August, 1921 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



499 



AT the bot- 

 tom of the 

 be a u t i f u 1 

 cover page of 

 Gleanings for 

 July is a quota- 

 tion from Mor- 

 ley Pettit, "One 

 of the pleasures 

 of a beekeeper's 

 life is the trip home from an outyard after 

 a hard day's work." "That's so," I ex- 

 claimed, mentally if not aloud. How many 

 times have I enjoyed these trips home, so 

 quiet and restful, even when I had to walk 

 up the long hills to relieve my patient horse 

 hauling a heavy load of honey! 



* « * 



The method advocated by Mr. Pettit, page 

 412, for getting combs cleaned up after ex- 

 tracting is certainly simple and effective, 

 and better than many of the plans hereto- 

 fore described. 



* « * 



Conditions here in Vermont are not prom- 

 ising a large crop of honey. The weather 

 has been very dry most of the time since 

 May 1, and, while some yards are doing 

 very well, others have made little more than 



a living. 



* « If 



One of the wants of beekeepers for many 

 years has been a perfectly sure method of 

 introducing a strange queen into a nucleus 

 or colony. The cage and method described 

 by Jay Smith on page 417 is as nearly per- 

 fect as we shall be likely ever to find. The 

 idea of a push-in cage, however, is not new. 

 Capt. J. E. Hetherington described it to me 

 — in fact, made one for me of wire cloth 

 49 years ago. At that time he recommended 

 this method as one of the safest for intro- 

 ducing queens. 



* * * 



That is a right good article by S. B. 

 Fracker, on page 422, on "Compulsory Hon- 

 ey Grading." It looks very much as tho 

 those Wisconsin beekeepers were on the 

 right track. Such a law will give "back 

 yard" beekeepers a jog that will set them, 

 as well as other producers of food, to think- 

 ing. It is a fact that ought to be often re- 

 peated, that mixing a low-grade product 

 with a high-grade rarely raises the price of 

 the low-grade, but almost invariably lowers 

 the value of the high-grade product. 



* * * 



In the first short editorial on page 409 it 

 is stated that July is an excellent time to 

 requeen. Not only is this true, but it is the 

 least expensive time as well as the best time 

 to secure the best stock, and no one has so 

 good a chance to secure good stock as the 

 honey producer himself. It is a compara- 

 tively easy matter to notice the great dif- 

 ference in a yard of bees in the storing of 

 honey. In a yard that will average 40 

 pounds of surplus honey, we are quite sure 



to find one or 

 two colonies 

 that will store 

 80 or 100 pounds 

 of surplus hon- 

 ey. How easy 

 to rear one or 

 more sets of 

 of queen-c ells 

 from such colo- 

 nies, to replace queens in colonies that have 

 proved the least productive! 



* * » 



"Leave more honey for the bees," says 

 the Editor of Gleanings, page 410. Certain- 

 ly good advice where a yard is run for ex- 

 tracted honey, and worth remembering when 

 run for comb honey. We had colonies starve 

 last year in outyards that we used for sec- 

 tion honey before we got around to feed 

 them for winter. There was an unusual 

 dearth of honey the latter part of the sea- 

 son, 



* « * 



"It is up to the beekeeper " snvi F *"' 

 Stahlman, page 429, and he is right. The 

 crop of honey will depend much more upon 

 the beekeeper than we are apt to think. I 

 was recently visiting some beekeepers in 

 the north part of our State, and while I 

 found some yards with strong colonies, other 

 yards were comparatively weak. While the 

 strong colonies were storing surplus, the 

 weak ones were busy filling their hives with 

 brood, and will store very little surplus un- 

 less there should be a good flow of honey 

 late in the season. 



* * * 



A. C. Ames, on page 426, gives to those 

 who are trying to overcome American foul 

 brood some excellent advice which all may 

 adopt with very decidedly satisfactory re- 

 sults. But European foul brood! This is 

 indeed the ' ' pestilence that walketh in 

 darkness ' ' and ' ' wasteth at noonday. ' ' You 

 can scarcely tell whenever it comes, or 

 where it is going to turn up next. There 

 seems to be a good many exceptions to its 

 general methods of development and disap- 

 pearance; but one thing seems pretty cer- 

 tain, that with strong colonies of Italian 

 bees we can fight it successfully. 



* * * 



That estimate of Mr. Demuth, on page 

 410, of the average amount of comb and ex- 

 tracted honey secured by colonies of equal 

 strength is most decidedly interesting. I 

 have been satisfied for some time that the 

 early estimates of two pounds of extracted 

 to one of comb were quite too high. A be- 

 ginner extracting honey before it is well 

 ripened or some one having a somewhat pe- 

 culiar location like the Dadants, or a heavy 

 late flow, may secure two pounds of ex- 

 tracted to one of comb. I believe those who 

 extract leave far less, as a rule, in the brood- 

 chamber than those who work for section 

 honev- 



