GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



.Tanuarv, 1921 



BEEKEEPING IN FOREIGN LANDS 



Spring Dwindling in the Tropics 

 Requeening and Other Things in 

 the T)ominican Republic 



By E. L. Sechrist 



SOME good 

 people tiiiuk 

 that every 

 season is sum- 

 mer in the trop- 

 ics and that bees 

 gather honey 

 every day. Some- 

 times that is 

 true — then 

 again it is not, and with a vengeance. For 

 instance, you never saw bees so anxious to 

 rob as they are here sometimes during the 

 months of drouth, during the broodless pe- 

 riod when the bees can fly every day, and 

 must fly and carry water to evaporate in 

 the hive to cool it. In some places water 

 may be so far away that it is wise to bring 

 it to the apiary to prevent undue wear and 

 tear of the bees. The usual method is to 

 carry water on the back of the patient burro 

 in the ever useful empty gasoline tins in 

 palm-leaf bags. Often a woman and child 

 will be perched on top of all. If it were 

 not for the burro and the Ford — the two 

 conversances of the common man, Dominican 

 for the burro and Americano for the Ford 

 • — -beekeeping would have troublous times in 

 this country. The burros also draw the 

 honey to market, either in tins, or in bar- 

 rels, on a two-wheeled cart drawn by three 

 burros or one mule and two burros. Occa- 

 sionally there is an ox-cart. 



The Winter Problem in the Tropics. 

 This continual flying of the bees during 

 the "winter" season of August, Septem- 

 ber, October, and often part of November 

 (especially if there has been a June and 

 July drouth stopping brood-rearing early, 

 so that colonies would go into ' ' winter 

 quarters" with few young bees) results in 

 the ' ' nicest ' ' cases of spring dwindling you 

 ever dreamed of. There may be left, when 

 brood-rearing begins, quite a respectable 

 number of bees in a hive and a good lot of 



In a Dominican apiary, 

 brood will be started. Then the worn-out 

 bees begin to die, and before enough young 

 bees have emerged to replace the old ones, 

 the colony may have dwindled to about a 

 two-frame nucleus with more hatching- 

 brood than the bees can cover — poor, chilled 

 youngsters hardly able to emerge. 



Brood Scattered Thruout the Hives. 

 Bees follow the same program here as 



elsewhere, b u t 

 the results are 

 somewhat differ- 

 ent. This is 

 quite noticeable 

 in the laying of 

 the queen. Here, 

 t e m p e r a ture 

 does not often 

 compel the bees 

 to keep the brood-nest compact, so often the 

 queen may lay a patch of eggs in the outside 

 of the outside comb as the place most free 

 from intrusive honey. As usual, the incoming 

 bees deposit the nectar in any empty cell in 

 the first combs they find. As they are not 

 compelled to move it from that spot in order 

 to keep the brood-nest compact, only too often 



Apiiii'y "Sabaio" huuse is of palm and is palm- 

 thatched. 



it is left right there and sealed, and the queen 

 lays wherever there is a vacant spot. Fre- 

 quently there is brood to equal three or four 

 frames scattered over ten, and often into 

 the second story unless the queen is kept be- 

 low by an excluder. A two-story brood- 

 chamber would be very desirable, but the 

 bees do not seem to know how to use it, not 

 being compelled to use it as they do in the 

 colder uorthland. The poor queen is at her 

 wits' end to know where to put eggs. If an 

 empty worker comb is put in the middle of 

 the brood-nest, it is ten chances to one that 

 the queen will be busy filling some few va- 

 cated cells in some other comb, and the 

 pesky workers will fill that new comb full 

 of honey before the queen discovers it. She 

 is sometimes able to get some eggs into the 

 bottom one or two inches of the comb, but 

 often it is solid full of honey, and the bees 

 do not move it — don't have to, so why 

 should they? Foundation fares slightly bet- 

 ter. 



Never, anywhere, have I seen such a great 

 loss of laying queens as in our apiaries here 

 — 'I'm not quite sure why, but one reason is 

 that queens are ordinarily reared in three- 

 frame nuclei, thus resulting in small poor 

 queens, of course. 



Advantages of the .Side-Nucleus. 



I am using, with a good deal of pleasure, 

 some "side-nuclei"; viz., a three-frame 

 nucleus attached to the side of the regular 

 hive, and with an auger hole entrance at 

 the rear and a double zinc-covered auger 



