American Vee Journal 



son is more competent to reply than 1, ; 

 is the oriKinatur of the "lying" busine 

 I've turned that question over to her, 

 answered in the Sisters' department. 



Bees Flying in Iowa. 

 I packed io6 colonics of bees last fall. Bees 

 are flying from io6 hives today. 



Leon, Iowa, Feb. 28. Edwin Bevins. 



A Real Winter Spell. 



A real spell of winter struck us hard Feb. 

 18th and 19th. It was not cold, but a hard 

 storm with a foot of snow. The roads are 

 blocked with snow. The wind blew a gale. 

 Bees flew well one day last week and seem 

 in good condition. F. A. SnEll. 



Milledgeville, III., Feb. 20. 



Bees in a "Vinegary'* Cellar. 



I see a report is asked for on bees wintering 

 in a cellar that has vinegar stored in it. (See 

 page 55). I kept 12 colonies last winter in 

 a cellar that had 10 barrels of vinegar with the 

 bungs open, and one barrel was spilled all over 

 the floor by having the hoops rust off. Vet 

 the bees all wintered. A. J. Morse. 



Diamond. Pa., Feb. 17. 



Bees Seemingly Doing Well. 



My bees are doing fine. I think. I have 

 not examined any of them yet. When we 

 have a pretty warm day they are gathering 

 some pollen from the soft-maple trees. I put 

 14 colonies into winter quarters, and they seem 

 to be all right, and strong. I have one im- 

 ported queen from central Italy. I want to rear 

 a few queens from her. I have one golden 

 and all the rest are good 3-banded Italians, and 

 hustlers. Ch.\s. Henson. 



Springdale. Ark., Feb. 24. 



Report for 1907. 



My bees did fairly well in 1907. I had 25 

 colonies in the spring. Some of them were 

 quite light. 1 fed them in April to start 

 breeding, so as to have them ready for the 

 early flow of nectar. I work for comb honey 

 altogether. I got 1,200 pounds of white honey, 

 and sold it at home for 15 cents a pound. 

 I also got IS good swarms. I have a total 

 of 40 colonies, and put them into the cellar 

 Nov. 30, in good condition. John Cline. 



Darlington, Wis.. Feb. 5. 



Bees Under Snow. 



bees are packed in winter-cases on the 

 T stands, at present surrounded with 2 

 or 3 feet of snow, and have been for nearly 

 4 weeks. One fine day last week the ther- 

 mometer registered 50 degrees, and I commenced 

 digging them out. Two colonies had a cleans- 

 ing flight, but several thousand bees were lost 

 in the snow. The next day it commenced 

 snowing and drifting as badly as ever, and it 

 is almost useless to do anything until the 

 weather clears up. D. Meuser. 



Elmwood. Ont.. Feb. 20. 



Several Years' Experience. 



colonies which cost 



, but did not 



I started in 1904 with 2 color 

 me $8. These were in movab! 

 The strongest colony cast 2 swan 

 yield any surplus honey. The 

 were put in box-hives, but later I trans- 

 ferred them to movable- frame hives. The 

 other swarm produced about 2 supers of surplus 

 honey. The next year (1905), I purchased 5 

 more colonies. I then had 9, which increased 

 to 18. One of the young swarms had been 

 hived a few days when another large swarm 

 came and entered the same hive. This col- 

 ony produced about 75 pounds of honey. I 

 received about 1 50 pounds of honey from 2 

 colonies. During the winter of 1905, 9 colo- 

 nies died. The next year ( 1906). I had 9 

 colonies. Two of these were very weak, so 

 I put 3 of them together, making 7 strong 



colonies. I put a hive full of empty brood- 

 combs on each' colonj^. About the middle of 

 June I took these hives off and put supers 

 on in their place. After taking off the hives I 

 had 4 hives full of sealed brood. I then took 

 these 4 hives of brood and nut 2 hives on one 

 stand. After putting some old bees in these 

 hives, I found that I had 2 strong colonies. I 

 received 2 more colonies by natural swarming. 

 I then had 1 1 colonies, and about 300 pounds 

 of nice honey. During the winter of 1906, 5 

 colonies died. 



