THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



25 



ber of a bee-keepers' association, at- 

 tends tlie meetings, reads books and 

 papers an apicultnre, and observes 

 iiow masters in tlie business manage 

 tlieir bees. Very soon lie tliinks lie 

 knows it all, and is ready to prove it. 

 He lias yet some colonies in box hives, 

 which are no ornament in his apiary; 

 these must be transferred; he had 

 read in a bee book that that may be 

 done at any time in the year, provi- 

 ded it is warm enough for the bees to 

 fly. So he goes to work at tlie end of 

 April or in May and transfers; how 

 he cuts and slashes ; it is fun to look 

 ■on; by much patching and propping he 

 manages to till 5 or 6 frames; the re- 

 mainder of the old comb does not lit 

 unywhere; especially those having 

 hoiiey are too thick. After a few 

 days the weather turns cold, brood 

 gets chilled, not being put compactly 

 in the frames and convenient enough 

 for the bees tocover; storesare scanty, 

 forage not yet very plenty; result — 

 weak or starving colonies. 



8uiipose. Mr Roe has avoided all 

 this; he has managed to winter his 

 bees without the loss of one colony. 

 He will henceforth consider himself 

 41 master, because he has read some- 

 where, that only a master is able to 

 ■winter bees without loss. Spring 

 looks very propitious; his colones 

 liave used very little of their stores; 

 they are full of bees and brood, aiul 

 everything looks well. JJiit, all of a 

 sudden, the weather turns cold and 

 remains so for some time; the stores 

 of the colonies are exhausted in 

 double-quick time, and starvation and 

 death tlireatens his bees. He would 

 like to give them full frames of capped 

 honey, but has none; his honey was 

 sold in the fall, hence he will buy to 

 feed, and he may consider himself 

 lucky, if he is able to obtain pure 

 honey or Mrst class white sugar; but 

 woe unto his bees if he thinks any- 

 thing will do, if it is only sweet, stuil- 

 ing his bees with poor syrup, sugar or 

 glucose, or spoiled infected honey, 

 forgetting all about dysentery and 

 foul brood. 



All this being the consequence 

 ■of avarice which made him sell his 

 last drop of honey, probably extract- 

 ing ill the fall iuore than the bees 

 could spare instead of saving some in 

 ■case of emergency. ]5ut next year 

 Mr. Roe will manage things different- 

 ly. He now feeds his bees, whether 

 they are in need of it or not; besides 

 he had read about stimulative feeding, 

 and wants to push his colonies now 

 in that way; his colonies get diseased 

 with dysentery, and commence to rob. 

 He does not feed in time, is careless 

 in doing it, and uses no judgment in 

 ^general. Beside these he makes 

 many other mistakes. He bothers 

 with weak, queenless colonies, im- 

 ports or buys costly queens from Italy. 

 Egypt, Syria, Carniola, etc. His 

 night's rest is even disturbed by 

 ■dreaming of that big Apis dorsatu. 



But, we will cover all these short- 

 comings with the cloak of brotherly 

 ■charity, and see how he manages his 

 bees tlirough the summer. We find 

 him in the apiary, extracting. He 

 looks rather pleased, for his pets have 

 •been very industrious. Everything is 



full and crowded. He must extract, 

 put on sections and remove those 

 finished. But, on closer observation, 

 we notice that he works too hasty. 

 Now, this section does not fit; that 

 honey-board does not suit; he has 

 mislaid his knife; cannot find another 

 instrument he wants; the bees he 

 shakes ofE in front of the hive, which 

 may incur the lo.ss of a queen; he can- 

 not immediately replace full frames 

 by empty ones, because the worms 

 aiid moths have ruined tliem; he 

 throws out some of the uncapped 

 brood into the extracted honey; his 

 extractor is a miserable clap-trap 

 alfair; in short, he lacks order and 

 neatness. Such are peccadillos of a 

 would-be bee-master in summer. 



But what about fall management? 

 Will he improve upon his former mis- 

 takes. It has l)een a poor honey year, 

 but he has had lots of swarms. How 

 does he act now V Very dilatory in- 

 deed. He did not feed his light colo- 

 nies early in Seiitember; little of the 

 stores consist of capped honey; colo- 

 nies rob one another without the least 

 anxiety on his part. To our expostu- 

 lations he answers: "Oh. well, one 

 cannot be so very particular; if I do 

 lose one colony, that does not make 

 much difference; I will unite some; 

 others I intend to bury and a few I 

 will put into the cellar; I hope to get 

 along nicely, and there is time enough 

 to do all this yet." 



