118 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



April 



^/^MnERICAS^ 



PUBLISHED MONTHLY AT 



First Nat'l Bank BIdg., Hamilton, 111. 



Entered as second-class matter at the 

 Hamilton, Illinois, Postoffice. 



C. P. Dadant, Editor. 



Dr. C. C. Miller, Associate Editor. 



Frank C. Pellett, Staff Correspondent. 



IMPORTANT NOTICE 



THE SUBSCRIPTION PRICE of this Jour- 

 nal is $1.00 per year in the United States of 

 America and Mexico; 3 years, $2.60; 5 years, 

 $4.00; in Canada, 15c extra, and in all 

 other countries in the Postal Union, 25 cents 

 a year extra for postage. Sample copy free. 



THE WRAPPER LABEL DATE indicates 

 the end of the month to which subscription is 

 paid. For instance, "decl8" on your label 

 shows that it is paid to the end of December, 

 1918. 



SUBSCRIPTION RECEIPTS.— We do not 

 send a receipt for money sent us to pay sub- 

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 dress, which show that the money has been 

 received and credited. In case of errors, 

 please write us. 



(Copyright: 1917, by C. P. Dadant.) 



THE EDITOR'S VIEWPOINT 



Boosting Honey Production 



An eight-page pamphlet has been 

 issued by the Department of Agri- 

 culture at Washington giving the 

 situation of honey in the "Agricul- 

 tural Situation of 1918." 



Now, if ever, we beekeepers should 

 strain ourselves to the utmost to in- 

 crease the output of honey. It will 

 act as a supplement to sugar in these 

 times of sugar scarcity. 



The booklet rightly points out that 

 myriads of pounds of honey go to 

 waste in parts of the United States in 

 flowers scarcely visited by bees, and 

 that the expansion of beekeeping to 

 take up a part of this waste will be 

 a net gain to humanity. 



Our production of honey at presenl 

 is in the neighborhood of 250,000,000 

 pounds annually, i>r only about 2^ 

 pounds for each man. woman and 

 child in the country. 



Copies of this booklet may be "I' 

 tained by asking for part 4, Circular 

 87, of the Department of Agriculture, 

 Washington, D. C. 



The Bee and Queen 

 Situation 



Never before has there been such a 

 demand for bees and queens at this 

 season of the year. Queen brei d< i 

 are in many instances having to turn 

 down some large orders so as to 

 be able to take care of the ordinary 

 trade. 



To offset this, however, the season 

 is much more promising with queen 

 I s than a year ago. Bees seem 

 i llent shape in the south- 

 east and honey is coming in suf- 

 ficiently to incite egg laying 

 colonies are fast becoming populous 



The only section which cannot 



show favorably in queen breeding is 

 Texas, which has been hard hit in the 

 past two years, so that some of her 

 breeders have discontinued the busi- 

 ness entirely. Fortunately, this con- 

 dition does not exist over the whole 

 State, and many of the breeders are 

 already getting in shape to fill orders 

 as before. 



There is. however, one source of 

 bees which we think is too little con- 

 sidered by the beekeeper who wants 

 lo increase, and that is the unpro- 

 ductive bees in his own neighbor- 

 hood, or at least in his surrounding 

 country. There are thousands of 

 colonies in the country today which 

 yield hardly a pound of surplus from 

 one season to the other. They have 

 no attention and in many instances 

 are allowed to "swarm themselves 

 away" by their owners who quite 

 frequently think that the zenith of 

 beekeeping is to have many swarms 



Now is your chance to buy up 

 many of these colonies and make 

 them produce. If bought early and 

 gotten in condition during fruit 

 bloom, they will in many instance 

 more than pay for themselves and 

 your trouble the first honey (low. 



Practical Queen-rearing 



Mr. Frank C. Pellett has jusl fin 

 ished a new book entitled "Practical 



it- ii. on. iniplie-. 



tliis 1mm, k is for the prai tical bi 

 keeper who expects to rear some of 

 Ins own queens, but it will lie found 

 of use to tin experienced queen 

 breeder as well 



I In i lUgh his numerous visit s to bei 

 ind to practically 

 all the larger queen-breeders in 

 tin South, Mr. l'cllett has picked 



up variations of different plans of 

 breeding queens, all of which have a 

 significant value and may suit in turn 

 many individual beekeepers. 



Besides this, of course, he gives the 

 standard methods of queen-rearing, 

 in concise form. The Doolittle, 

 Swarthmore, Miller and other meth- 

 ods are all explained. This new 

 book, which is now in the press, will 

 contain over 100 pages and will be 

 cloth bound, with many cuts from 

 original photographs. It is to sell 

 for $1.00 postpaid, and should he 

 ready for delivery by the time this 

 issue of the American Bee Journal 

 is in the mails. 



Bibliography 



Several interesting bulletins are 

 upon our desk. Among them we find 

 the following: 



"Insect Pollination of Timberline 

 Flowers in Colorado," by L. A. Ke- 

 noyer. Professor Kenoyer has in- 

 spected flowers above the tree line 

 in the Colorado mountains and found 

 many insects upon the blossoms. He 

 mentions a number of plants and of 

 insects which would interest the 

 students. His conclusions are that 

 flowers above the timber line are as 

 much visited by insects as those of 

 lower altitudes. 



"The Weather and Honey Produc- 

 tion," by the same author. It was 

 through the records made by J. L. 

 Strong, of Clarinda, Iowa, during 29 

 years of meteorological data and 

 weights of a hive of bees daily, that 

 Mr. Kenoyer secured this most inter- 

 esting information. His conclusions 

 confirm the opinion current among 

 old beekeepers, that rather abundant 

 rain is favorable for large honey 

 production : that south winds are ap- 

 parently more favorable than winds 

 from any other direction, that the 

 clear days just preceding a rain show 

 greater increase than the days im- 

 mediately following. He also con- 

 firms our opinion, based on past ex- 

 perience, that "a winter of heavy 

 snowfall is, in the great majority of 

 .uses, followed by a large honey 

 yield." This, we believe, is due to 

 the melting snow s.,aking the ground 

 more thoroughly than spring rains. 



"Environment Influences on Nectar 

 Secretion." by the same writer. This 

 is a very learned dissertation on the 

 ubji . I ..I nectar secretion, the writer 

 quoting 28 other experimenters and 

 students \ review of it would be 

 difficult. Let us mention only two 

 important points: "The optimum con- 



