1918 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



59 



The queen breeder and bee shipper 

 of the South must also have these 

 matters in consideration, as he may 

 help his customer by shipping at 

 the right moment. But in order that 

 both may have the greatest amount 

 of satisfaction it is necessary that 

 the purchaser should inform the 

 shipper of his wants long enough 

 ahead to enable him to prepare the 

 supply. Nothing is more unreason- 

 able than for a purchaser to make 

 up his mind, at the last minute, to 

 order 10 or 20 packages of bees and 

 demand immediate shipment or 

 money refunded. Although a breed- 

 er might happen to be in position to 

 fill such an order, there is more 

 probability of his having to return 

 the money, as it is not always possi- 

 ble to keep bees and queens on hand 

 subject to unexpected and immediate 

 demands of far away customers. 

 February is none too soon for the 

 buyer of bees in pound packages to 

 make his wants known and he 

 should also remember that the 

 breeder is just« as dependent upon 

 the weather as he is himself. 



Experience has shown that queen- 

 less packages arrive in poorer con- 

 dition than queenright ones. They 

 could only be used to reinforce other 

 colonies. The above explanation 

 also shows why already built combs 

 are of great importance in the suc- 

 cess of bees in pound packages. It 

 goes without saying that if there is 

 no honey to be had in the field the 

 bees must be fed to secure constant 

 and copious laying. 



Mating of Queens 



By Geo. F. Hayes 



IN his first "Answer" of the No- 

 vember (1917) issue of the Amer- 

 ican Bee Journal, Dr. Miller 

 states that he "thinks, in some cases, 

 queens mate at swarming time." I 

 had an opportunity last summer to 

 observe that such is the case. 



I shook from a low-hanging 

 branch, a large swarm in front of a 

 hive. After a few moments I noticed 

 the queen crawling in the grass. I 

 caught her and after concluding that 

 she was a virgin, attempted to drop 

 her directly in front of the entrance. 

 She refused to drop, however, and 

 flew into the air. After some con- 

 fusion the bees settled again on the 

 branch, from which I shook them a 

 second time, and again succeeded in 

 finding the queen. This time she bore 

 the usual signs of being newly 

 mated. I caught her to explain her 

 appearance to a couple of neighbors 

 who were watching. When I released 

 her she took wing as before, but 

 soon came back and alighted on the 

 front of the hive. 



The thought came to me that per- 

 haps here might be a way to get 

 queens mated in the home yard. 

 This queen must have met the drone 

 within a few feet of the hive, while 

 she was circling preparatory to 

 alighting again. The yard was close 

 by and there were many drones 

 flying from Italian colonies. The 

 queen was purely mated and was 



laying in a couple of days. The diffi- 

 culty is, of course, that virgin queens 

 are not always in the mating humor 

 when they swarm. May this not be 

 because they are too young, and if 

 they were manipulated so as to 

 cause swarming when four or five 

 days old would they always be in 

 swarming humor? If so, it would be 

 an easy matter to capture her while 

 hiving the swarm and toss her into 

 the air. She would circle around a 

 few times before alighting, thus giv- 

 ing the drones an opportunity to 

 seize her. 



Prices of Bees 



ON page 262, August, 1917, an ar- 

 ticle appeared in the American 

 Bee Journal concerning the 

 pound package business. The article 

 in question advised the dealer or 

 breeder of bees and queens not 

 to make any advance in prices 

 for 1918. If buyers will but consider 

 the matter fairly they will conclude 

 that it is impossible for dealers to 

 maintain last season's prices, espe- 

 cially those who sold bees at one 

 dollar a pound and seventy cents for 

 a queen. The material used in mak- 

 ing one of these pound package 

 cages costs about 31 cents, unprovis- 

 ioned. We use the best XXXX pul- 

 verized sugar for feed ; as a precau- 

 tion we use an abundance of feed, 

 never less than one-half pound when 

 the shipment is to be made within 

 our State, and when we ship out of 

 Louisiana we always use one-pound 

 of feed to each pound of bees. This 

 item is 10 to 12 cents per pound. Now 

 consider the work, which must be 

 done by an expert. Then estimate 

 the value of what honey one of 

 these pound packages would bring to 

 you if you should keep it at home. 

