1905 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



807' 



Bee Keepin&among the Rockies 



1^^ •'. .flL.CiREEIV 



If you are interested in raising your own 

 queens, as you ought to be, you should have 

 a copy of " Baby Nuclei," by Swarthmore. 



J. U. Hari'is, the President of the Nation- 

 al Bee-keepers' Association, is a bee-keeper 

 again, after being out of the ranks for sev- 

 eral years. 



cr 



Nearly all the surplus secured here this 

 season has been from cleome. It is a very 

 thick, heavy-bodied honey, of a deep golden 

 color, and a flavor that most call very good. 



Some of the granulated honey in paper 

 sacks that has stood on the shelves of the 

 grocers until the middle of July is still hard 

 and firm, while some has become very soft. 

 I think that that kept hardest was the first 

 to granulate, and contained a larger propor- 

 tion of alfalfa honey than that which soften- 

 ed in hot weather. 



When your smoker becomes incrusted all 

 over the inside with a thick carbonaceous 

 deposit, pour a little kerosene over it and 

 set it on fire, with the top of the smoker 

 tilted back. This will soften the deposit so 

 that it can be easily scraped off; or if you 

 wait until it has burned out it will shrink 

 into a scale that will readily come loose 

 from the tin. Some good friend told me 

 this and I pass it on. 



MORE THAN ONE LARVA IN A CELL. 



To find several eggs in a cell is a common 

 occurrence; but to find more than one larva 

 is rare, as the bees usually remove the sur- 

 plus eggs before they hatch. I have seen 

 this several times, and had a very interest- 

 ing case this summer. In a small colony 

 with an extra-good queen I found a frame of 

 brood in which a large proportion of the 

 cells contained two and three larvae about a 

 fourth grown. I wanted to watch them 

 closely; but, unfortunately, the queen was 

 accidentally killed, after which the extra 

 larvae disappeared very quickly. 



CLIPPING QUEENS' LEGS. 



Some time ago a correspondent of the 

 American Bee Journal recommended cutting 

 off a part of one of the large legs of a queen 

 in order to get queen-cells raised, alleging 

 that the bees would at once try to supersede 

 her, and that, by removing these cells be- 

 fore they hatched, the bees could be com- 

 pelled to raise other cells and thus a large 



number of fine cells be secured. I never 

 tried it that way; but I have a queen that 

 lost nearly all of one of her large legs in 

 April, 1904, by an accident in clipping. The 

 first season she did as good work as any 

 queen. She is now failing, but the bees 

 show no signs of a desire to supersede her. 



^' 



UNRIPE HONEY. 



It is interesting and encouraging to note- 

 the attitude that is being taken in regard to 

 the extracting of honey before it is properly 

 ripened. The great injury that has been; 

 done to the honey market by placing upon it 

 an inferior article is apparently recognized 

 as it never was before. It used to be taken 

 quite as a matter of course that a comb need 

 not have more than about a third of its sur- 

 face sealed when extracted. Nowadays it 

 is pretty well agreed that it is better for 

 the honey to remain on the hive for several 

 weeks; and if it is all capped over, so much 

 the better. The question, ' ' What propor- 

 tion of a comb should be sealed before it is 

 extracted?" always sounded to me very 

 much like asking, " How much poor honey 

 can you add to good honey without spoiling 

 it? " Why not leave the honey in the hive 

 until it is ripe, and have it all good? Of 

 course, under some circumstances unsealed 

 honey may be ripe; but usually a part, at 

 least, of the unsealed honey is very poor 

 stuff; and the man who puts honey on the 

 market containing much of this is not only 

 foolish but often wickedly dishonest. 



EXTRACTING HONEY FROM COLONIES WITH 

 FOUL BROOD. 



Elmer Todd, in the Bee-keepers' Review, 

 claims that it is safe to extract honey that 

 is above a queen-excluder over a colony that 

 has foul brood. While it is doubtless true 

 that a large proportion of the honey in a 

 diseased hive is not infected, I do not think 

 it would be safe to depend on any of it be- 

 ing incapable of conveying the disease. A 

 great deal of the honey stored in the super 

 has first been stored in the brood-combs, in 

 many cases at least. Indeed, I believe Doo- 

 Uttle claims that most of it has been so 

 stored. If this is the case, it will be seen 

 that any honey in the hive is liable to be in- 

 fected, no matter how clean the combs in 

 which it is finally stored. I am sorry to see 

 such things published, because most people 

 are entirely too ready to take chances with 

 foul brood, and I wish I could impress it on 

 their minds that it does not pay. There are 

 some methods of dealing with foul brood 

 that work all right in the hands of the ex- 

 pert and careful, but which leave altogeth- 

 er too many chances of spreading the dis- 

 ease when attempted by the average bee- 

 keeper. 



THE SEASON UP TO DATE. 



As I predicted in an earlier article, the 

 grasshoppers have done a great deal of dam- 

 age to the honey-producing plants of this lo- 



