December, 1920 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



747 



iiioiit Station lias made various experiments 

 with carbon bisulphide and in a bulletin, 

 June, 1918, by F. B. Paddock, he states that 

 when the supers are taken down the confined 

 gas will escape immediately, even before 

 they can be carried separately to a building. 

 Of course, if the carbon bisulphide was put 

 immediately on the combs this might make 

 a difference. We do not know. Perhaps 

 Prof. Paddock will enlighten us. 



Questions. — (1) Are bees injured by helping 

 themselves to molasses and skimmings that are 

 taken from it while it is being made? They do not 

 take to it readily until it begins to ferment. (2) 

 Will sweet cider injure the bees? (3) Where lum- 

 l>er is very cheap, as it is around the mountain saw 

 mills, do you think it would pay to provide winter 

 packing for bees in single-walled hives? Some are 

 in st^.ndard ten-frame and and some in Long Idea 

 hives. We are located in the mountains in northern 

 Alabama, and the bees are in an exposed location. 



Alabama. Lucian C. Scott. 



Answers. — (1) The fermented molasses 

 skimmings would not be good stores for the 

 bees. (2) Sweet cider is also a very poor 

 thing to allow the bees to store. (3) Since 

 your bees are in such an exposed location we 

 believe you wall find that it will be of bene- 

 fit for the colonies to have a little protec- 

 tion as you suggest, altho, of course, less 

 protection is needed in your locality. A 

 windbreak would also be a great help. 



Question. — In the fall I divided a colony by the 

 Alexander method and a few days later found them 

 dragging dead bees from the one on the old stand. 

 I examined them and found no honey, so I gave 

 them a comb full of it and in a few days they were 

 all right. Was starvation the cause of this? 



Nebraska. Burton Kiltz. 



Answer. — If the old swarm was short of 

 stores, this might have been the cause of 

 their carrying brood from the entrance. 

 They also would do the same thing, if the 

 entrance was not sufficiently contracted so 

 that the brood became chilled in the night, 

 or if too few bees were left with the brood, 

 as sometimes happens with the division 

 moved to a new stand. 



Questions. — (1) What information can you give 

 me about candied honey? What is the reason it 

 candies, and what can we do, if anything, to prer 

 vent it ? The stores do not care to handle our 

 honey becaii.se they say it candies in such a short 

 time, it is difficult for them to handle, but their 

 customers all like it. It is very thick, of good color, 

 and of fine flavor. They tell us that other beemen 

 furnish them with large tanks of honey which they 

 guarantee will not candy. Do they put anything in 

 if? (2) Why is it that at the end of the honey 

 flow I find that quite a number of my colonies are 

 queenless, some of which were the strongest the first 

 of the season. (3) Will the colony swarm out 

 when the queen goes out to mate! 



California. Bartlett Boyd. 



Answers. — (1) The reason that some hon- 

 lys candy more readily than others is be- 

 < ause they contain a greater amount of dex- 

 trose. Also, agitation of honey and sudden 

 changes of temperature always hasten gran- 

 ulation. If you lieat the honey to at least 

 ]-!i' ilcgrees Fahrenheit and take pains that 



it does not become any hotter than 160 de- 

 grees Fahrenlieit, which is a rather high tem- 

 perature, you will probably be able to put 

 your honey up so that it will remain liquid 

 for a much longer time. It is better to hold 

 the temperature at 130 or a little more for 

 some time rather than to use too high a 

 temperature. When heating your honey be- 

 fore bottling you will probably not have 

 much difficulty with its granulating while on 

 the hands of the storekeeper. We know of 

 nothing that you could put in the honey 

 to prevent its granulation, and anyway, you 

 would not care to do so since this would 

 adulterate the honey. (2) There are differ- 

 ent reasons that might account for the 

 queenlessness of your colony after the end 

 of the honey flow. In case you do not use 

 queen-excluders and the queen is allowed 

 free use of the entire hive, it is possible that 

 she might go into the supers and raise brood 

 there; then when you remove the supers you 

 might accidentally remove her also. We 

 have known colonies to become queenless in 

 this way. Again, there is a chance that the 

 old queens were superseded and perhaps the 

 young queens were lost in mating. Or, it may 

 be that the colonies after the honey flow 

 swarmed without your knowledge, and the 

 old queen left and the young one was lost 

 when she took her wedding flight. (3) Some- 

 times small nuclei do swarm out with the 

 virgin queen when she leaves the hive to 

 be mated, but usually the bees and queen 

 return shortly. 



Question. — We packed two colonies last winter, 

 each being packed the same. The colony with the 

 less winter stores came thru the winter finely, while 

 the colony with the more stores wintered badly, 

 more than half the bees dying. What could have 

 been the cause ? 



Ohio. Mrs. Silvia Petrecca. 



Answer. — We regret that you did not tell 

 us more about the two colonies. Without 

 knowing more of the conditions it is impos- 

 sible for us to explain why one wintered so 

 much better than the other. It is possible 

 that one colony was stronger than the other 

 in the fall, or it may be that one w^as more 

 exposed to the cold winds in winter. You 

 say nothing about the size of the entrances. 

 Of course, if an entrance was left large 

 enough so that a mouse could enter the hive, 

 poor wintering could be expected. Some- 

 times also we have known of field mice mak- 

 ing their nest under the hive. In most cases 

 this would probably do no harm, but if the 

 mice were close enough to the bottom of the 

 hive so that there was an occasional jarring 

 of the hive, this would cause the colony to 

 winter poorly. As a further suggestion we 

 might say that if a queen is old or poor, colo- 

 nies often do not raise as much young brood 

 ill the fall as they would do if they had a 

 good queen. Therefore, there are not as 

 many young bees to go into winter quarters. 

 Colonies that are composed mostly of old 

 bees in the fall do not winter nearly as well, 

 and in some cases perish outright. 



