1907 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



895 



queen-cells off the combs, what did you find 

 in them— plenty of royal jelly or very little?" 



"I guess you are going to prove your 

 point, for I noticed that there seemed to be 

 more jelly in them than in any queen-cells I 

 ever pulled off, unless I except some extra 

 heavy colonies which had swarmed very late 

 one season." 



"Yes. That royal-jelly btsiness proves to 

 your own mind that only the best of queens 

 could have come from cells so well supplied. 

 Therefore it was not a luird time to rear 

 queens, for the bees reared them themselves, 

 without any hard work on your part at ail, 

 and fed the larva.^ in those cells, calculating 

 to have the best of a mother from the one 

 they saved. Now, why did you not take 

 every cell you could had, but one, from the 

 first colonies which built cells, and put one 

 of those cells in each colony which you 

 thought would try to supei'sede its queen 

 later on?" 



"I guess I was more bent on stopping this 

 supersedure swarming than on studying up 

 on this matter." 



"If you had done this you could have su- 

 perseded those old queens without any swarm- 

 ing, any cutting of cells, or any exjiense of 

 brood-rearing, and done the whole at one 

 stroke, for the old queen would have kept 

 right on laying just the same for all the cell 

 or the young queen emerging therefrom, till 

 she got ready to die." 



"Don't you think she would have tried to 

 swarm from the giving of the cell?" 



"No, not if given before a lot of cells had 

 been started. It was the plurality of young 

 queens in their cells which caused your weak 

 colonies to swarm as you told me about. If 

 you had given the cells as I have told you, 

 you would have had all the brood you would 

 have gotten from the old queen in any event, 

 till this queen begax to lay, when she would 

 have boomed the brood with little danger 

 from swarming during the whole season; for 

 in the superseding of any queen beiore the 

 honey harvest, the swarming fever seems to 

 be satisfied, unless the colony swarms from 

 a plurality of queens in the cells before a 

 young one gets to laying." 



"Well, this is entirely a netv thought to 

 me." 



"If you will follow it out you will find it 

 to be a good thought, for this has been the 

 way I have managed with superseding cells 

 coming early in the season, and I have found 

 there is no w'ork in the apiary which pays 

 me better than that saving all supersedure 

 cells." 



Gleanings from Foreign Fields. 



BY W. K. MORRISON. 



The average American bee-keeper is anx- 

 ious to know how his own country measures 

 up against other countries in the matter of 

 bee-keeping; but it is hard to give an ans- 

 wer. The United Kingdom certainly uses 



the nicest hives, quite possibly because most 

 of them are made in this country. They 

 spend more money than we do on hives, and 

 get a good article. Americans would not 

 care to pay as much. They also go to more 

 pains than we do in inserting full sheets of 

 toundation in the brood-frames In sections 

 the foundation is fastened on all four sides. 

 which produces better-finished section honey! 

 The Britisher has the time to do things well, 

 and he does them. No nation in Europe does 

 better bee-keeping than old Ireland. 



I>ance is very scientific in all that it does, 

 and bee-keeping is no exception to the rule. 

 We might expect this in the mother-land of 

 Reaumur, the founder of experimental api- 

 culture. The hives of France are largely 

 on the Dadant order, with deep frames for 

 extractedhoney production; but American 

 hives with Hoffman Langstroth frames and 

 sections are making considerable progress. 

 A French edition of Gleanings, published 

 independently in Paris, is doing much to 

 make French bee-keepers familiar with Amer- 

 ican methods of apiculture. No other coun- 

 try in Europe is so quick to appreciate our 

 ideas as France, for the people generally are 

 ardent admirers of the American republic, 

 and the social and political systems of the 

 two nations are much alike. "France has al- 

 ways taken a prominent position in apicul- 

 ture, and at the present time maintains about 

 a dozen bee-journals. The system of mova- 

 ble combs has practically full sway, and we 

 need not wonder at this since the French aie 

 a truly scientific people in all respects, al- 

 ways ready to accept something better. 



Switzerland, small as it is, occupies a high 

 position in the bee-keeping world; and, being 

 the home of Huber, we need not marvel at 

 it. It is also the homeland of our so-called 

 Italian bees, for our leather-colored species 

 comes from a part of the Swiss republic in 

 and around Bellinzona. The Swiss bee-keep- 

 ers maintain two bee-papers— one in German 

 and the other in French. The one in Ger- 

 man is a model bee-journal, handsomely il- 

 lustrated, and quite scientific. The Swiss 

 have some very prominent scientific men 

 connected with the bee industry — notably the 

 Goeldi family, two of whom started the fine 

 museum at Para, Brazil, now presided over 

 by Prof. J. Huber, a descendant of the great 

 Francois Huber. Prof. Bourri, of the Uni- 

 versity Zurich, is a distinguished authority on 

 bees, notably on foul brood and partheno- 

 genesis. 



Belgium stands well to the front in bee- 

 keeping, maintaining six French bee-papers 

 and one in Flemish. The bee-keeping indus- 

 try is here pushed to its utmost limits. 



Netherland has two bee-papers, and the 

 industry is well looked after, it ought to be, 

 in Swammerdam's country. 



Germany and Austria maintain about HO 

 bee-papers at present, some of them very 

 creditable productions. This shows the im- 

 portance of bee-keeping in countries speak- 

 the German tongue. Some of the best; of 

 these papers are published in Austria (Vien- 

 na), Bohemia, and Moravia; Switzerland, 



