AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



409 



Wavelets o! News. 



Late Rains in California. 



The steady downpour of rain will 

 make some of our Valley apiarists want 

 to "flee as birds to the mountains," to 

 escape the flood. As the late rains are 

 usually credited with producing the 

 greatest yield of nectar, the bee-men can 

 look out upon the storm with the assur- 

 ance of a good season. Few, if any 

 hives are short of supplies. All that 

 will be wanted this Spring is an abun- 

 dance of primed sections, with a few 

 last-season sections, filled with comb, to 

 act as starters. 



These rainy days are the golden days 

 for the apiarist ; in them he nails up 

 and paints his hives, primes his sections, 

 and prepares for the coming harvest of 

 honey, which at this time promises to be 

 an unusual yield. — E. H. Schaeffle, in 

 the Rural Press. 



Home Market in Colorado. 



Montrose will record as large an in- 

 crease in honey product as any other 

 section of the State. There should be 

 an excellent home market for all that 

 can be produced. The opening of the 

 Rio Grande Southern railroad, and the 

 wonderful growth of the mining camps 

 in the West and Southwest, will cause 

 an increased demand at top prices. — 

 Colorado Field and Farm. 



Bees in Winter Quarters. 



It is best to avoid as much as possible 

 disturbing bees in their winter quarters, 

 until the time they shall show unmis- 

 takable signs of activity in the Spring. 

 Usually this will occur in April. This is 

 the ideal condition of wintering, but not 

 always the real. Bees often become 

 restless during the mild weather of 

 Winter. A variable temperature, im- 

 pure air, and jarring the hives all 

 create restlessness. Bees should be kept 

 in the cellar where the light is excluded. 

 —Exchange. 



Facts About Bees. 



Do not be alarmed to see a good many 

 dead bees on the bottom-board. They 

 keep dying off all the time from old age. 

 Neither need it frighten you to see a 

 little water running out of the hive when 



it is warm enough. The breath of the 

 bees makes it. 



Clear out the entrance if it gets 

 clogged with ice or dead bees. But 

 porous snow will do no harm, even if it 

 covers the hive entirely. 



Look out for colonies that are short of 

 stores. It is poor policy to let a colony 

 worry through the Winter, and then 

 starve, when 25 cents' worth of feed 

 would have brought them through all 

 right. It will do no harm to feed, even 

 if they do not need it. They will not 

 waste it. Remember, a little too much is 

 just right.— Dr. C. C. Miller, in the 

 Stockman and Farmer. 



Fruit Trees and the Bees. 



Apart from the profit undoubtedly to 

 be derived from the honey, bees render 

 a service, very often either not known 

 or not thought of, by fertilizing the 

 flowers of our fruits and seed plants ; 

 white clover, sainfoin and other forage 

 crops, and most plants valued for seeds, 

 and all our hardy fruits, owe their fertil- 

 ization to the agency of insects, princi- 

 pally to the bees. How often one hears 

 the complaint during a cold Spring, that 

 the frost has killed the fruit blossom, 

 whereas it is far more often that the 

 cold prevents bees from flying far from 

 their hives, and thus the flowers expand 

 their petals, and no insect comes to 

 execute the necessary task, so they fade 

 away without yielding the fruit or seeds. 



This wonderful provision, whereby the 

 bee, while seeking its own food, perform? 

 an act upon which, for us, so much de- 

 pends, should surely make us thought- 

 ful. The apple blossom, for instance, 

 requires five distinct visits for fertiliza- 

 tion before a perfect fruit is formed ; 

 and, if but one is missing, the small, 

 hard, imperfect fruit soon falls, if, in- 

 deed, it ever grows at all. 



Each strawberry requires between 200 

 and 300 visits for fertilizing each tiny 

 part of the yellow center of the flower. 

 This being done, the fruit swells, and 

 the little seeds outside the strawberry 

 show how truly the bees have performed 

 their wonderful work. 



A remarkable instance of this work of 

 bees came under my notice a few years 

 ago. The Spring was cold, and the 

 crops of gooseberries and currants very 

 scarce indeed. In a garden belonging 

 to a workingman, was a small shed for 

 three or four hives, and close to it was 

 a gooseberry bush. It was unusually 

 cold, bad weather during the whole time 

 the gooseberries were in flower, and ^' '■■ 



