1494 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Dec. 1 



man had very little to do with the quality of 

 our bees and queens prior to half a century 

 ago. 



It will be noted that Mr. Huddle states that 

 he found most of the cells not occupied with 

 brood, having honey in them when he went 

 to look for queen-cells and liberate the queen. 

 He does not tell us of his success in comb 

 honey from this colony; but with me, where 

 I have found these conditions when liberating 

 the queen, it has always meant a great rush 

 of honey into the sections, if the season held 

 out only from three days to two weeks after 

 the queen began to lay again. There seems 

 to be an incentive in just these conditions 

 which gives section honey beyond almost any 

 thing else, as this unsealed honey is removed 

 from the cells, through the eagerness of the 

 bees to give the queen room for her rapid 

 accumulation of eggs, while this removed 

 honey, together with the nectar coming in 

 from the fields, is rushed into the sections at 

 a rate rarely ever seen under any other con- 

 ditions; so that we soon have supers filled 

 with the very whitest honey, and that capped 

 to perfection, right out to the very wood of 

 the section all around. 



EARLY SETTING-IN OF BEES. 



This year I expect to place my bees into 

 winter quarters by the 12th of November. 

 "Early to bed, early to rise," I believe re- 

 sults, other conditions being right, in better- 

 wintered colonies. I have fed, this autumn, 

 sugar syrup to every colony, even if it had 

 plenty of stores. Pollen-clogged combs are 

 not good; pollen-clogged bees are still worse. 

 My intention is that the bees shall have ready 

 access to sugar-syrup stores during all the 

 early part of the winter. In the future the 

 microscope may help us to determine as to 

 the suitability of certain stores for winter. 

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 SPREAD OF FOUL BROOD. 



Under "Who Spreads Foul Brood? " the 

 British Bee Journal, page 233, Progressive 

 writes: "My experience shows that the big 

 people at the hall and the gentry generally 

 are the worst sinners; and why? Simply be- 

 cause they do not realize that they are doing 

 any one any harm. Their gardeners, as a 

 rule, are either too busy to attend to bees, 

 know nothing about them, or are afraid of 

 them. ' ' We have a parallel in the many who 

 keep bees in this country, but who rarely look 

 into a brood-chamber. One or two colonies 

 may form a connecting link to spread the 

 disease over a wide area. 



WHITE ITALIAN CLOVER. 



W. K. Morrison, p. 1385, Gleanings, intro- 

 duces to the attention of bee-keepers a new 

 clover. The illustration on page 1384 looks 

 tempting. In our vicinity our bees genei'al 

 ly have plenty of clover, but the weather and 

 other conditions are not always favorable. 

 I also find that, even with plenty of clover in 

 blossom, generally the result of frequent rains 

 prolonging bloom in old clover, or bringing 

 on bloom on alsike sown the previous spring, 

 clover rarely continues to yield much. 

 There may be one or more reasons for this. 



On page 389, B7'iiish Bee Journal, a cor- 

 respondent is answered as follows: "No. 2 

 (last season's honey) has a good portion of 

 honey-dew in it; fermentation has started; 

 but, though unsuitable for table use, it may 

 be utilized for bee-food if, after thinning 

 down a little with hot water, it is boiled for 

 a minute or two, and the scum removed be- 

 fore using " Boiling may have a beneficial 

 effect upon honey-dew. I have never tried 

 it. If I once had honey-dew outside of the 

 hive I would keep it there; and if I had any 

 in the hive for winter stores I would lie 

 awake at.night thinking about it. From ob- 

 servation and various reports there is more 

 honey-dew in Canadian hives this season 

 than will be good for the bees. 

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 irascibility. 



Under the above heading, p. 371, the same 

 journal, M. M. Banff states, "The season of 

 the year, the nature of the flow, the amount of 

 interference they are subjected to, as well as 

 climatic conditions, all go to explain the un- 

 certain temper of bees at times. Race also 

 counts considerably, and the blending of cer- 

 tain races almost invariably produces cross 

 bees." Let me add one very important fac- 

 tor — the distance individual hives are set 

 apart in a large apiary. If hives are set only 

 several feet apart when there are many hives, 

 and there is a heavy flow of honey when 

 bees are with all their strength and energy 

 intent on gathering honey, the flying bees, 

 each aiming for the entrance of a hive, cross 

 one another in their lines of flight. Many 

 are killed outright by striking one another, 

 others only slightly injured; and the latter, 

 not realizing how they are injured, are on 

 the attack, and also give off the poison odor, 

 which arouses the angry passions of other 

 bees. I do not allow my bees to stand any 

 closer than necessity demands — at least not 

 until I have the colonies three steps apart in 

 the row, and the rows four steps apart. 

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 beeware — the ides of. 



At college an old March friend, Julius Cajsar, 

 taught me that the Ides of March was a very 

 precarious time for an emperor. It has been 

 left to my old and esteemed friend J. L. 

 Byers, in the American Bee Journal, to di- 

 vulge to the apiarian fraternity that March 

 is also a critical time for a queen. Of course 

 our good friend may have discovered that 



