September. 191 r. 



American Vee Journal 



of, either, when running for extracted 

 lioney, and this "cut comb honey" 

 would be very similar in hive manipu- 

 lation to extracted-honey production. 



The Prolificness of Queens 



The past spring was especially 

 favorable to the spreading of brood, 

 and in a good many cases eggs and 

 young larvse were chilled, but the 

 continual placing of empty comb in 

 the center of the brood-nest kept the 

 queens busy laying, and their num- 

 ber of eggs laid daily steadily in- 

 creased as the season advanced. A 

 queen cannot jump into heavy egg- 

 laying all at once, and so I think I 

 gained much by having the queens 

 gaining gradually, even if half or two- 

 thirds of their eggs were lost along 

 at first. The case of a cow giving 

 milk is probably similar: if you dry 

 her up, or nearly so, j'ou cannot get 

 her back to former milk-production 

 by any means. 



For a week or two in early spring 

 we may have very warm, nice weath- 

 er, when the queen will go to work 

 and get right into heavy egg-laying; 

 then it turns cold, and she is shut 

 off. Well, my practice was different. 

 Twice a week I went around uncap- 

 ping the honey and spreading brood, 

 and I did this regardless of the pros- 

 pective cool weather. The queens 

 did not stop laying even in the cool 

 weather, for there was empty availa- 

 ble comb right in the brood-nest, and 



the bees had uncapped honey which 

 they could handle and place any- 

 where needed. 



This plan might not pay every- 

 where, or every year in this locality, 

 but it worked well this year. Of 

 course, the amount of spreading of 

 brood was determined by the size of 

 the cluster of bees. 



Dr. Miller, in Gleanings in Bee 

 Culture, thinks few queens lay eggs 

 that will not hatch. With Editor 

 Root, I think he is wrong. He prob- 

 ably is right, speaking of his own 

 apiary, but taking conditions here 

 in the West, where practically no 

 care is taken with the quality of 

 the queens, I think a great many do 

 not lay fertile eggs. Here it is a 

 general practice to use cells when- 

 ever found, regardless of the quality 

 of the bees, queen or size, and general 

 good appearance of the cell. Most 

 of the bee-men are too busy putting 

 up sections, hives, and performing 

 general apiary work, to do scientific 

 queen-rearing, so that the queens are 

 a nondescript lot. 



When a hive is found with a liunch 

 of cells, they are used in nuclei, and 

 w'herever the queens are manifestly 

 inferior may be killed and a cell put 

 in. Here in the West more depend- 

 ence is placed upon the abundance 

 of nectar than on the size and vigor 

 of the colonies of bees. It is re- 

 markable what yields some small 

 clusters of bees will give, too. 



Bee-Keeping 



In Dixie^ 



i-'oniliictcd by J. J. Wilder. Cordele. Ga. 



An Expert Queen-Breeder Needed 



Mr. Simpson, under "Caucasian 

 Bees," uttered a truth when he said: 

 "We need a queen-breeding expert." 



We have a lot of good queen- 

 breeders who are sending out queens 

 that attain a high standard of excel- 

 lence, but have we any who are set- 

 tled down in dead earnest, striving 

 to produce a better bee. or a strain 

 more suited for our condition, re- 

 gardless of color, etc.? If not, this 

 is certainly a fertile field for such a 

 breeder. 



The most of our queen-breeders 

 have been rearing queens for the 

 Northern trade; therefore, but little 

 has been done towards breeding for 

 a more suitable strain here. 



and reared too many drones, and the 

 crosses with the Italians were not so gen- 

 tle, but they built up some faster in 

 early spring, and those showing yellow 

 bands did not propolize so badly. 



I have found what Editor E. R. Root, 

 yourself and others have said relative to 

 the slow breeding of the Italians in early 

 spring, to be true in my location. Now 

 what is the South going to do for a 

 better bee? You seem to think that the 

 Caucasians and their crosses will be more 

 suitable for us. 



We need a queen-breeding expert here 

 in the South to breed a bee that will suit 

 us as well as the Italian bee does the 

 Northern bee-keepers, and it might not take 

 many years to accomplish this. 



