January, 1908. 



American liee Journal 



might somewhat curtail the profits of the ex- 

 press companies, it, of course, will be strongly 

 opposed. Also country merchants think they 

 see a bugbear in the mail-order houses, and 

 have organized to iight the bill. 



Now the mail-order houses have come to 

 stay, unless they are met by better methods 

 than fighting the parcels-post bill. 



The parcels post will cut small figure in 

 the mail-order business, for the reason that 

 that business will always be mainly by freight, 

 as freight-rates will always be very much 

 cheaper than any rate can be made by mail. 



You say, "The Post-Master-General has the 

 best wishes of the people." Has he? If he 

 has, let them strengthen his hands by writing 

 to their Senators and Representatives, asking 

 for the passage of the Parcels Post Bill. 

 Whenever the members of Congress are satis- 

 fied that the people want the law, they will 

 get it. A Congressman told me he was op- 

 posed to the bill. I asked him why. He re- 

 plied that he had many letters from country 

 merchants and commercial travelers objecting 

 to the bill, and hardly any in its favor. The 

 fact is that the many needing and wanting 

 the bill are the farmer and the artisan who 

 do not take so active a part in the business 

 of the country — not so active as they should. 



Now, if you want the parcels post, let your 

 wants be known. Write your Senators and 

 Representatives at once, and if this session of 

 Congress does not pass the bill, keep it up in 

 the next session, and we will get it. 



Clayton, 111., Uec. 25. S. N. Black. 



Nucleus Method of Making In- 

 crease. 



I will let some experimenting bee-keepers 

 know how I make swarms in the spring. I 

 go to the strongest colonies, and take 3 frames 

 of brood and eggs, and hang them in a new 

 hive, and hang 2 frames of honey, one on 

 each side of the 3 frames of brood, and let 

 them hatch their own queen. I hang 3 frames 

 of combs in the parent hive again, and about 

 10 days afterward I take 2 of those frames 

 out again and give them to the nucleus. I 

 have had great success in that way of making 

 swarms. I made 3 of those swarms about the 

 last part of May, and they are all 3 good, 

 strong colonies, with plenty of honey for win- 

 ter: and as for the parent colonies, one 

 swarmed and 2 didn't. The 2 that didn't filled 

 72 sections of comb honey each. 



LaMotte, Iowa, Dec. 23. Nick Jentgen. 



Clovers for Honey and Hay. 



This has been one of the poorest years for 

 honey in the history of bee-keeping in this 

 vicinity. We had no honey to speak of. The 

 bees went into winter quarters in fairly good 

 shape. The winter so far has been very mild 

 and dry, and could not have been better for 

 out-door wintering. Most of my bees are just 

 on the stands as they were in the summer. 

 Alsike and sweet clover seem to be the best 

 of anything we have for bees. Of course, 

 white clover is good, but not better than al- 

 sike, and perhaps not nearly so good, in this 

 place at least, and then the alsike makes 

 the very best hay of any of the clover family. 

 Mix alsike with timothy and for hay nothing 

 is nearly as good in this country. 



And then sweet clover, that some people call 

 a noxious weed, is a very valuable plant. 

 There is nothing that yields more honey than 

 it does, but as yet it has not been used for 

 hay. However, cattle eat it when green, quite 

 readily, and it would bear cutting two or 

 three times a year. It is also a great fer- 

 tilizer, having large, long roots, and the growth 

 is so dense that nothing else can grow where 

 it is. If you want to get rid of it, plow it 

 under when about 6 inches high and plant 

 corn, potatoes, or some other crop on the land, 

 and the job is done. O. P. Mieler. 



Menlo, Iowa, Dec. 24. 



Some Bee-Keeping Experiences. 



I began bee-keeping 4 years ago by capturing 

 a "honey queen." That is. I took unto my- 

 self a wife. My mother-in-law gave us 3 

 colonies of bees in old 8-frame Langstroth 

 hives. I did not know much about bee-keep- 

 jn<» at that time, although my wife had worked 

 with bees ever since she was large enough to 

 work a bee-smoker. 



I transferred the bees into lo-frame dove- 

 tailed hives, using the plain 4^^ section. The 

 first season I had one colony that gave me 106 

 pounds of fancy Honey, which I sold. My 

 sales of honey for that wear amounted to $18. 

 My sales of honey for every year have given 

 me a good profit on my investment. 



