794 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Sept. 15 



ing settled on the nest with her attendant hosts, the 

 linnet meanwhile calmly sitting on her eggs. With 

 great care the gardener cut off the bough of the ap- 

 ple-tree — swarm, nest, and all ; and, after having 

 smoked the bees off. he carefully stuck the bough 

 up again. The linnet returned to her nest, and is 

 now sitting on four eggs. 



\it 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 

 In the issue for Sept. 3, somebody asks 

 Dr. Miller how much honey and wax are 

 produced yearly in this country. He ad- 

 mits he does not know. The government 

 statistics do not seem to be satisfactory. 

 Probably the greater portion of the bee- 

 keepers make no returns, not thinking it 

 worth while to report the small and pre- 

 carious crop which is used entirely on their 

 own table. In this journal, page 111, 1902, 

 the editor estimates the weight of comb 

 honey produced annually in the United 

 States to be 50 million pounds; extracted, 

 125 million; value, 8 to 10 million dollars. 

 Perhaps these figures ought to be doubled. 

 In France the government statistics are far 

 more painstaking than here, and I am glad 

 to find in L'' Apiculteur a most elaborate re- 

 port on the number of colonies of bees kept 

 in France, together with the amount of hon- 

 ey produced in 1901. Each of the 87 de- 

 partments of France is given in detail; but 

 a summing-up for the whole country, up to 

 Dec. 31, 1901, is as follows: Total colonies 

 of bees, 1,675,929; honey of all kinds, 

 19.876,661 lbs. Value of honey, $2,723,612. 

 Wax, 5,577,682 lbs., worth $1,100,000. The 

 average value of wax would be about 19 cts. 

 The population of this country is fully 

 double that of France; but even if the French 

 figures are doubled they will still fall far 

 behind the estimate given for this country. 

 But the latter may be faulty. I have a 

 similar table for Austria; but as the unit 

 of weight is not given I can not use it. — Ed.] 



LATE-REARED QUEENS. 



"How do you do, Mr. Doolittle? As the 

 nights are getting longer I thought I would 

 come over a little while and chat a few 

 minutes with you on bees." 



"Yes, the evenings are quite a little 

 longer than thej' were, and I am reminded 

 that the bee season for 1903 will soon be 

 over. How did your bees do this year, Mr. 

 Brown? " 



" I did not get much surplus, but find 

 that the colonies, as a rule, have enough to 

 winter on, for which I am thankful. It has 

 been cold and wet nearly all summer, since 

 the drouth ended in June. Then the hard 



winds, heavy rains, and severe hailstorms, 

 have made the season unpropitious be3'ond 

 any other season I have ever known." 



"Yes, that is true. But what was the 

 ' chat ' to be about to-night? " 



" I wanted to have a little talk about late- 

 reared queens, as I wish to raise some dur- 

 ing the last of this month. Bee-keeper 

 Smith tells me that, if I so raise them, they 

 will be of no use, as they will not find any 

 drones thus late in the season, as the drones 

 will all be killed off." 



" If all drones are killed before any 

 queen becomes old enough to be fertilized, 

 and the season of the year is late fall, of 

 course such a queen will become barren or 

 a drone-layer." 



" Why do you say barren? Smith said 

 they would be only drone-layers, which 

 would be even worse than no queen at 

 all." 



"I know some say drone-layers every 

 time; but my own experience has been that 

 nearly or quite half of the queens which I 

 have wintered over that were not fertilized 

 never lay at all." 



"Without discussing that part of the 

 matter further, was Smith right in saying 

 that a queen not fertilized in the fall would 

 be of no use whatever?" 



"Well, that depends on the size of the 

 colony she is in. If it is merely a nucleus, 

 with no prospect of wintering over, then I 

 should say such a queen would be worth- 

 less. But should the colony be a good one, 

 or one strong in bees and rich in stores, 

 then I should consider an unfertile queen 

 of some value, as my experience goes to 

 prove that a colony having a queen, be she 

 laying or otherwise, will remain much 

 more quiet during the winter months than 

 will a queenless colony; hence the colony 

 having a queen will come out stronger in 

 the spring, with less consumption of stores, 

 than will one with no queen." 



" Will such an unfertile queen be of any 

 use in the spring? " 



" Only in one way. She can be allowed 

 to remain with the colony until we are able 

 to procure a young laj'ing queen from the 

 South, and thus a good colony may be saved 

 which otherwise might be lost. But even 

 in such a case I should consider it much 

 moie desirable to purchase a queen from 

 the South, and introduce her to the colony 

 having no fertile queen in the fall, where 

 such is possible, than to try to winter over 

 either a queenless colony or one having a 

 virgin queen." 



"Why?" 



"My reason for so considering is this: 

 Such purchased queen will commence to lay 

 during February or March, and from her 

 brood the colony will be materially 

 strengthened before a queen could be pro- 

 cured in the spring, and thus the colony be- 

 comes ready to take advantage of the early 

 honey-flows in the spring, which would be 

 of little use to the colony which went through 

 with a virgin queen, should she prove bar- 

 ren, and would be the means of having 



