72 MISCELLANEOUS PAPERS ON APICULTURE. 



The greatest obstacle in the control of swarming is the fact that 

 the activities bringing on swarming are so little understood. This 

 phenomenon represents the bee's natural method of increasing the 

 number of colonies, and it' may be attributed to instinct. This, 

 however, does not explain what factors induce the bees to swarm or 

 what their activities are previous to swarming. When the behavior 

 of the bees before and during swarming is better understood, we may 

 have greater hope of a method of control. 



Winter losses. — The losses in winter are considerable, due largely 

 to starvation, dampness, too long a time without a cleansing flight, 

 or extreme cold weather. By wintering bees in cellars in the North 

 this loss may be considerably reduced, but while much has been 

 written on this subject the general loss to northern bee keepers is 

 probably at least 10 per cent every winter. An even temperature of 

 about 45° F. and a dry atmosphere are considered best, and the best 

 method of obtaining these conditions is an individual problem. 



Where bee keepers do not pay any attention to the selection of 

 their best stock for breeding purposes, the loss of 10 per cent or more 

 of their colonies in winter must not be looked on as a total loss, for 

 g3nerally the poorest colonies succumb. In the southwestern part 

 of the United States the winter problem can be said not to exist in 

 the way it does in the North, and, as a result, a large part of the 

 bees kept there are of poor stock, vastly inferior in many cases to 

 equally neglected stock in portions of the country where winters are 

 severe. 



On the other hand, in these warmer portions of the country it is 

 necessary to leave much heavier stores of honey in the hives to carry 

 the colonies over from one season of activity to the next, so that 

 " wintering" is very expensive. It has been suggested seriously that 

 colonies be placed in cold storage for several months to save this 

 heavy consumption. 



" Winter loss" is in many cases caused by disease, which so weakens 

 the colony during the summer that it is not able to survive the winter. 

 In such cases the bee keeper is usually ignorant of disease. 



Waste of wax. — No other manipulation of the apiary is so primitive 

 as wax extraction and nowhere is there more room for improvement. 

 As every bee keeper knows, it is difficult to remove wax from the 

 comb, particularly in the case of old combs which have been used for 

 brood rearing for years. The amount of wax wasted every year by 

 inadequate methods of extraction amounts to thousands of dollars 

 annually. In most cases over 10 per cent of the wax remains in the 

 " slumgum, ' ' and even by careful work 5 per cent is left. By repeated 

 rendering, the amount may be reduced, but the time necessary for 

 this usually makes it unprofitable. 



