1919 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



93 



material snugly around the can and 

 the job is done, and you have fed and 

 not disturbed the bees in the least. 

 At any time you wish to know if 

 more food is needed just tap on the 

 can slightly and you can tell. I use 

 old broken pieces of honey or sec- 

 tions that are unsaleable or are not 

 tit for baits; mash them right into 

 the sugar, comb and all. I leave 

 these cans on until late, and have 

 frequently found comb built in them. 

 The heat penetrates into the food 

 and it does not get cold or too moist, 

 but just right all the time. If the 

 can should become empty just re- 

 move and put another one on. The 

 honey dissolves the sugar, with the 

 aid of the heat. 

 Bradshaw, Win. 



Hermaphrodite Bees 



By W. J. Sheppard 



ONE of the beekeepers in this 

 district has just been telling 

 me of the unusual experience 

 he had with one of his colonies in 



1917. During that year, and again in 



1918, large numbers of malformed 

 bees were thrown out of one of his 

 hives. On making an examination of 

 these bees, as many as thirteen dis- 

 tinct and curious combinations were 

 observed. Some of them had a 

 worker eye on the left side of the 

 head and a drone eye on the other, 

 and some just the reverse. Others 

 were perfectly formed drones as far 

 as the petiole (the tube connecting 

 the thorax with the abdomen), the 

 abdomens from that point being in 

 every way the same as workers, in- 

 cluding the sting. Others again were 

 just the reverse of this. These mon- 

 strosities all emerged from worker 

 cells which were capped in such a 

 peculiar manner that they could all 

 be recognized before hatching out. 

 There was apparently nothing radi- 

 cally amiss with the queen otherwise, 

 as the colony built up rapidly in the 

 spring. At this time five nuclei were 

 made from the hive, and now comes 

 the remarkable and strange part of 

 the story. All these nuclei have re- 

 peated the same phenomena as the 

 parent colony, similar types of mal- 

 formed bees having been thrown out 

 of every one. Here, therefore is di- 

 rect evidence of a well-defined, al- 

 though undesirable, trait or charac- 

 teristic, in a queen being transmitted 

 to her next succeeding generation. 

 A theory advanced, when the oc- 

 currence was first observed in 1917, 

 was that possibly the old queen 

 might have been mated with a drone 

 emanating from a laying worker. 



Nelson, B. C. 



A Colorado Plan for Winter 



In Colorado and the mountain 

 States where there is much sunshine 

 during the winter months, the ten- 

 dency is to winter the bees in the 

 open without winter protection. With 

 frequent flights the bees come 

 through, though the colonies are 

 often badly weakened. 



Daniel Danielson, of Brush, Colo., 

 writes us that he finds it desirable to 



Daniel Danielson's method of wintering in Colorado. 



give some additional protection for 

 the winter months. He sums up the 

 necessary conditions for successful 

 wintering in his locality to be: 



Strong colonies with plenty of 

 stores. 



Two-story hives with upper heavy 

 with honey. 



Sealed covers to prevent loss of 

 heat. 



Additional protection from winter 

 winds. 



He has practiced wrapping in tar 

 papers for ten years past and is well 

 pleased with results. The hives are 

 moved close together in long rows, as 

 shown in the picture. It should be 

 noted that the hive entrances alter- 

 nate, one facing one way and the 

 next in the opposite direction, to pre- 

 vent mixing of bees. The bees clus- 

 ter near the bottom of the upper 

 hive-body, thus getting away from 

 the entrance and consequent drafts. 

 The cost is small (he figures it at 

 about 8 cents per colony), and the 

 time required is short. 



For the Colorado climate Mr. Dan- 

 ielson feels that this method of win- 

 tering is very satisfactory. 



Extracting at Central Plant 



By Morley Pettit 



WHEN I decided in favor of car- 

 rying an extracting outfit 

 from yard to yard, it con- 

 sisted of a hand-extractor, capping 

 can, cold knives, strainer and barrels 

 for containers. The honey was sel- 

 dom taken home, but shipped from 

 the nearest railway station. With 

 such conditions the hauling home of 

 supers and honey, when neither 

 needed to go, would have been out of 

 proportion to the moving of such a 

 light extracting outfit, even if more 

 rapid transportation than horse- 

 power had been available. 



The inrrease ^f labor-saving ma- 

 chinery, with the decease of labor, 

 increased the difficulty of moving and 



set me looking for a better way. The 

 advent of the Ford truck turned the 

 trick. Contributing factors have been 

 the problem of extracting houses, our 

 system of blending and clarifying by 

 gravity, change of selling package 

 and of method of selling, and a grow- 

 ing desire for more regular life than 

 continued outapiary work permits. 



To enlarge on points in the last 

 paragraph, I always looked out for 

 an unused dwelling in an orchard for 

 an apiary site, thus securing an ex- 

 tracting house and shade for the 

 hives. This combination can fre- 

 quently be found, but not often 

 enough in combination with other 

 desirable features to suit extensive 

 beekeeping. Our store-tanks hold 

 2,500 pounds each. We have a suffi- 

 cient number to fill two a day and 

 still let each stand for at least three 

 days for blending and clarifying be- 

 fore filling into selling packages. 

 The latter are 10-pound pails almost 

 exclusively. It is obviously not de- 

 sirable to leave honey in such ac- 

 cessible form in an outapiary build- 

 ing. Our present method of selling 

 requires snipping in lots of a few 

 hundred or thousand pounds from 

 day to day, so shipments are all made 

 from home. 



Replying to Major Shallard (Ameri- 

 can Bee Journal, 1918, Page 370), I 

 agree with him fully in his desire to 

 sell honey with flavor and aroma un- 

 impaired. Like him, I do not care for 

 the idea of running the honey straight 

 from the extractor to the selling 

 packages. There is so much varia- 

 tion in the honey taken from differ- 

 ent supers in the same apiary at the 

 same time that we prefer to blend i. 

 in large quantities, as stated. 



I believe Major Shallard's difficulty 

 with capping melters is that he tries 

 to render wax and honey from cap- 

 pings at the same time. He is not 

 alone in this, but I consider it cannot 

 be done without too much flavoring 

 of the honey. The melter should not 

 liquefy the wax sufficiently to make 



