1906 



GLEAN IXGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



£03 



honey has been sold a few times by weight, 

 and has reached the hands of the retailer, it 

 assumes the nature of a ready- weighed pack- 

 age, and is sold by the piece to the satisfac- 

 tion of all concerned. A great deal more 

 could be said on this subject, but I will add 

 only one more thought. 



The neat and attractive appearance of our 

 sections is held responsible for spreading the 

 "Wiley lie," and, consequently, for the de- 

 pression of the comb- honey market. Possi- 

 bly there may be some truth in this asser- 

 tion. What actual share of this crime our 

 little sections are guilty of, I can not say. 

 I have no facts to prove any thing positive- 

 ly; but whatever it may be, it scores one in 

 their favor so far as I am concerned individ- 

 ually. The Wiley pleasantry does not hurt 

 my trade in the least; on the contrary, 

 whenever I am confronted with that artifi- 

 cial-comb-honey trash I am almost always 

 sure of making sales. It is the best intro- 

 duction I can wish for. It opens the way 

 for a bee- talk; and whenever I can get peo- 

 ple interested enough to draw them into a 

 conversation on bees and honey I have gen- 

 erally secured permanent customers. I may 

 not always succeed in convincing them that 

 comb honey can not be manufactured, but it 

 does not take me a great while to prove to 

 their satisfaction that my honey is the real 

 bee product. 



La Salle, N. Y. 



BEES FOR THE HONEY-FLOW. 



How to Have Strong Colonies when They are 

 Needed. 



BY R. F. HOLTERMANN. 



The ranchman in the far West sometimes 

 experiences a winter of such a nature that 

 much of his stock dies, and spring and sum- 

 mer come with large areas of abundant pas- 

 ture but little or no stock to gather in the 

 grass, assimilate, and turn into beef. Not 

 only is the pasture needed, but the stock. 

 So it is with the bee-keeper. Bad wintering 

 and unfavorable conditions for building up 

 the hive are powerful factors in reducing 

 the honey crop and therefore increasing the 

 cost of producing that crop. When I was a 

 boy on the farm in the backwoods of Ren- 

 frew County, Ontario, I remember the early 

 settlers, when short of hay or straw, used 

 to feed the cattle brush— " browse " them. 

 Toward spring, perhaps some died; others 

 could not get on their feet, and had to be 

 helped up; and while there was not much 

 beef on them, lots of material for broth ap- 

 peared to be in plain sight. This was 35 

 years ago. Times have changed in dairying 

 and stock-raising since then. A f armt r car- 

 rying on his business in that way could not 

 survive long. Bee-keeping is still conducted 

 on this principle by many. Stocks perish. 

 or are so weak in the spring they take all 

 the best part of the summer to build up, 

 through improper conditions of hive or sur- 

 roundings, that they give no return r a very 



small percentage of what they ought to give, 

 and the bee-keeper does not get the profit 

 he should. In this article the object is to 

 take up 



SPRING MANAGEMENT. 



As I see it, large hives and the prevention 

 of swarming give us more uniform colonies 

 to go into winter quarters, and should give 

 us more uniform colonies to come out. Thtn 

 plenty of stores should be provided the au- 

 tumn before. No matter what our opinion 

 may be about spring stimulative feeding, 

 we are, upon reflection, agreed, however 

 little we may carry it out, that bees should 

 be provided, not only with plenty of stores 

 for winter or the season of non- production, 

 but to give bees unstinted stores for brood- 

 rearing during the spring, and to tide over 

 the time when brood is reared but insuffi- 

 cient stores gathered. A good stock of bees, 

 of proper variety and plenty of stores in a 

 sheltered place, can do wonders in the way 

 of increasing, even if left alone at this sea- 

 son. In fact, any one not skillful had bet- 

 ter leave them alone. They may easily do 

 more harm than goad. 



By "proper variety of bees" I mean a 

 variety of bees that will rear brood in the 

 spring, and carry the rearing of brood 

 through gaps when there is nothing to stim- 

 ulate them; more than that, bees that will 

 feed the larvae properly at such times. In 

 this respect there is an immense difference 

 in bees. In my estim.ation, laying aside the 

 Cyprian and Holy Land bees, which have 

 too many other objectionable features, Car- 

 niolan bees have a grand propensity in this 

 direction, and for several years I have found 

 bees 25 per cent Carniolan, and the rest 

 Italian blood, very satisfactory. Careful 

 observation with many stocks and varieties 

 of bees show us an immense difference in the 

 way bees treat brood. In times of activity 

 some queens will deposit eggs, and the bees 

 feed the larvse; adverse circumstances step 

 in, such as cold, non-pollen and non-nectar 

 gathering, extracting the loose honey in the 

 supers after a flow, and the bees destroy 

 the eggs and young brood. Others feed the 

 larvae in a very indifferent way, and no doubt 

 bees thus fed, like any other stock indiffer- 

 ently nourished, will not do as good work, 

 will resist less cold winds, may carry a small 

 er load, live a shorter time, and be inferior 

 all through. Bees of the above kind, occa- 

 sionally stimulative fed, with could weather 

 between, may and are likely to be worse off 

 than if not fed at all. The vitality of the 

 old bees is exhausted more rapidly than if 

 left alone; and in extremely unfavorable 

 weather, which, of course, rarely occurs, 

 the bees lose or partially lose much imma- 

 ture brood and eggs. 



There may be strains of Italian bees which 

 can be made to do this equal to Carniolans. 

 I do not know. Seeing the value of keeping 

 fixed types in breeding I should like to keep 

 varieties in their purity; but my ground is 

 much like Dr. Miller's. If we can not get 

 this in one variety, fhen mix. 



Stimulative feeding is practiced much in 