I note that you are mixing up bees 

 considerably, and it may be a step in the 

 right direction. Keep it up; we don't ob- 

 ject to a mixture, just so we get results. 



W. D. SlMPSO.N. 



Caucasian Bees 



Mr. W. D. Simpson, of South Caro- 

 lina, writes relative to these bees and 

 their crosses: 



I don't think I have given these bees 

 and their crosses a fair trial. The queens 

 I obtained were not purely mated, and 

 they built a lot of brace-comb and almost 

 closed the entrance of the hives with 

 jiropolis ; they built a lot of drone-comb, 



Georgia as a Bee-Country 



In reply to questions by A. M. 

 Richards, of Massachusetts, I would 

 say: A few bee-keepers in Georgia 

 are enjoying as great prosperity as 

 any others in the United States, but 

 1 can't say that it is a great bee- 

 country. If a bee-keeper is perfectly 

 familiar with surroundings and con- 



ditions existing here, he can make a 

 living at bee-keeping. Otherwise he 

 can e.xpect to succeed only slowly 

 until he has mastered more of the 

 situation. 



Some writer on bee-culture recent- 

 ly struck a key-note when he said, 

 "If you come South you will have to 

 learn bee-keeping as it is here before 

 you succeed." 



The general facts relative to bee- 

 keeping, such as the time required for 

 a queen, a worker, or drone, to de- 

 velop, remain the same; but when it 

 comes to methods and conditions, it 

 is far different. Therefore but few 

 newcomers have ever succeeded in 

 our borders at bee-keeping, and we 

 can't say that it is a great bee-coun- 



Then, too, our average is low com- 

 pared with that of the North, and 

 iTiore bees would have to be kept 

 for a support, more capital invested, 

 more labor required, etc. And sum- 

 ming up all the difficulties in the 

 way, it is no great proposition, and 

 returns only come after experience, 

 and only then after "hard blows." 



.\s to the best part of Georgia for 

 bee-keeping, I would say that the 

 Southern part might be best. But 

 we have a lot of wild land here yet, 

 and it would not be advisable to lo- 

 cate in a thickly-settled section, for 

 the honey-flows are not as great and 

 so frequent, because the forest is not 

 so much protected from the fires, and 

 the acreage of cotton is too small to 

 give a flow. 



Bee-Keeping in Dixie 



I wish to give some of my experience 

 to illustrate the conditions and possibili- 

 ties of bee-keeping in Dixie. I have as 

 poor a location as there is in this State — 

 so poor it is that the box-hive bee-keep- 

 ers are becoming a thing of the past, as 

 the bees are dying, mostly from starva- 

 tion. They have no way of knowing the 

 needs of the bees, or of improving them 

 as honey-gatherers, until it is too late. 

 I have had farmers hunt me up to sell 

 me their bees in box-hives, and say that 

 their bees were a nuisance to them, as 

 they did not get any honey, and the bees 

 were so cross they stung their other 

 stock, and they had to sell them to me 

 so low in price, that after the bees had 

 • been transferred to frame hives, the 

 combs in the old box, when made into 

 beeswax, would pay for the whole outfit. 

 The wax is all that is to be expected 

 from a box-hive colony. Let the bees 

 transfer the honey, if they have any, in 

 the box-hive to the movable-frame hive. 

 The average per colony is about 50 pounds 

 of honey. 



The demand for honey here is never 

 supplied. It sells in the comb at 12VI 

 cents ver pound, and extracted honey at 

 81/2 cents, wholesale, on board the cars 

 here. . 



I have several out bee-yards, in all 

 more than 200 colonies. I do all the 

 work myself, except packing the honey, 

 which my wife does. I have two other 

 businesses besides bee-keeping, but I think 

 I will take the advice of Mr. Hutchinson 

 and remove one of these props, and "keep 

 more bees." 



I know of nothing for a poor man here, 

 that will pay as well as bee-keeping, tak- 

 ing into consideration the capital, time, 

 and the repairs involved ; but I wish to 

 say the best bees should be secured to 



