14 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



where the swarm has gone, cluster there, and 

 remain for a week or more, and dwindle away 

 one by one until they have all disappeared. 



Sometimes a swarm will settle in a wild 

 grape-vine, or under a limb of a tree, and be- 

 ing full of honey start combs, and the queen 

 lays a few eggs, then the scouts fail to entice 

 the swarm to leave its young, and remain all 

 summer to make comb and rear brood ; but I 

 never found any honey to amount to much, 

 only enough to feed the brood. But woe to 

 them when .Jack Frost puts in an appearance, 

 or a ring-tailed coon reaches his paw in the 

 combs and breaks them apart; then the poor 

 little bees have to bid farewell to this cold, 

 vain world, and pass to that bourne from 

 which no bee has ever yet returned. 



G. POINDEXTER. 



Dewitt Co., III., Dec. 14. 



c 



Beedom Boiled Down 



) 



Pawn Your Watch and Get a Bee= 

 Book. 



A beginner wrote to a well-known American 

 apiarist, asking for a few pointers on bee- 

 keeping, as he had no money to buy a bee- 

 book. The reply was at once laconic and 

 practical: " Pawn your watch and get one." 

 — Gilbert Wintle, in Canadian Bee Jour- 

 r.nl. 



How to Keep Honey Indefinitely. 



Mr. Charles Weber, son of C. H. W. Weber, 

 told me that it was no trick at all to keep all 

 honey except alfalfa liquid indefinitely under 

 all conditions. The temperature must be 

 brought up to 145 degrees Fahr., and kept 

 there continuously, without variation, for S6 

 hours. That is the whole secret. "But," 

 said I, " will this not darken the honey? " 



" No, sir, if you do it right. Lonr/ heating, 

 f07i(m!/ci«s/7/ applied at a muderate tempera- 

 ture is much more effective than a high tem- 

 perature for a short time. The latter spoils the 

 flavor of the honey, as well as darkens it, 

 while the former leaves it with its original 

 delicacy of flavor, and with no darkening of 

 color." 



He emphatically stated, however, that his 

 formula would not apply in the case of 

 alfalfa. He could liquefy it, of course, but it 

 would not keep in a liquid condition nearly 

 so long. — Gleanings in Bee-Culture. 



Bees Wintering in Spite of Distur- 

 ances. 



L. C. Root, well-known to older bee-keep- 

 ers as the son-in-law of Moses Quinby, and 

 himself a successful bee-keeper, on account of 

 other business gave up bee-keeping some 

 years ago. He says in Gleanings in Bee-Cul- 

 ture: 



Although living in the heart of the town I 

 was lonely without my bees; and as an experi- 

 ment I secured in the spring of 1001 a single 

 colony, and placed it in the loft of my barn. 

 During the season I made from this colony 



NO GAS TO KILL 



often 

 the 



SVRE HATCH INCUBATOR 



hef-ause it's heated by ourrustless, heavy 

 fopper, hotwater'circulator. Don't waste 

 money and lose good ej^g-s experiment- 

 inp with poor infubators. Send for free 

 catalogue. B 10 and learn whv the Sure 

 Hatch hatches 3» re. 8ure Hatch Ineu- 

 bator Co.. Clay C'eiiter, Neb. and ludlanapolU, Ind. 



We Sell Root's Goods in Michigan 



Let us quote jou prices on Sections, Hives, 

 Foundation, etc., as we can save you time and 

 freight. Four percent off for cash orders in 

 December. M. H. HUNT & SON. 



Bell Branch, Wayne Co., Mich. 



•GRANDEST FEATURE- 



"The removable ehic-k tray is the grandest feature 

 an incubatorcan have." Mr.ElIison, Poultry Judge, 

 said tb;it about the 



GEM INCUBATOR 



: GEM INCUBATOR COMPANY, Box 52, Dayton, Ohio | 



Please mention Bee Journal wnen writing 



850,000 



GRAPEVINES 



Uescriptlve price-list Iree. Lewis Roesch. Fredonla, N.Y. 



Ijice l>o More than to eat your fowls. 

 They eat your profits, for they sap the energry 

 of the hen and talie the " life " out of her. If 

 the lice problem is neglected, a flocli will not 

 lay half as many eggs as you would get for 

 your feed and work if you keep them free 

 from lice. It's a big job to catch each fowl 

 and grease or dust it by hand, and yet some- 

 thing must be done to keep down the lice. It 

 has taken American inventors a long time to 

 .solve this problem, but at last a machine has 

 come on the market that is simple and practi- 

 cal. It does the business in a common-sense 

 way, and thoroughly cleans six to a dozen 

 fowls at a time with less work than you have 

 to do in dusting one by hand The first thing 

 it does to them is to make them rutlle up all 

 the feathers on their bodies, so that a surpris- 

 ingly small amount of powder will kill all the 

 lice on them. It is a simple, inexpensive ma- 

 chine, and will pay for itself in a year if you 

 have only 25 fowls. It is one of those thing 

 that you wish you had thought of yourself — 

 it is so simple and practical. It is the inven- 

 tion of a practical poultryman and is endorsed 

 by some of the leading poultry experts in the 

 United States. Any one who wants the whole 

 story can obtain free a little book that tells 

 all about it, and gives a lot of practical infor- 

 mation on the lice yuestion, by addressing the 

 manufacturers, The Chas. Schild Company, 

 Ionia, Mich. Please mention the American 

 Bee .lournal when writing. 



