Ai(;i'sT, liiis 



(i I; K A N I N a S [ N 15 K K V U L T U R E 



473 



FROM THE FIELD OF EXPERIENCE 



has laid only a small fraction of the possible 

 nuniln'i'f 



Whilo it may be true that old (|ueeiis are 

 more ineliiie<l to swarm, I have never had to 

 replace more than one for not keeping the 

 colony up to the average size, and she sup- 

 ]>lied a small apiary with superior drones for 

 an entire summer when they were absent 

 from all the other colonies. This, by enab- 

 ling me to extend queen-rearing, was worth 

 many times the honey ever produced by a 

 single colony. By breeding tliese old queens 

 year after year, I keej) a stock of goldens 

 that surpasses all the dark strains I have 

 ever seen. 



It is not only to secure superior breeding 

 stock in both queens and drones, nor to avoid 

 the fussy work of annual requeening, that 

 1 keep old queens. My main reason is that 

 the young queens that supersede these old 

 ones produce so much hardier a strain of 

 bees than do the queens reared artificially. 

 I would even be content to have a few colo- 

 nies swarm, or even produce a smaller crop 

 for one year, since these strong supersedure 

 queens produce so many long-lived winter- 

 surviving workers that they make up the 

 loss the following summer. This supersedure 

 stock is all those eight-year ([ueens come 

 from. L. E. Kerr. 



Fort Smith, Ark. 



WHAT A GROCER DID 



He Got Honey so Fast that He Had to Hurry up 

 with a Wheelbarrow 



As a suitable side line for the grocery 

 ]»usiness, I decided to try beekeeping. There- 

 fore in the fall of 1916 I bought 52 colo- 

 nies of fine Italian bees, with young queens. 

 They all wintered so well that I did not lose 

 a single colony. About Apr. 15, I put them 

 on their summer sitande in an orchard, 

 bought expressly for the bees, the orchard 

 containing 75 apple trees and a great number 

 of raspberry bushes. When the young queens 

 began laying I took a record of every hive, 

 helping the weak ones as soon as I could get 

 brood from the strong ones. I examined 

 each hive once a week, forestalling swarm- 

 ing, so that when the honey flow came they 

 were all in pretty good condition and but 

 four or five swarmed. 



The honey flow lasted only 15 days. When 

 I first removed two full supers of honey at a 

 time I thought that was pretty good, but 

 later on I had to take away honey so fast 

 that I was obliged to use a wheelbarrow and 

 riMt'ove five suj)ers at a time. From the 

 52 hives T got ;-),800 pounds of white clover 

 honey. I took some to the Minnesota State 

 I'air and received second premium on the 

 extracted, ami also on ten fnunes of nice 

 white clover honey that wa3 not extracted. 



This honey I disposed of in the store and 



it sold very rapidly. Whenexer the glasses 

 of honey became a little can»lied I put them 

 on top of the radiator. In about five hours 

 the honey was as clear as if I had just ex- 

 tracted it. 



Last s])ring I sold two colonies to a woman, 

 who made one colony increase and got $23.00 

 worth of honey. How is that for two hives 

 of bees? Paul Knechtges. 



St. Paul, Minn. 



A PRIZE WINNER 



Tells Some of Hi 



Experiences 

 Beekeeper 



and Pleasures as a 



In the spring of 1873, when I was just a 

 boy, my father, for the sum of $100, pur- 

 chased 10 colonies in eight-frame Lang- 

 stroth hives. That season he divided them 

 into. 30 good colonies. The next season, he 

 sent to Italy for pure-bred queens. We in- 

 creased that year to 100 colonies, and the 

 next year to about 300, both seasons ex- 

 tracting some honey. 



The next season the bees contracted the 

 swarming fever. Some queens were clipped, 

 and some were not; some swarms were in 

 the air, and some in the trees. We returned 

 all the swarms possible to the original hives, 

 killing the old queens and destroying the 

 queen-cells. We knew nothing about supers, 

 but extracted all the honey there was in the 

 hives. It was the busiest summer I have 

 ever put in. I think I must have traveled 

 1,000 miles or more that summer. Father 

 shook and brushed the bees off the frames 

 that he took out to extract, and I carried 

 them to the honey-house and returned the 

 empties. (How I should love to live it over 

 again with father there! and how we would 

 "deck 'em" up!) Well, we slung out a 

 fine lot of honey — ten big barrels and some 

 comb honey besides. We had a big crop of 

 white and alsike clover, then basswood, 

 winding up in the fall with what some one 

 told us afterward was honeydew, gathered 

 from the leaves of hickory trees. That win- 

 ter nearly all of the bees died; and, altho 

 I have always kept bees since, I have neyer 

 seemed to get a good start. 



Two years ago I woke up after dreaming 

 that there were tons of honey going to 

 waste in my locality, since there are hun- 

 dreds of acres of white and alsike clover, 

 also sweet clover in abundance, with only 

 two beemen near. In the spring of 1917 

 I started with 60 ordinary colonies, and 

 olitained .'>,00() pounds of extracted and 

 some comb honey. I also won the prize at 

 the Wisconsin State Fair for the largest 

 amount of extracted honey from one colony, 

 ))roducing 210 pounds (see Mr. France's re- 

 l)ort in the March issue). Most of the crop 

 I sold at 15 cents a i>ouiid. Fred Alger. 



Waukau, Wis. 



