December, 1909. 



411 



American Hee Journal 



should prefer a plan to keep them at home 

 during the early breeding season rather than 

 encourage them to fly except for business. 



In 1878 the season was considered very 

 unfavorable, as the bees had only about oric 

 tiight in a week; but at that time mine had 

 plenty of honey, which was rapidly changed 

 into btood. It proved to b; a very favorable 

 season for early breeding. 



The bees that remained at home reared 

 brood, and were not induced to fly out and 

 die. Right in this connection allow me to 

 call attention to old box-hives unstimulated, 

 undisturbed, but with a good queen and plenty 

 of stores — they outstrip our stimulated colonies 

 every time. Their ambition at this time is to 

 convert as much honey into brood as possible; 

 and any man who thinks he can help them 

 at that time of year by spreading their brood, 

 etc., is making a great mistake. 



Buclnvheat Profitable. 



H. B. Harrington, who has had 40 

 years experience in raising buckwheat, 

 esteems it highly as a honey-plant "from 

 the middle of July, when basswood and 

 clover are past, up to the middle of 

 September, when the fall bloom of wild 

 flowers commences." He says in Glean- 

 ings : 



Very hot weather will sometimes blight it 

 if you sow too early, and early frosts de- 

 stroy if you sow too late in the season ; so 

 you see you have a seed time from the 20th 

 of June to August 1; and we one? harvested 

 over 40 bushels of very fine buckwheat per 

 acre from a crop drilled on the 4th of August; 

 but we used over 300 pounds of first-class 

 blood-and-bone phosphate per acre. 



Now to bee-keepers whe want the crop for 

 honey. Plant the crop at three different times 

 to prolong the honey-fiow, and you will be 

 sure to hit the lucky time for a good field 

 of grain. Buckwheat, on an average, will oc- 

 cupy the land about 60 days. It will com- 

 mence to yield honey in 3 5 or 20 days from 

 the time it is planted, and take about 10 

 days to mature after the honey-flow ceases. 



Sow the first crop on the 20th of June; 

 the second crop on the 4th of July, and the 

 third on the 18th of July. We pick the 18th 

 because the best crop we ever raised was sown 

 on that day. 



Buckwheat is the greatest weed exterminator 

 that a farmer can use. Plow in June and till 

 well, and two crops will exterminate and clear 

 any fild of Canada thistles. 



Bees and Honey in Mindanao 



Dr. V. D. Clum, of Cheviot, N. Y., 

 who has a son in the Philippine Islands, 

 has kindly sent us the following article 

 on "Bees and Honey in Mindanao," writ- 

 ten by Willis Lynch, and taken from 

 the Mindanao Herald, published at Zam- 

 boanga, P. I. : 



There are two distinct classes of native wild 

 honev-bees (Apis Indica and Apis Zonata), in 

 Mindanao, in addition to the Italian bees re- 

 cently introduced from Australia. 



Apis Indica, or "Mee Mesa" as it is called 

 in Indica, is a small, yellow hive-bee about 

 onehalf the size of the Italian bee. It is found 

 throughout the entire tropical Orient. It 

 builds its combs in hollow trees and sometimes 

 stores several pounds of excellent honey. They 

 are very nervous bees, very much inclined to 

 swarm, and also to sting if disturbed, yet they 

 are industrious. They protect themselves well 

 from ants and other enemies, and as they can 

 he very easily domesticated, it is probable that 

 thev can be bred up. 



When we consider the treatment that the na- 

 tive bees have received for countless ages from 

 the native it is strange that they have any 

 good traits left. 



Apis zonata is a very large variety of honey- 

 bee, with fine white bands across the upper 

 part of the abdomen, ibis bee is found only 

 in the Philippines. Its cousin. Apis Dorsata, 

 is found in Borneo and Southern Asia and is 

 much smaller, besides 'possessing several other 

 traits that make it an inferior bee to the Phil- 

 ippine variety. 



