1903 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



1009 



As reported in " Forty Years amoiifi;- the! 

 B^es," the bees did not have a fair chance,! 

 for the}' were put in after underfj^-oing- con-1 

 siderable confinement, and the winter was 

 unusuall}' warm. To make matters worse, 

 considerable smoke was allowed to escape 

 in the cellar during the first days. One 

 colony was reported as beinj,-- directly un- 

 der a hot-air pipe, only three inches below 

 it, a thermometer laid on the hive register- 

 ing' 70 degrees. This was purposel}' left to 

 await the outcome. Toward s]iring I went 

 to see how it was faring, iind was some- 

 what surprised to find it dead. Examina- 

 tion showed it had starved to denth! The 

 possibility of such a thing had not occurred 

 to me, but I suppose the heat made it con- 

 sume more stores. 



The fin.il result was, that out of 199 colo- 

 nies put in the cellar only l24 entered upon 

 the harvest. How much better they may do 

 another winter remains to be seen. 



Answering your questions in order: 



1. I don't know. I think you can. You 

 will have the no small advantage that with 

 that temperature you can have the cellar 

 open for air at night, if not by day, and 

 pure air is an important matter. 



2. My experience has been that bees do 

 not sutler from such disturbance to any 

 great degree. 



3. No. the bees will not be uneasy enough 

 for that. Even though they should be un- 

 easy, fastening them in would onh' make a 

 bad matter worse. If a bee becomes dis- 

 eased so it wants to leave the hive, it is bet- 

 ter out than in. If it can not get out, the 

 effort it makes to do so will only stir up the 

 others. By no means think of fastening 

 bees in their hives in winter. 



Marengo, 111. C. C. Miller. 



THF. CACTI OF ARIZONA FOR HONEY. 



I am seeking information regarding- the 

 practicabilit}' of bee keeping with cacti as 

 the honey-producing plants. As nearly as 

 I can find out, the harvest could be made 

 a'most perpetual, and the Arizona climate 

 would give easy wintering". Millions of 

 acres could be obtained for a song-, and my 

 idea would be to select and plant such cac- 

 ti as would give the longest harvest. Once 

 planted, Mexican labor would take care of 

 them. I should like to have some idea of 

 what has been done in the way of bonanza 

 bee-farming, and what the profits may be 

 under favorable conditions 



C. R. TiNSLEV. 



Black Diamond, Ariz., Oct. 15. 



[I made a number of inquiries with re- 

 gard to the feasibility of getting honey from 

 cacti that grow in Arizona, but was assured 

 by the veteran bee keepers of the Territory 

 that, while some honey is secured from thai 

 source, and while some individual plants 

 invariably yield a good big supply of nec- 

 tar, the amount in the aggregate is too 

 small to give the plants any importance as 

 a source of honej-. Of course, I understand 

 there ^j"e a gre^j: many different varieties; 



jbut I was told that there are no cacti of any 

 [description in the Territory that could be 

 .ranked as honey-plants. 



I do not know of any bonanza in bee- 

 faming unless it is to get in range of un- 

 limited quantities of alfalfa, and usually 

 there are so many bee- keepers to the square 

 mile on such bee-range that there is no very 

 great bonanza to any one of them. — Ed.] 



A PARTITIONED-OFF CELLAR FOR WINTER- 

 ING BEES. 



Having a furnace in the cellar I have 

 thought it would be too warm for the bees; 

 so I have taken a corner of the cellar and 

 boxed it off. I have put in a floor three 

 feet from the ground, and boxed this tight 

 to the ceiling with tarred paper. My pur- 

 pose is to make a cold place in one corner 

 of my warm cellar. I have succeeded, I 

 think, in pfetting it tight. To ventilate this 

 place I have built it around a window that 

 I can darken, and open or close as I see fit 

 for temperature. I purpose to put my doz- 

 en colonies in this place. Is such a place 

 all right? Can I ventilate it from the win- 

 dow? It seems to me I can. I think I have 

 overcome any possible dampness, secured 

 the suitable darkness, and also the right 

 temperature. I do not wish to put the bees 

 in just now, for we are having some fine 

 weather, and it may continue for six weeks 

 or more. After reading what was said on 

 p. 928, on " few colonies wintering well in a 

 cellar," I became a little "shaky" about 

 my cellar within a cellar. 



L. H. Clarke. 



Gardiner, Me., Nov. 2, 1903. 



[The compartment divided off in your 

 cellar, if you design to put in only about a 

 dozen colonies, will give you very satisfac- 

 torj' results providing you can give the bees 

 ventilation at night when the air is cool. It 

 is desirable to keep the temperature be- 

 tween 45 and 50 degrees. If you happen to 

 have a very nice warm day or two in mid- 

 winter, take the bees out and give them a 

 flight, then put them back. This will qui- 

 et them quite a little. It would be advis- 

 able to give them a flight in the spring, say 

 along in March or April, if you happen to 

 have a warm day so that you can. Bees 

 need more ventilation in the spring than in 

 the fall or mid-winter.— Ed.] 



NON-SWARMERS, BV SELECTION IN BREED- 

 ING, PRODUCE NON-SV/ARMING QUEENS. 



I don't want you and Dr. C. C. Miller to 

 give up chasing the will-o'-the wisp yet. 

 I, too, am hoping that we may breed a strain 

 oif bees that will not put in a good share of 

 the best of their time swarming; and I want 

 to encourage you a little. 



In my twenty-two 5'ears of keeping and 

 studying bees I never saw the swarming 

 fever run so high as it has this j'ear. Some 

 got as high as seven- fold increase. I am 

 not that kind of bee-keeper, but I got an in- 

 crease of 21 from 32 colonies; but it took 



