June, 1922 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



GEACE 

 LEN, 



[s 



SIFTINGS 



J. E. Crane 



LJ 



^=s^^^^^^=^ 



AL- 



n 

 page 312, 

 May Gleanings, 

 refers to Miss 

 Josephine Morse 

 as a typical 

 "sideline!-, " and 

 she is right. Not 



only is she a typ- . , ^vt -n t i 



ical "sideliner," but a typical New England 

 woman. No one, to see her at a beekeepers 

 meeting, the lady that she is, would suspect 

 the work she can do. The soil of New Eng- 

 land is not as fertile as the prairies ot the 

 West and the Inter-mountain regions, or 

 the Pacific coast. Our climate is harsh, our 

 winters severe; but it is doubtful whether 

 anv other section of our country is better 

 adapted to the production of strong, selt- 

 reliant men and women than this same New 

 England. It is not at all surprising that 

 she succeeds where others might fail. 

 * * * 

 A P Sturtevant, in the article commenc- 

 ing on page 298 on the ' ' Brood Disease Vari- 

 ations," is most enlightening. I frankly 

 confess I have never been able to tell to a 

 certainty, in a small per cent of the ease^ 

 that have come under my observation 

 whether it was American or European foul 

 brood. After carefully studying his article 

 one ought to be pretty sure of his diagno- 

 sis- * , * 



A colored man is said to have been build- 

 ino- a fire with wet wood, and when called 

 away for a little he returned to find his fire 

 had gone out. He remarked with all the 

 cheerfulness of his race, "Bless cle Lor , it 

 de fire has gone out de wood is left. bo 

 we beekeepers may keep cheerful if we find 

 a few colonies in spring dead from queen- 

 lessness or other causes. We may yet be 

 thankful that the hives, combs and more or 

 less honev are left, with which to help 

 other colonies or to make new ones when 

 honey is plentiful. 



That up-to-date article by H. H. Boot on 

 extracting honey on a large scale, commenc- 

 ino- on page 302, is certainly interesting. 

 While most of us do not do business on so 

 lar<Te a scale, we may get some items of in- 

 formation that will be helpful. I was espe^ 

 cially interested in the corrugated bottom ot 

 a capping-melter. The great objection to 

 these melters has always been that the heat 

 injures the quality of the lioney. If the 

 honey could be separated from the wax as 

 soon as melted, it would help; but the honey 

 rests on the hot pan and is prevented from 

 running off quieklv by tlie wax, unless the 

 pan is hot enough to melt the wax as soon 

 as it strikes the pan. While studying this 

 problem a year ago I came to the conclusion 

 that a corrugated bottom would help mat- 

 ters I constructed a small model and found 

 it to work well. The honey and wax as soon 



1 



%J 



331 



as melted would 

 drop to tlie bot- 

 tom of the corru- 

 gations and run 

 off, while the 

 wax unmelted 

 would remain on 

 the ridge until 

 melted. I be- 

 lieve it a decided 



improvement on the flat-bottom melting pan 

 and hope it may come into general use. 

 * * » 



I am pleased to notice what J. L. Byer has 

 to say, on page 318, about the loss of a half 

 dozen colonies from queen lessness. It is the 

 order of the day to say that every hive 

 should be supplied with a young queen in 

 the late summer or early fall, that every col- 

 ony should be brought to its greatest pro- 

 ductiveness. This is possible where one has 

 a small yard of 20 to 30 or even 50 colonies, 

 but when one has 500 or 1000 colonies, scat- 

 tered through a half-dozen towns, it is not 

 an easy matter. The supreme question then 

 is, how may we secure the best or largest 

 results from the time we have to spend with 

 our bees? We often have to leave a good 

 many things for the bees to do, and the 

 superseding of queens is often one of them. 

 » * * 



On page 309, under "Sif tings," the state- 

 ment was made that little was known of 

 the value of insects in the fertilization of 

 our fruits before 25 years ago. As I had de- 

 pended upon memory, I wrote to the Agri- 

 cultural Department at Washington to know 

 the exact date when the value of insects in 

 the fertilization of our cultivated fruits was 

 discovered, and I have received a long let- 

 ter from Prof. M. B. Waite, saying that the 

 experiments that decided the question were 

 made mostly in the spring of 1892, 30 years 

 ago. I wish I had room to quote at length 

 from his interesting letter on his painstak- 

 ing experiments to discover the value and 

 even necessity of insects in the production 

 of pears and apples. Of course. their value 

 in the cross-fertilization of many plants was 

 known many years before, and a most inter- 

 esting account was given by Darwin some 



60 years ago. 



* * » 



The following is sometimes a good way 

 to take care of swarming for those who wish 

 to take their work a little easier and can 

 speild their entire time in one yard and do 

 not take the trouble to clip the queen's 

 wings: Whenever a swarm issues hive it in 

 an empty hive and set it close to the en- 

 trance of the hive from which it issued. In 

 three or four days shake it out, just at night, 

 and let it run into the hive from which it 

 came, and swarming is over for the present. 

 I treated O. O. Poppleton's yard in South 

 Florida in this way and it worked well, but 

 he used large hives and ran for extracted 

 honey. 



