THE APIARY.

Otago Witness, Issue 3017, 10 January 1912, Page 12

THE APIARY.

By J. A

SOUTHLAND BEEKEEPERS’ ASSOCIATION FIELD DAY. This event is fixed for Wednesday, January 17, and is to take place at “ Qakleigh Apiary,” Wyndiham. For the event th© • Southland Beekeepers’ Association gives a hearty invitation to all interested in beekeeping. Their hope is that it may be helpful to individual beekepers as -well as helping the interest* of th© association generally. The usual programme is something like the: The visitors gather during the forenoon at the apiary. At noon lunch is served. In th© afternoon demonstrations covering most of the important work in the apiary are given, and discussion follows. Then in the evening a meeting of the association is held. At this meeting matters of much importance will be brought forward. It is to be hoped that members will roll up and that there will be a good muster. Looked: at from a social point of view, tlie meeting has done good in the past. It helps the feeling of brotherlinegs among beekeepers, and wo say that this is not the least important benefit we derive from our association. Wo hopo to see a large number of the old faces again, and wo extend to them all a hearty “ Come and help us.” THE WEEK. The south has been favoured during the holidays, and; already wo would fain see a good heavy shower occasionally. We do not get on well with more than a week or 10 days’ dry weather at one time, more especially when, during one half of the days, it is blowing hard. The bees are now doing very well. Brood-rearing is going on with a rush; but there is a lot of leeway to make up, end; it will be bettor for beekeepers if the. rush of the season does not come for a fortnight yet. At Oakleigh we have now all th© supers on. To-day (January 5) we finished a round, in which we “closed up” our apiary considerably. Where colonies were backward we put two gethcr. Honey was coming in freely, and there as no need to lake any particular care in uniting. While field bees from a shifted colony were welcomed without trouble by the next nearest colony, our plan was simply to take one weak colony and place it on top of another, allowing the field bees to find a horn© In the nearest colony. An excluder was placed: between thorn, but no car© was taken to remove th© queen, ko that for a little while in a few colonies there will be two queens at work. In a short time, however, all the queens remaining in the supers will bo removed. QUEEN-REARING.

It is a good thing for two reasons to know how to rear good queens. We want to improve our strain of hoe® so as to get the best workers, and also the bees with most vigour that will fight against disease. Then we want to replace the old queens. Some of our best boekeepe:® have found that it paid to only keep a queen for two seasons, the third and fourth season often showing a marked fulling off in her power to keep her combs full. It is therefore in the interest of the beekeepers to replace her.

To roar good queen® requires more than a theoretical knowledge. We must have practice, and whatever system is adopted wo think it best to go slow until a sufficient amount of practice has developed confidence. It is not enough to raise something that we can call a queen. That is easily done. What wo must aim at is to produce good queens, and until we can manage to do that it is more profitable to allow the bee® to attend to the business themselves. The system wo prefer and most commonlv in use is that worked out by the late Air E. L. Pratt, and given by him in his pamphlet, entitled “Simplified Queenrearing.’’ In his introduction to this booklet he says: “I have several times been asked by extensive honey-producers and others to devise a simple plan of queenroaring with ‘swarth more’ appliances, which cun he successfully carried on by help, without materially interfering with honey-production —ono that will produce long-lived queens with as little time and attention as possible, and one that, dees net ‘ use up ’ the bee® devoted to honeystoring. “ Withl this object in view I ret to experimenting, and it is mv belief that I now present a thoroughlv practical and reliable plan, which will fully me'-t the requirements of any beekeepe r whose time and interest are mainly given to producing honey. “ In the following pages I endeavour to give full and plain directions for cheaply raising any number of queens during a honey flow, which will in every way equal tho-e reared by natural swarming with the least manipulation of any plan ever- yet psib’i’shcd. “There is no expensive dequeening of stocks, no disturbance to brood combs, no lor® of brood or hon.-v, no stop in egglaying, and no time lost in hunting queens or puttering. “ The entire proceeding can he conducted along with the regular day’s work. Furthermore. this is a plan so simple that the average helper can prepare everything in advance under direction.” Now, this system i® all that the author claims for it. AVc cannot in this column !

