1904. 



rHE AMERICAN BEE-KEEPEU. 



91 



the high Sierras, suow-clad summer 

 and winter, the batUe ground of the 

 primeval elements ever since the ice 

 age retreated polevi^ard. Snow Irwenty 

 to eighty feet deep. Canons leveled 

 brimful overnight, whole towns laid 

 away in nature's own funeral shroud 

 till spring and resurrection. They say 

 that apiculture up there, or along the 

 higher slopes, is wonderfully produc- 

 tive, that tile honey flow lasts all sum- 

 mer through, and is as certain as nat- 

 ural law. But bees cannot live there 

 in winter, with forty feet of snow 

 piled on top of them, or exposed to the 

 terrific blasts of the -winter storms. A 

 few venturesome men move apiaries 

 up from the foothills most every spring 

 or early summer, and return in the 

 fall loaded to the guards with honey, 

 wax and increase. But moving api- 

 aries hundreds of miles every year is 

 not everybody's business, and they 

 say that there ^ is yet considerable 

 room up in the California Alps for api- 

 arists of the strenuous type. 



On the whole then, the prospects for 

 a crop of honey are rather good at 

 present in this State. 



ONE FOR DICKEL. 

 At the first spring overhauling of 

 my apiary, about six weeks ago, 1 

 came to a colony that had become 

 queenless for some reason or other. 

 Ordinarily it is best to unite such a 

 one with another queenright colony. 

 But this was pretty strong, able to 

 raise a queen and make honey besides, 

 when the time would come. So they 

 were given a frame of brood and shut 

 up — and forgotten. On examination 

 a little less than three weelvs later a 

 young virgin was found, a lot of de- 

 stroyed queen cells, all the rest of the 

 brood either hatched or capped over, 

 but near the center o fthe comb a 

 worker cell — just one — was sealed over 

 round, raised up. There was a drone 

 in that cell without the least doubt. 

 There was no intention at that time 

 of testing the Dickel theory; it flashed 

 into my mind only when I looked at 

 tliat raised cell. They say that mira- 

 cles do not happen any more; that is: 

 because the beholder's eyes are veiled. 

 That incomprehensible, eccentric, ut- 

 most methodical busybody, the worl^er 

 bee, able to convert an ordinary bee 

 egg into either a perfect male, a per- 

 fect female, or a sexless worker, as it 



sees fit, — isn't that a miracle of the 

 very first order? Does that happen 

 again in the whole wide domain of 

 nature? 



Weissman has been reported as de- 

 nying the correctness of the Dickel 

 theory. Weissman is an authority on 

 biology, ranking very high. I wonder 

 what he would make of that little 

 round-capped cell of mine out in Pig- 

 eon Pass Canon. As I now remember, 

 this same thing has happened to n:i 

 before, but I never knew its meaning 

 or importance. 

 REFUSE BEET SUGAR FOR BEES. 



There was mailed to me by a near- 

 by sugar mill a circular advising me 

 to buy some of their lumpy leftover 

 beet sugar for bee feed. There .s, of 

 course, nothing unusual in that. But 

 at the bottom of the leaflet there ap- 

 pears an indorsement, signed by H. 

 J. Mercer, secretary California N. H. 

 P. A., recommending said lumpy beet 

 sugar as being healthier as well as 

 cheaper to feed than honey, with no 

 danger of foul brood from its use, at 

 which this humble scril^e has wonder- 

 ed a gi'eat deal. "Healtliier" than 

 honey, the bees' very own special food, 

 lumpy beet sugar? If sugar is health- 

 ier than honey, honey must be lens 

 healthy than sugar. The only thing 

 that would or could make honey less 

 healthy than sugar is the possibility of 

 its carrying the spores of the foul 

 brood disease. Mr. Mercer does not 

 say why. But he later on expressly 

 mentions sugar as dangerless with re- 

 gard to foul brood, thus leaving the 

 impression behind that the iloney in 

 the marlvet is veiy likely largely foul- 

 brood-spore infected goods, and hence 

 not good for bee feed, nor, by impli- 

 cation, for man food, either. But foul- 

 broody colonies are not productive, and 

 therefore furnish no honey for the 

 market, and this Mr. ]\Iercer must 

 know. "No danger of foul bi-ood from 

 its use" — directly, no, but indirectly, 

 sugar may become a very strong fac- 

 tor in the taking of the disease. In 

 years gone by Europeans practiced ex- 

 tracting honev to the last dron. and 

 feeding up with sugar instead. Honey 

 sold ff)r twice the price of sugar, thus 

 making that .svstem of robbery seem 

 a proifital)le one. But close observers 

 found that sugar-fed colonics soon 

 lacked the vim and Vigor of those fed 

 on honey, and that they, moreover, 



