1138 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Sept. 1 



made a living till Aug. 10, when they started 

 in on another spurt; but I don't know how 

 lunch it will amount to, and I don't know 

 how much of what is gathered comes from 

 other sources than white clover. All this 

 while white clover has been flourishing, and 

 August 13 bloom appears as fresh and as 

 ])l»'ntiful as ever. Why didn't it yield dur- 

 ing that three weeks July 21 to Aug. 10? 

 Plenty of bloom in sight, neither too wet nor 

 too dry, too cold nor too warm, at least not 

 enough to account for the failure, but it just 

 didn't yield. 



'•Don't try to winter a queen the third 

 winter," says E. W. Alexander, p. 1080. I 

 wonder if there isn't a difference made by 

 locality, strain of bees, or something. Twen- 

 ty-four of my colonies this year have queens 

 reared in 1904, and I don'c see but they aver- 

 age fairly with others, some of them the best. 

 1 don't believe longevity in bees is appreciat- 

 ed as it should be. If six weeks is the aver- 

 age life of a worker in summer (lately the 

 tendency is to discount that a little), and if 

 it takes to the field at 16 days of age, then a 

 worker that lives 48 days instead of 42 ought 

 to gather 23 per cent more than the average. 

 Even if it lives only a day more than the av- 

 erage, it ought to gather 104 pounds for ev- 

 ery 100 pounds gathered by the average bee. 

 If a strain of bees has queens that last three 

 years and do good work, and another strain 

 has queens that are good for only two years, 

 would you not naturally expect that there 

 would be a difference in the ages of the work- 

 ers from the two queens? And how will you 

 encourage long life in the workers any bet- 

 ter than by favoring long life in the queens? 

 The thing is worth thinking over. 



"What is the matter with sheep in a 

 sheep-pasture when the hives are low down?" 

 says J. E. Crane, page 1073. One year sheep 

 were in the Hastings yard for a short time, 

 and they shoved the hives off the stands. I 

 c(mgratulate you if you succeed, for sheep 

 keep down the grass so nicely. The differ- 

 ence may be that in my case the yard was 

 small and the sheep crowded; perhaps your 

 sheep- pasture was lai'ge. This year I had 

 experience in another direction. A sheep- 

 pasture adjoins the Wilson apiary, and I've 

 seen a sheep lun frantically as if crazy with 

 stings. Not many days ago,, when I went to 

 that apiary I found a sheep inside the api- 

 ary, hung in the fence, dead. I don't know 

 whether it was stung to death, or driven by 

 the bees to hang itself, but 1 don't believe it 

 would have died if there had been no bees 

 there. Cattle, horses, and hogs have all had 

 a chance at my bees, and none have been so 

 troublesome as sheep. But if the enclosure 

 is large enough, none of them may do harm. 

 [At our north yards sheep have access to the 

 bees. The only trouble we ever had was 

 when some of them lay down at night and 

 shoved some of the baby nuclei off their 

 stands. A neighbor having a lot of sheep 

 was short of pasturage. Our basswood grove 

 was growing up to weeds and underbrush. 

 We finally effected an arrangement by which 



the sheep have access to this grove. So far 

 nothing serious has happened. Sheep have 

 the range of the Vernon Burt yards, and he 

 finds they keep the weeds down nicely around 

 the hives; but they appear to have learned 

 the trick of doing the "lawn-mowing" 

 around the hives at night. — Ed.] 



Referring to your note, p. 1068, Mr. Edi- 

 tor, admit^ting the laying of worker-eggs in 

 Swarthmore cell cups and other places, is it 

 not just possible that there is something 

 about the position of the queen's legs or body 

 when laying in a drone-cell, either complete 

 or incomplete, that prevents the fertilization 

 of the egg? All that, however, is aside from 

 my point, which perhaps you did not get. 

 It is this: If fertilization is entirely a matter 

 of the queen's will, why does she not will to 

 lay worker-eggs in drone-cells without the 

 mouths of the cells being first narrowed? or 

 does she sometimes do so? An answer to 

 either or both those questions will be wel- 

 comed. In the several cases of worker-brood 

 in drone-cells that I have known, the mouth 

 of the cell was narrowed; but I've known 

 only a few cases, and it may be that others 

 have found drone-cells unchanged and still 

 worker- brood in them. [We do not quite 

 see how the conditions surrounding normal 

 drone-cells can be any different (except to be 

 worse) than those surrounding the Swarth- 

 more artificial queen-cups which have no 

 restriction of the opening, for, as a matter of 

 fact, bees do not have time to restrict the 

 openings, as the queen will often occupy them, 

 so we are told, almost immediately. Some 

 of the evidence that was submitted, unless 1 

 am very much mistaken, bore on the very 

 point that you have called up— that the queen 

 will lay worker eggs in drone-cells that are 

 not restricted at the mouth. — Ed.] 



This year there will probably be offered 

 to the market considerable off-grade comb 

 honey. The general poorness of the season, 

 too much rain and too much drouth, will 

 make a good deal of the honey travel-stained 

 and a mixed lot, and many of the cells un- 

 finished. For that reason a strictly No. 1 

 and "Fancy" should bring a greater differ- 

 ence between off-grade price and No. 1 and 

 " Fancy" price. If the dealer fails to get the 

 fancy at 16 and 17, let him try offering 18 

 and 20. 



MORE IRhlGATIOX PROJECTS. 



Definite preliminary work has commem^- 

 ed on the Fort Hall Indian Reservation, in 

 Idaho, to provide an irrigation system of 



