1907 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



4G7 



mixed with this abimdaiit secretion and con- 

 verted into honey. The pollen, the proteid 

 food of bees, is also acted on by another co- 

 pious secretion, that from the lower head 

 glands, and is converted into the "chyme," 

 already referred to as a very perfect' food. 

 This forms the basis, doiil)tless, of the royal 

 jelly; and if this is what is fed to the queen 

 it must be a very admiral)le food, else it 

 would not give such vigor as the queen pos- 

 sesses, for she lays nearly twice her own 

 weight of eggs each day when at her best. 

 The wax is also the product of glandular ac- 

 tion, from the glands along the under side 

 of the abdomen. The work of these glands, 

 when the bees need much wax, is something 

 tremendous. At such times the worker bees 

 eat much and exercise little, and the full en- 

 ergy is given to wax-formation, and the re- 

 sults are as just mentioned. Nor is this all; 

 for the poison of the bees which they use so 

 effectively when they sting is also a secre- 

 tion, which is formed by large racemose 

 glands situated close to the poison-sac, near 

 the tip of the abdomen. I believe that we 

 are safe in claiming for our bees three phases 

 of development that are unsurpassed by any 

 other animal, even not excluding our own 

 species — one the varied secretions, and ex- 

 ceeding glandular development, just pointed 

 out; another the varied physiological devel- 

 opment, for J know no other animal that does 

 so much as do bees; and the third, the won- 

 drous structural development without which 

 the high functional performance would be 

 quite impossible. 



J, I 





Some of the honey-dealers can not see any 

 chance for a rise in the price of honey through 

 the operation of the pure-food law. Are 

 they looking for a chance to make a little ex- 

 tia profit themselves ? 



At the time this is written, the report 

 comes that a pure-food law, sti'engthening 

 the national pure-food law, has just passed 

 the Colorado legislature, and is only await- 

 ing the governor's signature. Colorado leg- 

 islators are all right. Remember that Colo- 

 rado already has a special pure-honey law. 



Bee-keepers ought to have a great deal of 

 sympathy with otner industries that are at- 

 tacked in the newspapers, since we have 

 seen for ourselves how cruelly unjust and 

 unti'uthful such things may be. It is easy 

 for the careful and unprejudiced reader to 

 see that many of these newspaper reports 

 are simply sensational lies, or, at the best, 



badly exaggerated, and it behooves us to 

 withhold judgment in many matters until 

 we have information more reliable than mere 

 newspaper report. 



.^ 

 Some people have curious ideas as to the 

 amount of honey that plants yield. "The 

 Jay" tells us of those who thought his crops 

 of honey came from his geranium-bed. Our 

 lawn is bordered by some very fine roses, 

 from which we call our place " Roselawn,'' 

 and on several occasions people have shovvn 

 a serious belief that these roses had a great 

 deal to do with the crops of hcmey we secure. 



THE SEASON. 



We have had a very mild winter here, al- 

 most no cold weather at all; 18 above zero 

 was the coldest I noticed, and most of the 

 time the bees were flying every three or four 

 days. As a result of this mild weather the 

 bees are wintering very well; and if they do 

 not use up their honey'in brood-rearing they 

 are likely to be in very good shape for an 

 early harvest. Every thing is further ad- 

 vanced than usual at this season. Some of 

 the soft maples were in bloom Feb. 15th, 

 and wild mustard the 24th. Peaches, apri- 

 cots, and almonds have been reported in 

 bloom in sheltered places about the same 

 time, and the bees will soon be humming on 

 all kinds of early bloom. 

 ^> 



IIIVE-STANDS AND TOADS.' 



Dr. Miller's plan of making concrete 

 prisms to support bottom-boards, keeping 

 them up off the damp ground, is doubtless 

 G^ood and will add much to their life by keep- 

 ing them from rotting. One objection I 

 would have to any such arrangement is that 

 it would make a good shelter for toads. In 

 some places here, toads are very plentiful 

 and do a great deal of damage to the bee- 

 keeper because of the number of bees they 

 eat. On account of this, and for some other 

 reasons, I want a hive-stand which, while 

 Keeping the hive itself a few inches above 

 the ground, is perfectly tight all around. 

 Even with these, and with the ground kept 

 clean between the hives, toads come into the 

 apiary in such numbers in the evening that 

 in some apiaries I find that these hive-stands 

 must be so high that toads can not reach the 

 alighting-board. I have been wondering if 

 it would not pay me to make a toad-tight 

 fence around such apiaries. 



AN ENEMY TO BEE-KEEPING. 



I took a walk a few days ago to look up 

 some of the sources of honey supply in the 

 neighborhood. As I walked along the banks 

 of the great irrigating-ditches, or down in 

 their beds, dry at this season, 1 noticed some 

 places where the sweet (clover grew luxuri- 

 antly along the banks of the large canals and 

 the laterals that ran from them, while in 

 other places the ground was bare of every 

 thing except weeds and the shrubbery of the 

 desert. The reason for the difference was 