Apis zonata, or the large Philippine bee, 

 builds on the outside of the tree instead of 

 the inside as the other »ees do, usually on the 

 tmdcr side of a slanting tree or branch. They 

 are not migratory as the Borneo and Indian 

 bees are, nor do they always select high trees 



to avoid honey-bears as their Borneo cousins 

 have to do. They frequently store several 

 pounds of good honey, yet they are greater 

 wax-producers. 



They are exceedingly vicious when disturbed, 

 often following their disturbers for several 

 minutes. 



This bee is probably the largest and also the 

 strongest of the entire honey-bee family. Its 

 wing power is about double that of the Italian 

 bee, while it lives several times as long, and a 

 sting or two from it will cause a person to 

 see stars in broad daylight. 



Their combs sometimes attain 4 or 5 feet 

 in diameter, and are entirely covered with a 

 thick mass of bees arranged as the shingles 

 are on the roof of a house, their wings point- 

 ing downward. 



This bee is a true Filipino, that is, it sleeps 

 during the hottest part of the day and also on 

 dark nights, though it works very diligently 

 during the early morning and the evening 

 hours, while on moonlight nights it frequently 

 works all night. It is doubtless the only honey- 

 bee that is partially nocturnal. 



All atempts to domesticate this bee have 

 thus far failed. The bees will not remain long 

 in a box or hive if placed theje. Italian bees 

 will accept a small amount of the sealed brood 

 or young bees of the Apis Zonata and care 

 for them, but if large amounts of this brood 

 are given the Italian bees they will kill off 

 the voung ones as soon as they hatch, to keep 

 the young savages from eating up the prepared 

 food of the young Italian bees. It is very 

 probable that this large bee will be domesti- 

 cated in the near future. 



The Italian bees recently imported have done 

 remarkablv well on Basilan. fully as well as 

 thev would have done in California or any 

 othf'r first*class bee-country. 



Mindanao has not the stronglv marked wet 

 and dry seasons that are found in otherparts, 

 and for that reason has almost a continuous 

 flora of one kind or another; and particularly 

 is this true where rubber, cocoanuts and ba- 

 nanas are planted. In addition to the last- 

 named honey-plants there are large forest- 

 blooming trees that produce an abundance of 

 honey at several intervals during the year. 



No country offers more favorable prospects 

 to the practical bee-keeper, the man who keeps 

 a few bees to produce his own honey, or the 

 scientific student of bcc-culturc, than Southern 

 Mindanao does. 



C*oncleii.satioii ol' Neotar 



By what means is the watery nectar 

 that !)ees uet from the flowers reduced 

 to the ricli consistency of ripe honey? 

 Years ago A. I. Root recorded that he 

 saw the home-coming bees ejecting 

 minute drops of water as they ap- 

 proached the Iiive. Dr. K. Bniennich. 

 in Gleanings, confirms this view, and 

 gives his conclusions in the following 

 words : 



"The thickening of nectar into ripe honey 

 is not a matter of evaporation, but resnlts 

 from the ability of the honey-sac of the bcc 

 to withdraw a part of the water. Rv the 

 transferrintf of the honey in the hive it loses 

 by degrees its superfluous water, and is. at 

 the same time, inverted and enriched with 

 formic acid and albumen." 



Value of Bee.s to Fruit, Kto. 



C. G. Chevalier, of Baltimore, clipped 

 the following from the Baltimore 

 American, which, although not new, is 

 of general interest, having been writ- 

 ted by a London reporter: 



The busy bee. despite the precautions 

 which fruit-growers take to keep it away 

 from their fruit, and despite tli^ unreasoning 

 anger of the people whom it stings, is a mis- 

 judti^ed insect. In fact, it is a philanthropist, 

 cleverly disguised. Mr. Walter F. Reid. vice- 

 chairman of the British Bee-Keepers' Asso- 

 ciation, explained in a lecture at the Royal 

 Horticultural Hall yesterday. 



