GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



January, 1922 



North, where the honey flow usually comes 

 when the bees have the most brood, the 

 brood-chambers are crowded with young and 

 emerging bees when the honey flow begins. 



Character of Honey Flow Determines Num- 

 ber of Supers Needed. 



The honey flow in one location may be 

 short and rapid, as in the clover region and 

 the citrus-fruit region, while in another it 

 may be long and slow, thus making a great 

 difference in the number of supers needed to 

 harvest the crop and have the honey well 

 ripened. In dry climates where the honey 

 flow is long and slow, many beekeepers in- 

 sist, that one extracting super is enough for 

 each colony, since they can extract several 

 times during the honey flow and at the same 

 time have the honey well ripened; while the 

 beekeeper in a moist climate, having a short 

 and rapid honey flow, insists that it is nec- 

 essary to have enotigh supers to hold the en- 

 tire crop, and advises extracting some time 



after the close of the honey flow. In each 

 case the other fellow is always wrong. 



Examples of this kind could be multiplied 

 almost indefinitely, because the number of 

 possible combinations of weather conditions 

 and honey flows ia almost without limit. It 

 is important that beekeepers in any particu- 

 lar type of locality learn the reasons for the 

 other fellow's management, instead of con- 

 demning it without study because in their 

 own locality the variation from season to 

 season varies their problems, sometimes 

 making the methods that have been worked 

 out in an entirely different locality the best 

 to use in their own locality on account of 

 some peculiarity of the season. In other 

 words, he who fails to recognize and study 

 the problem of locality and adjust his man- 

 agement to fit changed conditions, will not 

 be able to secure the best results possible in 

 his locality every season. Would it not be 

 well for us to polish away the smirch from 

 the old term "locality" and give it another 

 trial as a beekeeping term? 



I 



ALWAYS feel 



HETHERINGTON - QUINBY HIVE 



poor fool who 

 can tolerate 

 closed-end 

 frames with 

 their bee glue 

 and bee-smash- 

 ing. ' ' I presume 

 I have heard 



that remark hundreds of times. It is sel- 

 dom, however, that the user of such frames 

 is sorry for himself, and he would resent the 

 insinuation that he belongs to the class com- 

 monly called "fools. " I must confess that 

 I myself, away back in the 90 's, shared 

 somewhat the feeling voiced above, until 

 a certain bicycle trip caused me to modify 

 my views somewhat — 'not because I advo- 

 cated the closed-end frames, but because 

 I saw that such frames could be handled, 

 and were handled, by some of the most ex- 

 tensive beekeepers in the world. In the early 

 days of California beekeeping J. S. Harbi- 

 son could not have been persuaded to han- 

 dle anything else than his own particular 

 type of closed-end frame. The late Captain 

 J. E. Iletherington at one time had 3,000 

 colonies on Quinby closed-end frames; and 

 today, if I am not very much mistaken, P. 

 H. Elwood has over 1,000 colonies on such 

 frames. 



I began editorial work on this journal in 

 1885. I read various discussions concern- 

 ing the various merits of closed-end and 

 open-end unspaced Langstroth frames. 

 Knowing that some of the largest beekeep- 

 ers in New York were users of the Quinby 

 closed-end frame as modified by Hethering- 

 ton, I had a great desire to sec and know 



Some Reminiscences of the Good 

 Old l^ays When Modern Beekeep- 

 ing Was in the taking 



By E. R. Root 



for myself. The 

 result was that 

 in August, 1890, 

 I made a trip 

 across the State 

 of New York on 

 one of the first 

 safety bicycles 

 that was ever 

 made. At that 

 time a man traveling on a " safety ' ' was 

 more of a novelty than a man in an airplane 

 going overhead today — so much so, in fact, 

 that the people in the country towns flocked 

 out in great crowds to see that man skip- 



One of the original Hetherington-Quinhy hives of 

 .SO years ago as found in the apiary of C. F. M. 

 Stone, Ijamanda Park, Cal. This hive has all but 

 gone out of use; but, says Mr. Stone, for breeding 

 bees and the production of comb honey it is one 

 of the best ever devised. Altho the frames are 

 ilospd-end it is not a bee-smasher; and those wlio 

 arc Btill using it in New York swear by it. 



