1905 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



645 



tect the fraud, if there were any such, Mr. 

 E. E. Hasty, in the Ame7'ican Bee Journal, 

 in view of the fact that ceresin foundation 

 is sold in Europe, suggests that the reason 

 why paraffine and ceresin foundation can 

 be sold across the water and not in America 

 is due to the difference in climate. He says 

 that, with our extremes of temperature, im- 

 pure foundation would be sure to melt down; 

 while in cool climates without our extremes 

 the breakdown is only occasional — not fre- 

 quent enough to stop the use of the article. 

 Some years ago A. I. Root tested ceresin 

 and paraffine foundation, and in every case 

 the results were but a little short of the 

 disastrous. The first hot day resulted in all 

 the combs built from that article melting 

 down in one shapeless mass, destroying 

 brood, drowning bees, and the honey escap- 

 ing from the entrance. Other experiments 

 were tried by others at about the same 

 time, with precisely the same results, and 

 these seem to have been enough to satisfy 

 American bee-keepers for all time that the 

 only article that can enter into foundation 

 at all is pure beeswax, the piirest of the 

 pure. 



THE SIBBALD AND SHAKE PLAN OF SWARM 

 CONTROL TESTED AT MEDINA. 



I HAVE been testing both the brush and 

 shake-swarm methods as well as the Sibbald 

 plan of keeping down swarming. I find this 

 to be true: That the returning-bee scheme 

 is a little slow, while the shake plan gets 

 immediate results. Still I can see conditions 

 under which the Sibbald would be perfectly 

 satisfactory, and save the bother and nui- 

 sance of stirring up a whole colony of bees, 

 and getting them in the grass and up one's 

 trowsers legs, resulting in more or less 

 stings and inconvenience. In the generality 

 of cases I have found it more convenient to 

 use a combination of both methods. 



I tried the Sibbald plan without a frame 

 of brood, in some cases using only founda- 

 tion, but in most cases the bees would find 

 the old entrance, even when I carried it 

 away several feet. Mr. Sibbald makes it 

 emphatic that the new hive on the old stand 

 must have one frame of brood and the queen, 

 and I believe he is right. But even then I 

 noticed the bees were loath to go into the 

 new hive, though it was exactly in the old 

 location. The changed condition of the 

 brood-nest seemed to indicate to the incom- 

 ing bees that they had made a mistake, and 

 they would hang around on the outside until 

 they found the old entrance, two or three 

 feet to one side. 



In the case of dark hybrids I had no end 

 of trouble, for, be it understood, we had one 

 yard made up of bees which we had bought 

 from several different farmers. The black 

 strains would find their entrance, in spite of 

 me. Indeed, it is a well-known fact that 

 black bees will find their hive much more 

 readily than the Itahans, and this one fact 

 will make this race and their crosses difficult 

 to handle on the Sibbald plan. My present 

 impression is that the average bee-keeper 



will succeed better on the brush- swarming 

 plan pure and simple, then carry the old 

 hive to an entirely diff'erent portion of the 

 apiary; but even then it is essential to put 

 the queen with the shaken or brushed bees; 

 for in some cases I found that, without the 

 queen, especially if no brood were given, the 

 bees would desert, going into the other 

 hives here and there. 



I got into one mess by shaking about a 

 dozen colonies all near together. There was 

 a general mix-up. Some of the hives se- 

 cured most of the bees, while others were 

 entirely deserted; but in every case where I 

 gave a queen with a frame of brood just 

 long enough for the bees to get used to the 

 new conditions at the old stand they stayed 

 nicely and went to work. 



THE HONEY-CROP PROSPECTS FOR 1905. 



There has been an unusual amount of 

 rainy and chilly weather everywhere. All 

 through the Northern States in the clover 

 and basswood belt the season has been very 

 backward. But the weather has apparently 

 changed for the better just in the nick of 

 time. There is an unusual amount of red, 

 white, and alsike clover this season. In our 

 locality I never saw such heavy mattings of 

 it. The fields are fairly white. The bees 

 that have been on the verge of starvation 

 are now just beginning to bring in honey. 

 But the nights have been a little too cool to 

 insure a good secretion ready for the bees 

 in the morning. As the atmosphere warms 

 up the bees begin to get in their work. 



Desiring to get the very latest informa- 

 tion from two or three of the great honey- 

 producing centers of the United States, I 

 wrote to the managers of two honey associ- 

 ations and one representative bee-keeper, 

 requesting them to wire us on the 12th re- 

 garding the honey-crop conditions up to that 

 date, and the prospects. The following tel- 

 egram from Mr. H. J. Mercer, Manager of 

 the California Honey-producers' Association, 

 of Southern California, speaks for itself: 



Sixty per cent of bees died; continuous cold cloudy 

 weather has greatly reduced crop. I estimate total crop 

 100 cars, mostly extracted. H. J. Merger, 



June 13. Mgr. Cal. Honey-producers' Ass'n. 



As Southern California has a capacity of 

 500 carloads or more in a good year, the 100 

 cars estimated will probably be somewheie 

 about a fourth of a crop. Northern Cali- 

 fornia will probably produce its usual amount 

 of honey. Taking it all in all, California 

 may be able to produce 200 carloads. This 

 amount will not be enough to affect materi- 

 ally the prices of Eastern honey, because 

 not a large portion of it probably will find 

 its way to the Eastern markets. 



Mr. Udo Toepperwein, who is in touch 

 with nearly every portion of Texas by rea- 

 son of his business connections with the bee- 

 keepers' of that State, wires us as follows: 



Too much rain this spring. Horsemint crop only 

 fair. Mesquites budding. Fair crop expected from 

 mesquite flow soon. Udo Toepperwein. 



San Antonio. Texas. 



If this indicates any thing, it shows that 

 the season has been backward, but it does 