He told of the elaborate precautions he 

 h;ul taken to keep bees from his fruit. He 

 covered a gooseberry bush withmusiin. The 

 result was there were no bees, and prac- 

 tically st>eaking. there was no fruit. At 

 least, the bush yielded only 6 berries, while 

 two neighboring bushes which were uncov- 

 ered bore i=;r and 167 respectively. A fruit- 

 grower, he added, who saw that bees were 

 not so bad as they had been painted, actually 



encouraged them to visit his fruit. He placed 

 hives of bees among the trees with the re- 

 sult that his crop increased fourfold. 



The reason. Mr. Reid declared, was that 

 the bees, passing from one plant to another, 

 distributed pollen which fertilized the blos- 

 som. " It is estimated," he said. " that one 

 maize plant would produce 50.000.000 grains 

 of pollen, and in the course of a single jour- 

 ney a bee w-ould visit several thousands of 

 blossoms." 



Another point in the bees' favor mentioned 

 by Mr. Reid. was that when people were 

 stung by bees once or twice they became 

 immune from bee poison and also other 

 poison. Sir Albert Rollit said that this the- 

 ory probably gave rise to the belief that bee- 

 sting was a remedy for rheumatism, which 

 was. after all, only a kind of poisoning. 



Triple Crop for Bees 



A. I. Root, in Gleanings in Bee Cul- 

 ■ture, says : 



In our locality we have never failed with 

 crimson clover when put on good ground iu 

 .August. It always stands wintering. Now. 

 by using crimson clover, rape, and turnip, 

 ail three, we should have three chances for 

 lionoy. and it is hardly likely that all of 

 them would fail. All three are valuable for 

 feed for all kinds of stock, and they are 

 spendid for turning under to enrich the soil. 



The turnip recommended is cowhorn 

 or seven-top. 



Not a Blooming Bee-Hive 



E. Brubaker, of Philadelphia, has 

 sent in the following on " honey," from 

 the Philadelphia Bulletin, which he 

 thought might be interesting to our 

 readers : 



"That was an error." said Senator Bev- 

 eridge. apropos of an opponent's argument, 

 at a dinner in Indianapolis. "Our friend 

 made an embarrassing error. He reminds 

 me of John Winslow. 



"John Winslow spent his honeymoon at 

 Niagara. He left the bridal apartment late 

 one night to bathe, and on his return knock- 

 ed, as he supposed, on his wife's door, call- 

 ing softly: 

 Honey!" 



"There was no answer. Winslow knocked 

 again. 



'*' Honey!' 



"Still no answer. Winslow thundered on 

 the door. 



" ' Honey!" he cried, in a voice of agony. 



"Then a reply came at last. 



" * Sneak, you blooming idiot!' a male voice 

 growJcd. "Ihis is a bedroom, not a bloom- 

 ing bee-hive!" '" 



Clay to Stop Cracks 



The best tiling that we have ever found 

 for stopiiing ui) cracks with wJien using es- 

 cape boards, is good stiff clay, the kind that 

 is real sticky when wet. We take a good 

 sized piece and wet it and mix and work it 

 with our hands until we make a sort of 

 dough of it. then every time we put the es- 

 cape-boards down, we go over all the supers 

 above the escape-boards very carcjully, all 

 the way around the top of the super, under 

 the cover, all the way around the bottom 

 where it sets on the escape-board, we look 

 all the corners over; in fact, every seam and 

 crack about it. and plaster up every place 

 that a bee could possibly squeeze through. 



'I'lie bees will not touch it when it is wet 

 and sticky, and when it dries it is so hard 

 they rtw/'/dig it out.— Ei.mkk Hutchinson in 

 Bee-Keepers" Review. 



Splints for Extracting-Combs 



H. E. Crowtlicrs, in Gleanings, gives 

 the following emphatic testimony to 

 the value of the Miller splints: 



The use of splints with foundation is a big 

 advantage, right at this time, in stiffening 

 the combs at tlieir weakest point, wliich is 

 two inches below the top-bar. We used 

 some in several different ways last year, and 

 will use them on all full sheets this year 

 witli two wires and four si)liuts about s 

 inches long for I.angstroth frames. Of 

 course, the main advantage iu their use is 

 in the prevention of sag in tlie foundation. 