 Shipping bees to northern and west- 

 ern buyers begins right at the time 

 our best honey flow begins. The 

 above will give the buyer an idea of 

 whether a dealer would be justified 

 in offering bees at even $2 for a one- 

 pound package with queen. 



A BREEDER. 



Glimpses of Southern Bee- 

 keeping 



By Joseph S. Scott 



LAST year the whole Gulf Coast 

 was visited by a terrible wind 

 and rain storm in July, and the 

 amount of damage was great. The 

 government had to open supply sta- 

 tions on the Alabama river to feed 

 the laborers; most of them were 

 tenants, and the overflow from the 

 river wiped away their crops and 

 there was no other work that they 

 could do. Several beekeepers lost a 

 lot of bees. 



These were not lost by overflow, 

 either; they were blown away. I did 

 not lose any, but, as usual, I antici- 

 pated a flow from summer titi in 

 July and boneset and goldenrod in 

 September, so I had extracted all 

 the honey that was on the hives and 



even some that was in the brood- 

 nest and sold it all. Several days af- 

 ter the storm came I had to begin 

 to feed. I think that I fed every- 

 thing that I could get that was 

 sweet, but out of 225 hives I only 

 pulled through the winter with 90. 

 and they were living from hand to 

 mouth (my hand to their mouth). 

 However, there was a good early 

 flow and they began to pick up, and 

 they never stopped picking up, either. 

 I have kept bees here for seven 

 years and this is the first year that 

 I ever saw them, gather honey prac- 

 tically every day in the month from 

 February up to the last of Septem- 

 ber. Titi was followed by black- 

 berry, then tupelo, then black gum, 

 then poplar, then cow peas, then 

 summer titi, then velvet beans, then 

 boneset. 



The peas were from the heavy 

 plantings for food, as they make a 

 good dish for the table, come early, 

 and need very little work. Velvet 

 beans were more extensively planted 

 this year than ever before. While I 

 have gotten honey from both before, 

 it was only just enough to know that 

 we could get honey from these 

 plants. Mr. Simmons, from Green- 

 ville, Ala., had a fine sample of vel- 

 vet bean honey at the county fair at 

 Mobile last year. The velvet beans 

 were planted and introduced there 

 several years before they were here. 

 I examined a bloom this summer and 

 found in one blossom enough nectar 

 for three bees. I mean by that that 

 it would take at least three bees to 

 clean up that one bloom. 



As for the cow pea, the bee does 

 not get the nectar from the blossom 

 at all, neither does it get it from 

 where the leaves come out. A stem 

 about the size and length of a lead 

 pencil will grow from the vine and 

 this stem will have several blossoms 

 on it and when the blossoms drop 

 off they will leave the little pea and 

 after the pea gets about half grown 

 then the bees will get the nectar. 

 There will be at the end of the stem 

 near the peas a very few little "eyes." 

 They look like potato eyes, and the 

 bees will suck the nectar from these 

 eyes. They will visit a great many 

 stems before they get a load, and I 

 rather think that the fluid that they 

 get is really not honey, but a sweet 

 substance. I have never had enough 

 peas to get this honey in its purity, 

 but hope to have them next year. 



Velvet bean honey is of a light am- 

 ber color with a mild flavor, but not 

 the body of basswood or clover or 

 tupelo. 



This is also the first year that I 

 ever got a large surplus from bone- 

 set. We had a terrible rain and 

 wind storm here the last of Septem- 

 ber and the bees were working furi- 

 ously on boneset when it came. As 

 the weather turned cold for a few 

 days after, that cut off the rest of 

 the surplus from that source. This 

 boneset has sprung up on low places 

 where the pine timber has been cut, 

 and I think that in a few more years 

 I will have a fine place for a surplus 

 from that source alone. I got as it 

 was an average of twenty pounds 



