December, 1921 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



753 



but few such yards in western Idaho and 

 eastern Oregon. First, if robbing occurs, 

 and an undiscovered case of foul brood is 

 robbed, either in the apiary, or belonging 

 to some careless farmer, there is great dan- 

 ger of infecting a large number of colonies. 

 A few years ago, one of our apiaries of 100 

 colonies was robbing a yard of about 30 

 colonies near by, nearly all foul, yet only 

 69 of our colonies were infected. 



If our yard had contained three or four 

 hundred colonies, the loss would have been 

 great. In spring and fall, the small apiary 

 is far easier to work without serious trouble 

 from robbing. The comb-honey producer, 

 with his little one-story hives, can better 

 cope with this robbing nuisance; but the 

 cxtraoted-honey producer, with his three, 

 four, five, or even six or seven story hives, 

 must remove honey at times when conditions 

 are so conducive to robbing that he some- 

 times wishes he had never seen a bee. Then 

 the robbing is a serious handicap, especially 

 in large yards and during or after the honey 

 flow. This robbing can be partially over- 

 come by the use of queen-excluders, bee-es- 

 capes, and by working part of a yard, then 

 moving to another. 



In the irrigated regions, with the increas- 

 ing area intensively farmed, it is becoming 

 more and more difficult to find places to put 

 an apiary, as land values are very high, and 

 almost no one will have an apiary near a 

 cultivated field, since, owing to the absence 

 of trees, bees fly low, especially on windy 

 days, and may make trouble for men and 

 teams at work in the fields near by. 



Because of new land going into cultiva- 

 tion, odd corners being leveled and culti- 

 vated, and changes of ownership, apiaries 

 must often be moved, and the small apiary 

 is easily moved to a new location. 



I hope to own the land on which one of 

 our best apiaries will be kept, and will then 

 again experiment toward a large yard, pro- 

 vided there are not several yards near by, 

 for unquestionably there is a limit some- 

 where. 



When Large Apiaries Are Advisable. 



In a good location, where there are few 

 bees near by, where there is small change in 

 the crops raised from year to year, where 

 the beeyard is surrounded by trees so that 

 the bees do not fly low enough to be a 

 nuisance to others, where reasonably good 

 crops may be expected from year to year, 

 and where there is a good supply of minor 

 plants to provide spring and fall feed, per- 

 haps few fields of endeavor hold more prom- 

 ise than testing one 's locality to determine 

 if 200, 300, or perhaps more colonies, may 

 yield good crops, for there is no question 

 but that honey can be raised far cheaper in 

 a small number of large yards than in a 

 large number of small yards, other factors 

 being approximately equal. 



Meridian, Ida. 



[In some carefully conducted experiments 

 by the U. S. Department of Agriculture in 

 1911, it was found that the honeybee is as 

 efficient a cross pollinator of red clover as 

 the bumblebee. See United States Depart- 

 ment of Agriculture Bulletin No. 289. — -Edi- 

 tor.] 



)ne of E. F. Atwater's apiaries in Idaho. This apiary is located on an unlrrigated spot but near irri 

 fields. Such apiary sites are difficult to find. 



