HOETICULTURAL SOCIETY. 267 



that nine pounds is sufficient to winter them on and he will war- 

 rant them to go through all right on that. He commenced last 

 spring with about 80 swarms of bees, and he showed me about 15 

 hives that he intended to use to put the surplus bees in that he got 

 this last season. This man has made a great amount of money. 

 At one time he lost every bee he had, but he was not discouraged. 

 He went to work and got some more and he is very successful in 

 bee-keeping now. He keeps down the increase and keeps his 

 swarms very strong. He put in 81 swarms the last fall and in the 

 spring he had 79 left, and those two were lost on account of being 

 queenless. That is an important point. The old bee-keepers 

 say that we must see that our colonies have strong, fertile queens, 

 and be careful not to keep a queen more than three years, and it is 

 better to renew them at the end of two years. 



I wish to say one word in regard to the uses of honey. Now, 

 you know that there is a disease called la grippe that is going all 

 through the country. There are thousands sick with it at the 

 present time. The editor of the American Bee Journal has been con- 

 fined to his bed with this disease and there was one of his neigh- 

 bors who was very low with it. They called in three doctors, for 

 consultation, and they decided they would try honey and lemons 

 and if that wouldn't help her, they didn't know what to do. They 

 commenced using the honey and lemons and at the date of the 

 last Beekeeper's Journal she was getting much better. I have a 

 brother living here in this town, and he had a very severe attack 

 of this disease which settled in his jaw. I brought down some 

 honey with me and he commenced to use it with the lemons and 

 last night he was fully 50 per cent better. He said he commenced 

 to feel better right after he used it. 



President Wilcox. I wish the bee-keepers here to state how 

 many swarms they have on an average, and how much honey they 

 have produced and just about what the bees have netted them. 



Mr. Thielman. I commenced with 185 colonies last spring. 

 This is the basis we go on as a rule. They have increased to two 

 hundred and have produced twenty-five thousand pounds of honey 

 which netted me $2000 or about that. There were twenty-two 

 thousand pounds of comb honey and three thousand of the other. 



Mr. Pond. Last spring I commenced with about five colonies of 

 bees, and increased to about seventeen. I had six thousand pounds 

 of extract honey, or within a few pounds of that. Almost the en- 

 tire work of attending to the bees was done by my daughter 19 

 years old, and my son about 13 years old. My brother makes it his 

 entire business to attend to bees. He started last year with seven- 



