December, 1920 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



729 



FROM THE FIELD OF EXPERIENCE 



or so, and no bees having made any advance 

 ill that direction, I took it off and replaced 

 it with a full-depth brood-body. By this 

 time the brood-elianibers were full, and I 

 selected four combs that were well sealed 

 and placed them in the second story, at the 

 same time spacing the combs of both stories 

 so that I could fill the alternating vacant 

 spaces with sheets of foundation. A week 

 after I had done this, practically every comb 

 in the hive was drawn out, and the bees had 

 a good start in the second story. 



Swarming was controlled by an abundance 

 of room, killing queen-cells, and giving 

 plenty of ventilation by means of three- 

 eighths inch blocks under the corners of the 

 cover and inch blocks under the brood-cham- 

 ber. The four-i)ound nucleus I divided once 

 by the Alexander method, and again took 

 frames of bees from the daughter and parent 

 hives to make a third swarm, thus securing 

 three colonies from the four-pound nucleus. 

 When I made the Alexander division I had 

 a little "set-back." I did not have a laying 

 (|ueen to put with the daughter colony and 

 had to wait to raise one. I calculated that 

 this delay lost me about 75 pounds of honey, 

 as the new colony dwindled badly during 

 this time. 



We had a constant How from sweet clover 

 from the middle of June until the last of 

 September, dwindling out by the middle of 

 October, with a flow from alfalfa the first 

 part of July and another the latter part of 

 August. Consequently the rest of the sum- 

 mer was spent in supplying plenty of super 

 room. This I accomplished by lifting the 

 near)}' full super and placing an empty under 

 it, leaving them all on until I extracted the 

 last of September. 



About the first of July I had my first ex- 

 perience in hiving a swarm that clustered 

 in a big Cottonwood. Later in the summer I 

 trapped a swarm from a bee-tree, thus in- 

 creasing the number of colonies. 



About this time one of my farmer bee- 

 keeper friends endeavored to convince me 

 that foundation was an unnecessary expense. 

 We went out to his old box hive where the 

 workers were dragging out the drones lit- 

 erally by the hundred. I took him over to 

 my six colonies, and after watching 15 or 

 20 minutes without seeing a single drone, he 

 admitted I was right. 



This is the measure of my first year's suc- 

 cess with bees: Three colonies and 249 

 pounds of extracted honey from my four- 

 pound nucleus, 165 pounds of honey from 

 my two-pound nucleus, 150 pounds of honey 

 from a captured swarm, and five extra 

 combs of honey and j)ollen from a trapped 

 swarm. The honey was put up in quart jars 

 with a nice label and sold to the grocery 

 stores at a good price. Altogether, I sold 

 $72.80 worth of honev besides what we kept 



for our own family, and 50 pounds that we 

 gave away. The six ten-frame colonies 

 started the winter with not less than 225 

 pounds. 



What, then, are the essentials necessary 

 for success in bee culture? Let me give 

 them as I see them: 



First, a good bee range. Second, a mas- 

 tery of the best boo literature obtainable. 

 Third, a good strain of Italian bees. Fourth, 

 the application of those principles tried and 

 recommended by our foremost beemen, as 

 gleaned from books and magazines. 



Shell, Wyo. T. E. Spencer, 



=JO^C«= 



MAINTAINING HONEY PRICES 



What Can Be Done by Co-operarion and Judicious 

 Advertising 



Previous to the war and until shipping 

 was provided and the United States entered 

 the war, honey was selling at about half the 

 present price or less. After that time, due 

 to the lack of shipping to carry honey from 

 the West Indies and South America and 

 other parts of the world that were remote 

 from the United States and Europe (which 

 also produced a honey shortage in Europe), 

 and also to the sugar shortage, produced by 

 the same causes and the unavailability of 

 the German sugar supply, there came a 

 great demand for honey. This was also fos- 

 tered by the issuing of bulletins by the Fed- 

 eral Government, which urged and explained 

 the use of honey in the place of sugar. This 

 was done by the Government until there de- 

 veloped an actual honey shortage, when 

 other, and not as satisfactory substitutes 

 were also recommended. 



These conditions caused the price of 

 honey to rise to where it was during 1919 

 and 1920, nearly twice the previous price. 

 It also taught many people to use and like 

 honey, who had never used it before. 



The question is, what can be done to main- 

 tain, at least x>artially, the present prices? 

 I do not expect it to go all the way back to 

 pre-war prices, but if nothing is done, it will 

 go down nearly to that level. 



There are several infiuences that may be 

 brought to bear to prevent this, but before 

 suggesting them let us look at the pre-war 

 conditions. In 1910 there was produced in 

 the United States between two and three 

 [lounds of honey per capita, and there was 

 consumed over 80 pounds of sugar per capita 

 annually. With our honey exportations, it 

 is probable our per capita honey consump- 

 tion was less than two pounds per annum, 

 or about 2^4 pcr cent of the sugar consump- 

 tion. Therefore our honey consumption was, 

 and still is, too low. There should be pro- 