9 I Q.80 Fsr 

 I ^ 200 Egg 

 iNCUSATOR 



Perfect 



action. Tiatches every fertilt 



egg. W:ile for catalog to-day, 



QEO. H. STAHL, Quincy, III 



Please mention the Bee Journal. 



THE EASY WAY 



HOEING CULTIVATING. 



No. 4 Combined Drill does gardening "the easy way." It Is ni>w absolutely i 



PLANTING 



THE "PLANET JR 



rows and drops accurately in liills— 



and vei^etable seeds. Undeniably the best general purpose tool obtaiDableatany 



for the private gfardei 



an artificial swarm and took 100 pounds of 

 surplus in sections, both colonies being left 

 in good condition for any experiment in win- 

 tering. 



The hives were placed on the eoulh side of 

 the stable, which is in a protected location, 

 affording the bees frequent flights, for in the 

 south of Connecticut there are often mild and 

 sunny days even in mid-winter. A fire is kept 

 in the lower room of the stable in severe 

 weather, and this, with the animal heat con- 

 stantly radiated, maintains an even, moderate 

 temperature. The advantage of this position 

 lies in the fact that it is a compromise be- 

 tween the exposure of outdoor wintering and 

 the confinement of the usual indoor practice. 



Two horses belonging to a physician are 

 stabled directly under the hives; and as feed 

 is kept in the loft, and all stable work done in 

 the barn, the bees are subject to disturbance 

 at all hours of day and night. Even with 

 other conditions in their favor I did not believe 

 it possible that bees could winter well in a 

 location when they would be so continuously 

 disturbed. Much to my surprise they came 

 through in extremely good condition ; in fact, 

 they wintered so well that I have increased 

 them during the present season to eight colo- 

 nies, although I attribute part of my success 

 in securing this increase to my good fortune 

 in obtaining extremely good Italian queens to 

 supply the new colonies. 



If it can be proved that noise and jarring 

 are not detrimental to bees in winter quarters, 

 the knowledge may be useful to bee-keepers 

 of all classes; yet my chief motive in relating 

 this experience is that it gives encourage- 

 ment to those who, like myself, have but 

 limited room, and can not keep bees except in 

 a buildittg where disturbances are unavoid- 

 able. 



California Honey and Producers. 



The California producers of honey have or- 

 ganized a combination or trust, whose object 

 is to relieve the industry from the slough of 

 low prices into which it has fallen for the last 

 few years. 



Prices of California honey have ruled low 

 for several seasons — i to 5 cents per pound 

 f. o. b. for extracted honey, and 9 cents for 

 comb — owing mostly to competition among 

 producers to unload at a time hardly consis- 

 tent with buyers' operations, which are al- 

 ways best in the fall. This condition has 

 been remedied, however, by the forming of 

 the Honey Association, and, as honey is so 

 much money, the same has found its way 

 into storage, with prices held high, so that 

 moving East brings 5'.^ cents, carload lots, for 

 extracted, and 13 cents for comb honey. 



Producers generally are in better condition 

 financially, are operating on a larger scale, 

 and are not forcing a market. 



Honey associations have had a wonderful 

 effect in giving stability to the business, and 

 producers generally are holding for higher 

 prices than the associations, of which there 

 are five in Southern California, with the new 

 large one just formed in Central California. 

 These associations are now affording facilities 

 for storage and necessary advances, and have 

 yet to take up the distribution and advertis- 

 ing of a famous article of food. 



The value of California honey has deteri- 

 orated for years past, owing to careless pro- 

 duction, the sacrifice of tiuality for quantity. 

 This is the cause of so much thin, unripe 

 honey, and has practically killed the large 

 European trade we enjoyed years back, and 

 to an extent destroyed the esteem in which 

 California honey was held. 



With the good effect of association work 

 and the interesting of men of modern ideas, 

 California will attain the reputation again, 

 and, with careful inspection of the product 

 by men who are thoroughly familiar with and 

 are producers themselves of the best grades, 

 will in time create a large demand, gaining 

 lost trade. This will mean a vast increase in 

 production. Here is an opportunity for capi- 

 tal and enterprise, with a system of labels and 

 brands and the knowledge of where the grades 

 are best distributed, to build an immense en- 

 terprise. I have sold honey to an Eastern 

 packer at 5 cents to be resold at 16 cents per 

 pound under his own label. 



The United States produces less than one 

 pound of honey per capita, while sugar rates 