In 1907 I nad 10 colonies. The spring was 

 cold and bad for bees. I fed some sugar syrup 

 until the clover began to bloom, so I had 

 plenty of "harvest hands" when the harvest 



was white. I put the first honey on the mar- 

 ket that was sold in this vicinity this season. 

 I peddle almost all of my honey, selling it 

 direct to the consumers. I have learned a 

 few things and have had some rather queer 

 experiences in disposing of my honey crop in 

 this way, and I may tell some time about sell- 

 ing honev that way. 



I kept no account of the number of pounds 

 of honey that I produced. I kept a record of 

 my sales, which amounted to $91.64. fancy 

 honey selling for 15 cents a pound, and No. i 

 for 12^ cents. 



I kept my bees from swarming by cutting 



?ueen-cells, giving room, ventilation, and shade, 

 made some mistakes that cost me money, 

 but I will try not to make the same blunders 

 again. I caught and bought 9 swarms. I 

 didn't make any increase, but united the 

 swarms with the weakest colonies. I reared 

 a few queens from my best bees, and re- 

 queened the poorest colonies with them. 1 

 bought 4 colonies of bees at a public sale this * 

 fall for $2.23 per colony, as bees are generally 

 a poor sale, seldom bringing the cost of the 

 hive. 



There are no expert bee-keepers m this coun- 

 try. Almost every one keeps a few bees to 

 produce honey for his own use, although this 

 is a fair bee-country, with tons of honey going 

 to waste for want of bees to gather it. There 

 are no extractors used, and the majority of 

 people don't know what extracted honey is; 

 and it would take some energy and push to 

 work up an extracted honey market. 



D. B. KiNNISON. 



David City, Nebr., Dec. 26. 

 Worked for Increase — Bee-Tree — 

 Plan for Requeening. 



In the fall of 1906 I had 4 colonies. In the 

 spring of 1907 I had 3 colonies. I worked 

 mostly for increase, so my honey crop was only 

 about 200 pounds of comb honey. What honey 

 I did sell, I sold at 15 cents per pound. This 

 fall I had 11 colonies. As I did more in- 

 creasing than was profitable, considering the 

 season, some colonies were light. 



As to honey-plants, I would say that, in my 

 opinion, the alsike clover is getting a better 

 hold, I think, in this vicinity. We always 

 have a good flow of white clover honey. 



I will relate a little of my experience of 

 the other day. My brother and myself had 

 taken the job of cutting down some trees for 

 some neighbors. When we had one tree cut 

 down, I happened to walk around the top, and 

 heard the buzzing of some Dees. On closer ob- 

 servation we found that quite a large colony 

 of bees were in the tree. 



I have 3 colonies with pure (queens. I would 

 like a simple plan for requeening those others 

 without buying queens. 



Walter M. Adema. 



Berlin, Mich., Dec. 29. 



[Perhaps Dr. Miller will furnish the "sim- 

 ple plan" requested. — Editor.] 



Results of the Past Season. 



In 1905 I bought a standard-bred queen. In 

 1906 she did no good, nor did any of my other 

 bees, but I want to tell you what she did under 

 the bad conditions we had here last spring. 

 In January, February, and March, it was fine, 

 warm weather, and the bees were breeding and 

 building up fast, and had lots- of brood and 

 were doing fine, when April came with the 

 cold weather and caught the poor bees hover- 

 ing their young, and you know how game 

 they are. they stuck to their young and died 

 in the act of protecting them. So I lost 30 

 percent of my bees with the cold spell last 

 April. Hence you see that my bees were in 

 bad shape. Then we had too much wet weath- 

 er for wliite clover, so we had no show for any 

 kind of honey crop. 



Now the standard queen I had bought, as I 

 said above, outdid all the bee-work I have seen 

 while working with bees for over 20 years. 



Last spring was wet and there were no signs 

 of any honey up to June 15, so I could see no 

 signs of any swarms. On the i6th, I said to 

 my wife that I would go to town as there were 

 no bees going to swarm. At 10 o'clock my 

 standard queen came off with a very laroe 

 swarm and settled in a small cedar tree, and 

 were still hanging on the tree when I came 

 home, too late to hive them. 



In hiving them I took out 4 frames of brood 

 and put them in a lo-frame hive with one 

 queen-cell and 2 empty frames with starters. 

 Then I took 2 more frames and put them in a 

 lo-frame hive. Then I took one more frame 

 of brood with a queen-cell and put it in a 10- 

 fram hive. So you see 1 had taken out 7 

 frames from my standard queen, leaving 3. I 

 filled the hive with tramcs with starters, and 

 by the mdidle of July the hive was full of 



brood and honey. So I took out the old queen 

 with one frame of brood and put her in a 10- 

 frame hive, putting in also a frame of honey 

 and an empty frame. Now, of course, the 

 bees went to work rearing queens, and when 

 the cells were ripe I had a nice lot of young 

 queens that i made good use of. 



