1919 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



125 



Six were marked at the same time, 

 and no effect was noticeable in the 

 behavior of the queen or the bees. 

 This queen was prolific this season 

 and had a strong colony, but it stored 

 a surplus of only 21J4 pounds, f was 

 very enthusiastic at the time about 

 marking queens, but realized that 

 marking does not take the place of 

 the clipping, and I finally decided 

 that it was not worth the trouble. 



Practice on drones or workers be- 

 fore attempting queens. 



New Jersey. 



bloom without seeing a bee working 

 on it. The particular field where the 

 bees were busy had been neglected 

 and was full of grass and weeds and 

 the tobacco plants had suffered, the 

 leaves and blooms hanging down, 

 while in the adjoining fields which 

 were well worked, the plants looked 

 fresh and the flowers stood upright. 

 HEXRY BRENNER, Seguin. Tex. 



Honey From Tobacco 



In my first year in Porto Rico I 

 noticed one morning that the bees 

 were bringing in nectar abundantly. 

 I traced the bees about half a mile 

 and found them working in a tobacco 

 field of about an acre or two. On 

 my way I passed lots of tobacco in 



Nothing New Under the Sun 



In the October issue of the Ameri- 

 can Bee Journal a feeder is described 

 under the heading "A New Feeder." 

 It is now some 40 years since I de- 

 signed or invented a similar feeder 

 and gave a description of it in the 

 British Bee Journal. A good thing, 

 but it did not "take on." 



A. D. CAMERON, 

 Druimchruaid, Scotland. 



BEEKEEPERS BY THE WAY 



Migratory Graham 



There is no more interesting char- 

 acter on the Pacific Coast than Mi- 

 grator}' Graham. Known and feared 

 from the Canadian line to the Mexi- 

 can border, no man moves more fre- 

 quently or has a wider beekeeping 

 experience than he. Beginning his 

 career in San Diego County at the 

 age of 15 years, he has kept bees in 

 32 California counties and in five val- 

 leys of Nevada. 



Wherever beekeepers congregate 

 one hears tales of the exploits of 

 Migratory Graham. According to his 

 own statement he has shipped 161 

 cars of bees. When one stops to 

 consider the labor of preparing and 

 shipping a car of bees it seems amaz- 

 ing that one man should live to carry 

 on the shipping of bees on such a 

 scale. This would mean an average 

 of eight cars a year for twenty years. 



Graham figures that by frequent 

 moving one can get several crops a 

 year in California. As a typical ex- 

 ample of the possibilities in this di- 

 rection, he suggests building up in 

 spring in the almond belt of Butte 

 or Colusa Counties. From here he 

 would move to the orange in Tulare 

 County, then back to the Sacramento 



A famous migratory beekeeper 



or San Joachim Valley to the domes- 

 tic seed belt. From here he would 

 move to Northern California for an 

 alfalfa flow, and then south again for 

 Jackass clover. 



Graham has had more ups and 

 downs than fall to the lot of the 

 average man who aspires to do 

 things on a large scale. At one time 

 he had 3,000 colonies of bees and the 

 best equipment on the Pacific coast 

 and produced a crop of 240,000 

 pounds by the practice of migration. 

 From that he has reached the other 

 extreme with neither bees nor equip- 

 ment, and is now again on the up 

 grade with 600 colonies. 



Graham has been freely charged 

 with spreading foulbrood all up and 

 down the coast and has been the tar- 

 get for much violent criticism. Spe- 

 cial ordinances have been passed to 

 keep him out of special territory and 

 he has been arrested and fined times 

 almost without number. When the 

 writer enquired how many times he 

 had been arrested for violation of 

 ordinances, he replied that nobody 

 knew. 



Neither ordinances or quarantines, 

 fines or imprisonment have been suf- 

 ficient to keep him from moving, and 

 the beekeepers of a favored locality 

 are often surprised on going out 

 some morning to find a big apiary 

 offering its competition for the 

 honey-flow. However, he seldom re- 

 mains long in a place, and as soon 

 as the flow is over he leaves as mys- 

 teriously as he came. 



Migratory Graham is undoubtedly 

 one of the most capable beekeepers 

 of the time, yet his life has been far 

 from a pleasant one. Few men are 

 more adaptable than he is reported 

 to be. It is said that in the days of 

 his prosperity he dressed the part of 

 a gentleman of leisure and would 

 readily have passed for a foreign 

 nobleman with His high hat and cane. 

 In days of adversity he can play the 

 part of a tramp and make himself 

 comfortable with the barest necessi- 

 ties with equal ease. The world may 

 never see his like again. 



Does Corn Produce Nectar? 



I NOTICE that this subject is now 

 coming in for discussion in the 

 American Bee Journal, and I will 

 offer some thoughts on the subject 

 for what they are worth. I have 

 been keeping bees ever since I was 14 

 years of age and have always been 

 advised that common Indian corn or 

 maize does not produce nectar. The 

 fact of the matter is the botanical 

 rule holds that all plants that are 

 wind pollinating do not produce nec- 

 tar, while all the plants that are in- 

 sect pollinating do. I think that this 

 will hold good as a rule in corn, as 

 it is one of the wind pollinators. My 

 observations show for many years 

 that bees do not work on corn for 

 honey, but do so for pollen. I have 

 seen the bees working on the silks of 

 corn many times, and have good 

 reason to believe that they gather 

 some little sweet substance there- 

 from at times, but in so slight an 

 amount that it is not worth while 

 to mention. I have seen the bees 

 picking up pollen from the silks of 

 the corn on two occasions, and one 

 year I saw the bees gathering aphide 

 secretions from the corn. I know 

 that this was true from the fact that 

 much of the corn had a goodly 

 amount of aphides (lice) on it. It is 

 my observation that bees do not 

 gather honey from corn to count at 

 all. I mast say in this connection 

 that it is easy to believe that bees 

 gather honey from corn, since there 

 are many honey-bearing plants that 

 are producing at the time corn is at 

 its best. As a pollen-producer the 

 corn cannot be excelled, sometimes. 

 During the latter part of June and 

 the first part of July, 1917,1 witnessed 

 the greatest collection of pollen from 

 corn that I ever saw. We had a great 

 drought here in Texas at that time 

 and the corn just bunched to tassel. 

 About half of the corn pushed the 

 tassel about half out of the boot and 

 stopped growing suddenly. The tas- 

 sel was well enough developed to 

 produce pollen, and as the blades of 

 corn formed a funnel around the tas- 

 sel the pollen fell into this funnel and 

 lay in heaps, sometimes more than an 

 inch deep. At this time there was 

 nothing for the bees to do but gather 

 the pollen, and my bees put in great 

 slabs of this pollen. It was so dry 

 here that all other vegetation had 

 dried up and there was not an ounce 

 of honey in the country, but about 

 ten days later the cotton began to 

 give a faint tinge of honey. These 

 conditions continued until in Septem- 

 ber, when a few light showers came 

 and a little honey came, so that the 

 bees could gather enough for winter. 

 We thought that these fearfully dry 

 conditions would cease at the end of 



1917, but they continued all through 



1918, and we had a repetition of the 

 corn conditions of 1917, but had more 

 honey in the cotton, and the bees did 

 better. Neither of these years 

 showed that bees gathered honey 

 from corn. 



T. P. ROBINSON, Bartlett ; Tex. 

 A New Yorker's Observation 

 I have seen bees on both tassels 

 and silks, and have also seen them 



