1906 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



r47 



good portion of the flying bees will go back 

 to the old one; but when doing this, be care- 

 ful not to make the division in cool or chilly 

 weather. The brood left at home with two- 

 thirds of the bees in the new location would 

 be neglected and chilled, for the flying bees 

 that were moved might not return until the 

 second or third day. 



If one has an outyard he can make the 

 division just as he chooses, carrying the 

 moved bees and the brood to another loca- 

 tion one and a half or two miles away. 

 Both lots will then hold their relative strength 

 in bees. 



But whenever dividing is practiced in the 

 same yard one should always be careful to 

 take account of the flying bees that will go 

 back to the old location in 24 hours if the 

 weather is warm. If there should be very 

 few young bees in the hive at the time the 

 division was made, one would have to figure 

 that most of the bees would go back to the 

 old stand. 



Many more bees will stay in a new loca- 

 tion if the entrances of the moved lot of 

 bees be stuffed with grass so they will be 

 confined three or four days. As the grass 

 withers, the bees will push it away. The 

 confinement of several days will cause them 

 to mark their location so a much larger per- 

 centage of the flying bees will stay, although 

 even then quite a lot of them will probably 

 go back to the old stand.— Ed.] 



WHAT CAN BE EXPECTED PROM BUCKWHEAT; 

 INBREEDING. 



1. How many colonies will 60 acres of 

 buckwheat support, or how much honey can 

 be gathered from it? 



2. In using a queen for a breeder, does it 

 make any difference if her virgins are mat- 

 ed with her drones? 



3. If so, what effect does it have on the 

 progeny? 



4. In selecting a queen to breed from, is 

 it advisable to trap all of the drones from 

 the other colonies? Wm. Maag. 



Dover, Del. 



[1. It would be impossible to give an ex- 

 act answer, as very much will depend on the 

 locality, that is, soil and climate. In New 

 York, especially the eastern portion, buck- 

 wheat grows much more luxuriantly, and 

 yields much more honey per acre, than it 

 does elsewhere in the United States. We 

 may have several acres of buckwheat in 

 Ohio, and the bees will work on it only a lit- 

 tle while in the morning and a short time 

 toward night. While this is true to a cer- 

 tain extent in York State, the plants seem 

 to yield nectar longer, and consequently more 

 of it. But there is such an immense acre- 

 age of buckwheat that there are times ap- 

 parently when there are not bees enough to 

 exhaust the nectar from the flowers. 



To answer your question, it might take 

 100 acres of buckwheat to keep 25 colonies 

 going in Ohio. In New York I should guess 

 that the same acreage would take care of 50 

 or even 100 colonies. 



Mr. Alexander could possibly answer this 

 question pretty closely, as nearly all of his 

 bee range is in sight, and he could count up 

 the acreage and place that over against the 

 number of colonies in one yard. If be re- 

 gains his health sufficiently we should be 

 glad to have him take up this question. 



2. No; and on the other hand it is quite an 

 advantage to use such drones; for in order 

 to accentuate certain very desirable quali- 

 ties, inbreeding has to be practiced to a cer- 

 tain extent. To prevent deterioration, this 

 stock is then bred with other stock having 

 the same or similar characteristics. 



3. This question is already answered in 2. 



4. Yes, indeed, if you would improve the 

 quality of your stock; but in doing so you 

 must make sure that there is a sufficiency 

 of drones or many of your virgins will fail 

 to mate. In order to get regular and suc- 

 cessful mating there must be a good many 

 drones in the yard— a good many times more 

 than the number of queens to be mated. 

 There may be a large number of drones in 

 the yard, but only a few of them of the right 

 age, and possibly onljr a small part of the 

 ones of the right age in the air at the time 

 the queen is out for a flight, and she may even 

 then fail to find a mate. Sometimes it is 

 not practicable to breed from the drones of 

 some particular queen because it is difficult 

 to get that queen to lay in drone-cells; and 

 even when the queen does lay drone eggs 

 the bees themselves may be indisposed to 

 take care of them. Where many queens 

 have to be mated in a large yard it may be 

 necessary at certain seasons of the year to 

 have drones from several queens, so this is 

 a matter that hinges somewhat on the time 

 of year. Any colony will tolerate drones in 

 a good honey-flow; but after that time, un- 

 less that colony is queenless, has a virgin, or 

 is trying to supersede, the drones will be un- 

 ceremoniously pushed out of the hive and 

 die. -Ed.] 



MANIPULATING HIVES INSTEAD OF FRAMES; 

 THE ADVANTAGE OF THE HEDDON SYSTEM. 



The handling of hives instead of frames is 

 a subject that is not being discussed in the 

 bee journals of late years. I have often 

 wondered why bee-keepers were so slow to 

 see the advantages of this system. There 

 seems to be a sort of fascination about the 

 handling of frames in a hive, especially 

 among beginners. I well remember the 

 time when I thought it necessary to go 

 through my bees nearly every day, handling 

 the frames separately to see if the queen 

 was all right and that every thing was as it 

 should be. 



I soon found that this was not only a use- 

 less waste of time but a positive detriment 

 to the bees, causing them to consume an ex- 

 tra amount of stores, often at a time when 

 they could ill afford to store them. 



Some twenty years ago I adopted the 

 Heddon system of handling hives instead of 

 frames, and there has never been a time 

 since that when I have had any desire to go 