givo it in the author’s words, simply because it is too long. Neither can we condense it. We therefore advise our readers to procure a copy, and along with it a copy of Mr Pratt’s other booklets, which are aft. advertised by the Alliance Box Company. Mr Pratt was one of those gentle souls who could handle bees without smoke. Ho is principally responsible for what is called ' the baby nuclei system—-that is, little colonies in 6in square boxes, with frames to suit, and tenanted by a single cupful of bee©. In these he was ab'e successfully to hatch and fertilise his queens at small expense in bees to the apiary. Let us say further that wo do not want our readers to forget that the standard work on the above subject :'s Doolittle’s “ Queen-rear-ing.” BEE BEHATIOUR. Some Things Which Are Net Known in the Books.— (By Arthur 0. Miller.) Bees sleep, and do a lot of it. They will crawl into a cell containing an egg or ! sometimes a small larva, settle comfortably I down, and stay there for hours at a time. Tlius doth the little busy bee! They never' touch the egg or larva, and their presence ! has nothing to do with the hatching cf | the egg. When a queen is cramped for room she j will u»o any shaped cell or put several eggs J in a cell, and sometimes two of them will ' hatch there and the larvae bo fed as one. j Before they got very large one disappears, i There is an authentic report of two queens j hatching from ono cell. Bees sometimes seal a queen-cell when | the larva is only four days from the egg— I 90 to 100 hours,' —and the resulting queen I is as fine as can be desired. This ac- I counts for some of the supposedly tardy j hatchings. The reason that the queen larva does not spin a cocoon at the upper part | of the cell is because she cannot reach i it. She turns about and reaches up her j full length, but cannot go further. When pressed for room bees will sometimes put ! fresh nectar in cells containing eggs, and ' soon after remove the nectar. The eggs hatch a© usual. When ripening . honew bees spread out all they can.; nonce 10 frames in a 10frame super are better than eight, as it gives the beea mere ‘'standing room.” The ripening process is most interesting to watch. The large glands which open at the base of the mandibles apparently have an active part in the conversion of nectar into honey. This “standing room” probably has much to do with the nonewirming or retarded swarming in the Aspinwall hive.

A bee packing pollen in a cell acts like a little pig rooting, and a tiny grunt from the little worker would hard y seem strange. Workers, drones, and queens alike are very fond of digested food' fresh from the workers or of brood food from th© cells when it is taken out; and why they let it alone when it is in the cells is a mystery —probably due to the presence of the larva; for when that is gone, the food is promptly eaten up; and yet if conditions become adverse, larvae and food all vanish. Shall we ever know th© whys? To irritate gentle bees to the stinging point, use cotton in any form as smoker fuel. Comb-building, to all appearances, is a most haphazard job. One bee, after a seemingly endless lot of fussing, will add a bit of wax to the growing Comb, and soon after another bee will remove it and apply it elsewhere. And yet see the result. Unsealed honey in the brood-nest undergoes a lot of shifting—outward if the brood is increasing, inward if decreasing; and this is l so, even with a pretty heavy inflow of fresh nectar. A dozen bees can raise a good quean if conditions are right. Bees draw down out of the suners on 000 l nights, not to keep th© brood warm, but to keep themselves Warm. The sheets of brood are superb warming-pans for cold bce-foet. Watch the drones when they are being gradually expelled from the cluster. They will mass shoulder to shoulder on any outlying brood. To keep that brood warm 7 Well, hardlv. The bee’s tongue has four known functions —taking up food, spreading propolis, “ polishing ” cells (probably with propolis), and taking up any surplus liquids within the hive. If the food is , goed bees can get along without flying for a long period in winter. ' Under normal conditions, then, all excrement is virtually solid. If the hive is dry, and ventilation ample, it soon becomes quite dry, and is later thrown out with capping chips, etc. In winter the temperature within the hive and outride the clu«t?r is, within one or two degrees, the same as it is outside the hive. Winter temperature of the cluster is close to 70deg Fanr. Bees hang back down and feet up when putting honey (nectar) in the cells until the Cells arc nearly full; then they hang vertically with head down. The nectar (already partly ; changed to honey) is discharged directly . from the mouth, and flows between the mandibles and over the gland-duct openings thereon. The mandibles are kept in motion during the operation. The tongue takes no part in the operation, but is folded up behind the chin. Providence, R. I. [The idea that brood is a warming-pan ; for th© cold feet of bees is a now one. I and probably rioht. This is like a num- ! be-p of oilier thim/e hero suggested that should draw forth discussion. Wo don’t find that cotton waste angers bees—quite to the contrary. We use dirty or greasy waste as an exclusive fuel for smokers. —Ed.] — , “ Gleanings in Bee Culture.”