We are rather surprised at his an- 

 swer, but have resolved to let him 

 alone. But winter sets in early and 

 his preparations are not yet finished; 

 whether or not his cellar and ditches 

 are fit to put bees in has not entered 

 his mind. Next spring, when he puts 

 his bees on their summer stand, he 

 finds dead bees by the quart, some of 

 them molded and decayed, suffocated, 

 drowned and starved. Still, he is 

 contented, because others fared no 

 better and yon cannot winter bees 

 witliout having some dead ones in 

 spring ! Poor consolation ! 



A few more points which I shall 

 mention before I close. Instead of 

 leaving costly experiments to masters, 

 some, who have not the time nor 

 money nor knowledge, engage in ex- 

 travagances. They have read about 

 giant colonies. American honey-racks, 

 artificial fertilization, etc., etc., and 

 our friend Roe goes to work with a 

 vengeance, tries everything new, 

 spends and loses time and money to 

 find in tlie end, that he paid too dear 

 for his whistle. 



Tliirul Xc'W Vorker. 



Pollen in the Hive in Winter. 



PIIOF. A. J. COOK. 



In articles written for other jour- 

 nals, and in my " Manual of the 

 Apiary," I have stated that the old 

 bee could live for long periods without 

 pollen. As honey. however, is a liydro- 

 carbon, and so contains no nitrogen, 

 it is to be presumed that the old bees 

 need and do eat some pollen during 

 the active season, to supply the waste 

 of tissue, consequent upon all pliysi- 

 cal activity. 



I have further stated that pollen 

 was an indispensable requisite to 

 brood-rearing; that it is an essential 

 element in the food of the larval bees. 

 As a scholium under this last proposi- 

 tion, I have expressed the opinion 

 that in some conditions the presence 

 of pollen in the liive in winter is a 

 positive injury, and that in all cases 

 it is unnecessary. But I would re- 

 mark, and with emphasis, that this 

 pollen is more valuable as soon as the 

 bees commence to fly the following 

 spring, and then any frames that con- 

 tain ic should be given to the bees. 



These facts have lately been called 

 in question by several writers. I 

 think most of the critics object, sim- 

 ply because they do not understand 

 my position. One writer, however, 

 who, whatever else may be said of 

 him, puts forth very original ideas, 

 and contradicts nearly every well 

 grounded fact in apiculture, calls for 

 proofs. 



1. I have wintered bees on food 

 which was made wholly of cane sugar, 

 and which I had analyzed, and which 

 gave no trace of nitrogen. This was 

 fed on clean combs which, so far as 

 we could see, contained not a trace of 

 bee-bread. New combs are so trans- 

 parent that they cannot contain more 

 than the faintest trace of pollen, at 

 least without showing it. I have fed 

 bees, right in the busy season of the 

 year, this same kind of food and have 

 had them so shut up that they could 

 get at no other, and they have lived in 

 this way for weeks and have built 

 large combs, and when given liberty 

 were in good condition. It is impossi- 

 ble to prove that bees need and must 

 have nitrogenous food when they are 

 actively storing, but this position is 

 sustained by all analogy. 



2. in the last experiments the bees 

 would have enough pollen in their 

 stomachs and on their pollen baskets, 

 so that they would put quite a little 

 in the cells after first building the 

 comb, and so would commence rear- 

 ing brood, but the brood-rearing 

 would soon be discontinued. After 

 the brood-rearing had ceased, I could 

 set it to going at once, by giving the 

 bees a frame of bee-bread. In such 

 cases we must not feed honey, as there 

 is often quite a little pollen in the 

 nectar which the bees have brought 

 to the hive. Some honey, as bass- 

 wood, often contains quite a trace of 

 this. This would give enough pollen 

 to rear a little brood. Again, for 

 several winters I have practiced giv- 

 ing half our bees pollen, and the other 

 half, frames with no pollen. In all 

 cases we have noticed that those with- 

 out pollen would always be without 

 brood in the spring, while in the other 

 hives we almost always found brood. 

 Those without pollen would go to 

 gathering very fast as they could get 

 pollen the first of April and would 

 then, or as soon as we would supply 

 the lack of pollen in the hive, go 

 rapidly to breeding. 



These last experiments have satis- 

 fied me that bees are often better off 

 with no pollen in winter. In the best 

 condition they will eat little or no 

 pollen, as they breed very little, and 

 in these circurastancest he presence 



