swarms in a short time. This year, with 

 about the same number of decoys, only 

 five or six swarms have been caught. It 

 is certainly a good idea to have all hives 

 no longer considered in condition to be used 

 in the apiary, placed around in trees and 

 out-of-the-way places. A colony caught is 

 cheaper than a colony bought. 



There certainly has been a ' ' come-back ' ' 

 to the black sage this year in southern 

 California and especially in Eiverside Coun- 

 ty. The writer does not hesitate in saying 

 that the best flow experienced in the past 

 25 years has been on for a few weeks. 

 Colonies strong in bees and of. the right age 

 for field work have averaged four pounds 

 per day over a period of 15 days or from 

 one extracting to another. The honey is 

 water white and of a very heavy body. 

 The white sage is just beginning to yield 

 well in most sections of southern Cali- 

 fornia. The purple sage is also yielding 

 well. The wild buckwheat is lookino; fine 

 now and is secreting a little nectar in tiie 

 (>arlier localities. It sliould produce abun- 

 dantly for some weeks yet. 



Corona, Calif. L. L. Andrews. 



♦ * » 



In Iowa From the correspondeiiee which 

 is now being received concern- 

 ing foul-brood inspection, it is very evident 

 that amono' the beekeepers there is general 

 ignorance of the law relative to this mat- 

 ter. Every beekeeper interested in this 