In 1907 I had 6 colonies, 2 of which were 

 weak. These were increased to 9, but I did 

 not get any surplus honey. Late in the fall 

 I fed 50 jiounas of sugar. I then bought 

 100 pounds of sugar, which I made into candy, 

 and fed it to 9 colonies. P. S. Johnson. 



I.inie Springs, Iowa, Feb. 8. 



Honey in California. 



As things appear to me, the^ honey crops of 

 1907 were by no means anything like short in 

 the aggregate. If they had been, the market 

 on comb honey, especially in this State, would 

 be stronger than it is. in spite of the money 

 market stringency. As a matter of fact, San 

 Francisco, Oakland, Sacramento, and Stockton 

 are flooded with comb honey of the better 

 grades, and dark comb finds no buyers at 

 even as low figures as 8 cents per comb. 

 Trying to obtain that figure for my crop, I 

 have the great bulk of it still on hand, and 

 will have to "give in" if I want to move it 

 at all. SEB.\sTrAN Iselin. 



Sluckton, Calif.. Feb. 17. 



Winter Bee-Shed— Salt as Moth 

 Remedy. 



The year 1 907 was almost a complete fail- 

 ure throughout central Missouri, White clover 

 came in about the middle of June, and not 

 much of it then. 



I have been in the habit of wintering my 

 bees on the summer stands, but after the last 

 spring failure I planned a shed to protect them 

 from the north and northwest winds. The 

 shed is built of common fencing plank with 

 double walls, having a 6-inch space between 

 the walls to be filled with leaves or grass. 

 It is built long enough to shelter 5 colonies. 

 It may be so constructed that it can be taken 

 apart in the summer and stored away until 

 winter comes again. This is my first winter 

 with the shed, and I am having good re- 

 sults so far. 



Last summer I noticed that one of my colo- 

 nies was greatly injured by those bothersome 

 bee-moths. I got a handful of coarse salt and 

 scattered it on the alighting board. The salt 

 was quickly carried in by the bees. A few 

 days later they were busy rolling the dead 

 moth-larvx out of the hive, and now this is 

 one of my strongest colonies. Do not use 

 table salt, as the coarse kind is better. 



Slater, Mo., Feb. 28. R. C. Hickman. 



Fair Years with Bees. 



I have been in the bee-business 4 years. 

 I bought my first swarm from my brother for 

 $1.00, and hived it in a dry-goods box, and 

 it is still alive and in the same box. I now 

 have 33 colonies of bees. The spring of 1907 

 being so cold and damp, many bee-men in this 

 vicinity lost many of their bees. I had only 

 one colony of bees starve, and 2 died leaving 

 honey. Over half of my bees did not swarm 

 at all last summer. Some of them gathered 

 almost 100 pounds of comb honey per col- 

 ony. Others did not furnish any. In all, 

 I averaged 25 sections. At this date my bees 

 are all alive, and seem to have plenty of 

 honey. 



I winter my bees by placing them on a plat- 

 form about a f<'ot high, and have the hives one 

 foot apart. Then I place straw all around 

 them except in front of the hive, and cover 

 them with boards, rubber roofing, or some 

 other material to keep them dry. I had good 

 success last winter, and so far this winter. I 

 hope the next season will be better. 



W. W. Ettlemak. 



Sidney, Iowa, Feb. 21. 



Vinegar in Bee-Cellar — Bumble-Bees. 



On page 5s the question is asked whether 

 bees wintered in a cellar where vinegar is 

 kept would be injured by the strong odor aris- 

 ing from the vinegar. I have had 40 barrels 

 of vinegar in my cellar with my 25 colonies 

 of bees, and t he bees came out all right in 

 the spring, without losing a colony. And there 

 is no ventilator in the cellar. All the air that 

 they have is what passes through a cellar that 



is closed up for winter. The cellar is also 

 very damp. I put my bees in the cellar every 

 year and never have less than 5 barrels of 

 vinegar in the cellar. Some of the bees are 

 right beside the vinegar. If you keep the 

 barrels of vinegar bunged up tight there will 

 not much acid escape from the barrels. 



