724 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



June 1 



Some are very large, can sting powerfully, 

 but are not wont to use this formidable 

 weapon unless disturbed. I am sure we 

 may regard the wasps as man's good friends. 



THE WILD BEfeS. 



While the large hairy showy bumble-bees 

 and the equally large though less hairy car- 



E enter bees are social like the honey or hive 

 ee, yet most bees are solitary. In habits 

 they remind us of the wasps, but they feed 

 their larvae, which, like most larval hymen- 

 opterns, are quite helpless, wholly on pol- 

 len, while wasps feed their young on other 

 insects. The benefit to man from bees as 

 pollinators of flowers is beyond computation. 

 Our valuable red clover would seed not at 

 all except for cross-pollination wrought by 

 bumble-bees. 

 Berlin, Prussia. 



3r J. A .Orkem 



LOOK OUT FOR EARLY SWARMS. 



There is cleome on the desert this year. 

 This means that the bees that have access 

 to it, if they were not too weak on the start, 

 will swarm early and often. 

 j^ 



SWEET CLOVER. 



For several days I have been staking our 

 cow out in the alfalfa pasture in order to 

 give her a little green food. It would hard- 

 ly be safe, you know, to let her run loose 

 and eat her fill. Yesterday I tied her to 

 the fence. There is a sprinkling of sweet 

 clover all along this edge of the field. What 

 did the misguided creature do but pick out 

 and devour every stalk of sweet clover with- 

 in reach before she would touch any of the 

 alfalfa! Surely she ought to have known 

 better! Those who hold that sweet clover 

 is not a fit food for stock are invited to la- 

 bor with her and convince her of the error 

 of her ways. 



EXPERIMENTS. 



Doubtless you have in mind some experi- 

 ments you would like to make in order to 

 test some theory you have formed or heard 

 of. This is right. It is by such experi- 

 ments, by theory put into practice, that we 

 can gain the most accurate knowledge. 

 Along with this goes the knowledge that is 

 gained by the observation of conditions that 

 arise without pre-arfangement. But do not 

 make the mistake of supposing that experi- 

 ments or observations that are confined to 

 only two or three colonies are of any great 

 value. Conditions in bee-keeping vary too 



much for that. We often hear of experi- 

 ments that have been made by selecting two 

 colonies of apparently the same strength, 

 and assuming that the different results 

 reached are due to the different conditions 

 under which they have been placed. But if 

 you take two colonies apparently exactly 

 alike, and keep them under conditions as ex- 

 actly alike as possible, there will often be a 

 wide difference in results. To make an ex- 

 periment of any value, it should be tried on 

 a number of colonies, say on a row clear 

 through the apiary, excluding any that are 

 plainly much above or below the average. 

 Then, to make it really conclusive, it should 

 be repeated for several seasons. 



CLEOME LUTENS. 



On page 438 a subscriber inquires what 

 kind of cleome we have that blooms in June. 

 This is the yellow cleome, Cleome lutens, 

 which begins to bloom here about the last 

 of April. Unlike the purple cleome, which 

 grows mostly in the creek bottoms and up- 

 per mountain valleys, seeming to prefer a 

 cool and well-watered location the yellow 

 variety is seldom found anywhere except in 

 the desert or uncultivated lands of the 

 warmer valleys. Unless there has been a 

 great deal of rain or snow during the win- 

 ter or early spring, the seed does not ger- 

 minate at all but lies dormant in the soil, 

 waiting for favorable conditions, and some- 

 times there will be but little or none of it for 

 several years. But when there has been 

 enough rain or snow so that the soil is stored 

 with a sufficient amount of moisture it 

 springs up so thickly that sometimes for 

 miles the desert looks as though it were 

 covered with a carpet of gold. In places 

 where the soil does not dry out easily, or 

 where it receives water from irrigation, it 

 may grow to a height of two feet or more, 

 and bloom nearly all summer. Ordinarily, 

 unless there are frequent rains it gets to be 

 only twelve to eighteen inches high, and 

 dies in two or three weeks after it begins to 

 bloom. As the blossoms open in succession 

 it may remain in bloom a long time if it does 

 not dry out, and under favorable conditions 

 it may yield a great deal of honey. Last 

 year a small apiary that I moved to the cle- 

 ome- fields averaged nearly a super of honey 

 to the colony, while those in the alfalfa and 

 sweet- clover districts gave little or no sur- 

 plus. The honey is rather dark colored, but 

 the flavor is pronounced good by most peo- 

 ple. The greatest value of cleome lies in 

 the fact that it fills in the gap between 

 fruit- blossoms and alfalfa, thus stimulating 

 brood-rearing to the utmost, and getting 

 the bees into fine condition for the harvest 

 of white honey. 



STARTERS IN BROOD-FRAMES. 



A very common way of using foundation 

 here is to use a strip about three inches 

 wide. Swarms are hived on these and they 

 are used wherever a comb is to be built. 