Now I want to tell you what those young 

 queens did — that is, the first hatch of them. I 

 know what I am about to state is absolutely 

 true. We will call the 4-frame hive No. i. 

 That young queen filled her hive chock-full in 

 little or no time, as we had an early fall run 

 of honey and it came in very fast, but a very 

 early frost cut it off suddenly. To my amaze- 

 ment I got 95 pounds of surplus honey from 

 No. I. No. 2 with the 2 frames filled her 

 hive full and gave me 40 pounds of honey. 

 No. 3 with the one frame of brood filled her 

 hive 'full, and I had put on a super and they 

 had just commenced to work in the super when 

 the frost came. 



Now, you can have no idea what I think of 

 those bees, for in 1901 I had a colony that 

 gave me 251 pounds, and I thought that that 

 was a great thing, but triat was nothing to 

 compare with this, as 1901 was a boomer for 

 honey, and this year was a failure, we may 

 say, for I did not get over 600 pounds of 

 honey, and this is the record of the first lot 

 of queens from the swarm.. I will tell about 

 the last lot of queens later. They did well; 

 not one of them mismated, and had more 

 honey in their hives than they can consume this 

 winter. George Sage. 



Linton, Ind., Dec. 23. 



Handling Bees in the City. 



I have been handling bees for the last 25 

 years. The first start I got was by catching 

 a run-away swarm. I have never had over 10 

 colonies at one time, because I did not have 

 room for them. I reside in a city which has 

 a population of about 80.000 inhabitants, and 

 I keep my bees in a small yard in the rear of 

 my house. I have never had one word of com- 

 plaint from my neighbors about them and I'll 

 tell you that sometimes they make things pretty 

 lively around this small yard. You can imag- 

 ine that they must do some flying when one 

 black colony stored about 170 pounds of comb 

 honey. Don't let me hear anybody say that 

 those black bees are not hustlers, if they are 

 managed right, and at the proper time. I also 

 have one colony of Italians and 2 of Car- 

 niolans, but they did not store any honey, as 

 they were only nuclei in August, but I manipu- 

 lated tliem in this short time so that they went 

 into wihter quarters on 8 frames, and at this 

 writing they appear to be in the best of spirits. 



I make all my hives by hand, and up to this 

 date I have 25 hand-made hives. Quite a few 

 of our bee-keepers think that bees will not 

 store as much honey in a hand-made hive as 

 they will in a nice, machine-made hive. Yes, 

 I must say right here that a friend of mine 

 who lives only a short distance away, buys all 

 his hives, etc., and yet he averaged only about 

 30 pounds per colony. This goes to show 

 that the hive is not the important question 

 in the production of honey. It is how you 

 manipulate the bees. I claim that this, and 

 this alone, is one of the most important steps 

 in bee-keeping. If you have an apiary you 

 must study every colony and make yourself 

 familiar with the conditions of the inside of 

 every hive; you must know the exact age of 

 your queen; whether she is doing her duty; 

 whether there is plenty of brood hatching in 

 the proper time; if there are plenty of bees 

 in the hive; whether there is too much drone- 

 comb or too many useless drones. Those arc a 

 few of the many things which the apiarist must 

 acquaint himself with, and must remedy them 

 at once if he wishes to reap any profits from 

 the sale of honev. The coming spring I intend 

 to start an apiary in Rensselaer county. I 

 have planned and arranged this in such a way 

 that I will have everything very convenient. 

 Wm. J. Hayes. 

 Lansingburg, N. \.. Dec. 27. 



Honey-Plants — Fall - Built Comb — 

 Short Fences a Drawback. 



Our honey-source is elm and maple in spring, 

 white clover in summer, the small goldcnrod 

 and the white aster in the fall. Of course 

 there are other honey-plants, but these are the 

 main ones. 



The bees do not gather any honey from the 

 large goldcnrod. It is the first to bloom here. 

 'I'lle small or tiwarf kind commences to bloom 

 as the large is drying up. The goldcnrod is 

 our lirst fall honey-plant to give any honey 

 to amount to anything. It is of poor flavor 

 and dark in color. 



The white aster is next in order when 

 frost does not come too soon. A light frost 

 iloes not stop the honey being secreted in the 