The same person asked what became of the 

 bumble-bee when cold weather comes on. He 

 said that he never found anv after the first 

 cold spell. The workers and drones die off 

 in the fall. Along in the last of July they 

 hatch out 3 or 4 queens, and they are fer- 

 tilized by the drones the same as our honey- 

 queens are. All the difference is that the 

 drones don*t die. When it becomes cold the 

 young queens seek their winter quarters in 

 hollow trees or lo^s, and sleep there till warm 

 weather in the sprmg wakes them up, and then 

 they come forth and seek a place to start 

 a nest. The queen will build 4 cells and lay 

 an egg in each cell. Then she will hover 

 them and nurse them until they hatch. She 

 will gather honey enough to keep herself and 

 the 4 bees until they are old enough to gather 

 honey. Then the queen never leaves her nest 

 again except for exercise. I have found bum- 

 ble-bee queens in hollow logs when cutting 

 them up for wood. * M. D. Tyler. 



Seville, Ohio. 



Some Southern Honey-Plants. 



We had the same unfavorable weather here 

 that prevailed elsewhere during April and May, 

 1907, but by the middle of June the bees 

 were able to do something, and the season 

 as a whole was very good. My average, 

 spring count, was 116 sections as against 104 

 in 1906. The fall flo\v from bitter-weed was 

 unusually heavy, and the bees went into win- 

 ter with hives heavier than I ever knew before. 



The last wet spring prevented much good 

 farming land being planted, and this grew 

 up in bitter-weed, so that the acreage in this 

 plant was much larger than usual, and the 

 bees reaped the benefit. Although not palata- 

 ble when first gathered, this honey loses much 

 of the bitter taste after being kept a while. 



I think cow-peas are one of the very best 

 honey-plants we have here in the South. The 

 honey is of very fine quality. There is an- 

 other plant which I noticed for the first time 

 the past season. It grows in low. marshy 

 places, and is commonly — ■"-'' "' — k-..- ,„«♦ • 

 I do not know whether 

 name or not. It blooms 

 just swarmed over it. 

 variety of honey-plants he 

 quantities, so our honey i 

 flavors. There 



lied "barber-root, 

 that is the correct 

 early, and the bees 

 We have a great 

 re. but none in great 

 ; a blending of many 

 hat could be called a 

 rush, but a steady flow from about the middle 

 of June until frost. 



I have not seen any sign of robbing since 

 June 15. the bees getting plenty to keep them 

 occupied. Sometimes, however, we are both- 

 ered with robbing late in the fall. 



Tupelo, Miss., Feb. 4. J- D- Rowan. 



Bee-Keeping in Oklahoma. 



Having been without bees for the past 6 or 

 7 years I have not been reading the bee-papers 

 and keeping in touch with the bee-keeping fra- 

 ternity, and so do not know what may have 

 been written on bee-keeping in Oklahoma. To 

 the average person who has taken up his resi- 

 dence in this State from the North and East, 

 the first point that he considers when the 

 question of bee-keeping is mentioned is the 

 wind. While the winds that have always char- 

 acterized this country still prevail to some ex- 

 tent, they are not nearly so prevalent nor so 

 strong as before the planting of trees and the 

 tilling of the soil began. 



After about 12 years' experience in keeping 

 bees in Southern Kansas and Oklahoma, I us- 

 ually make the reply to such remarks that a 

 bee can work successfully in any wind that 

 a man can. While this may not be literally 

 true it does not miss it very far. While the 

 bees are no doubt greatly handicapped by a 

 strong wind I find that they will work in a 

 very strong breeze if the hives are so arranged 

 that thev can alight with their loads. Our pre- 

 vailing winds here during the working season 

 are from the south. My experience has taught 

 me that the hives should face the north. The 

 heavy-laden bee as she approaches the hive may 

 then drop down in the lee of the hive and 

 safely arrive with its load, while if the hive 

 faces the south I have seen them beaten back 

 from the entrance a dozen or more times be- 

 fore they secure a foothola. 



The past season was very adverse for bees 

 in this section of Oklahoma. The month of 

 NIarch was unusually warm, and the bees 

 started breeding as much as they usually do in 

 April or May. In April we had the weather 

 we should have had in March — so cold that 

 the bees scarcely showed themselves the entire 



