124 



April. 1916. 



American Hee Journal 



of a heavy yellow honey is stored an- 

 nually. Honeybees show a preference 

 for Solidaja^o lanceolata, or according 

 to the 7th edition of Gray's Manual S. 

 graminifoJia. 



The asters are freely visited by bees, 

 but they are not common enough to 

 vie with the goldenrods, neither do 

 they secrete nectar as freely. Properly 

 ripened and sealed aster honey is an 

 excellent winter food, as scores of bee- 

 keepers can testify; but if it is gath- 

 ered so late that it has not time to 

 ripen and is left unsealed it will very 

 likely deteriorate and prove injurious. 

 But I have lost a colony of bees by 

 feeding sugar syrup very late in the 

 fall. It has been suggested that per- 

 haps different species of aster yield 

 very difTerent kinds of honey, but there 

 are no grounds for such a supposition, 

 on the contrary they are much alike 

 just as in the case of the goldenrods. 



Fig. 5— Purple vetch. Violet-purple bee flow- 

 ers, common in worn-out fields. The struc- 

 ture of the flower is similar to that of the 

 garden pea. The pollen is placed on the 

 under side of the bee's body. After pol- 

 lination the flowers bend downward and 

 turn a dark purple. 



There are many other flowers be- 

 sides those enumerated, which are 

 more or less helpful to the beekeeper, 

 as the fireweed, thistle, Spanish-needles, 

 thoroughwort and many bee flowers 

 belonging to the pea. mint and figwort 

 families (Fig. 5), but the more impor- 

 tant honey plants are believed to have 

 been mentioned. The most promising 

 method of improving the honey flora 

 would seem to be the more general 

 introduction of white sweet clover. 



Waldoboro, Maine. 



New England Beekeepers 



BY r. E. CRANE. 



LYONSVILLE, MASS . is a place of 

 unusual interest to New England 

 beekeepers, for here lived the elder 

 \Vm. W. Cary some 70 years ago, al- 

 ready an enterprising beekeeper, and 

 here his son W. W. Cary, Jr., still lives. 

 It was here that Rev. L. L. Langstrofh, 



Wm. W. Gary. Sr. 



more than 60 years ago, full of ideas 

 and- enthusiasm, came to consult the 

 elder Cary as to the value of a movable- 

 comb hive, and doubtless to construct 

 it in his workshop. Certain it is that 

 here the movable-frame Langstroth 

 hive was first used, and the exact spot 

 where it sat is still shown to those 

 interested. 



Wm. W. Cary. Sr., went to Flushing, 

 Long Island, in 1860, to care for the 

 first successful importation of Italian 

 bees by Mr. Parsons. A few years later 

 I visited Lyonsville, then known as 

 Coleraine, hoping to meet Mr. Cary, 

 but much to my disappointment he was 

 absent from home. I met, however, 

 his son, then a young man and as en- 

 thusiastic over bees as I was, and we 

 "talked bees" until I suspect every one 

 about the premises was disgusted. He 

 showed me some of their choicest 

 queens and told me of their honey re- 

 sources, so different from my own. He 

 told me of trying to hive a colony of 



very cross bees and getting stung so 

 severely as to become nearly uncon- 

 scious, but after an hour or two was 

 able to go at them again and conquer 

 them, after which he was immune to 

 bee poison. 



Two or three years ago, at the re- 

 quest of Earl M. Nichols, a son-in-law, 

 I again visited the old place, and found 

 the house and grounds of .50 years 

 ago greatly enlarged and improved, 

 the better to harmonize with Mr. Cary's 

 large heart and hospitable nature. The 

 old cider mill has become an immense 

 vinegar manufacturing plant, one of 

 the largest and most successful in the 

 country. 



The rearing of queens and the supply 

 business was looked after by Mr. Nich- 

 ols, while Mr. Cary was as enthusiastic 

 over fruit growing as he had formerly 

 been over beekeeping or queen-rearing. 

 The thorough manner in which he was 

 preparing the soil for a prospective or- 

 chard accounted for much of his suc- 

 cess as a business man. 



To my mind there is no beekeeper 

 in New England in whom I am more 

 interested than Allen Latham, of Nor- 

 wichtown. Conn., for many years presi- 

 dent of the Connecticut Beekeepers' 

 Association, and to whose efforts much 

 of the prosperity of that institution is 

 due. Of a scientific turn and decidedly 

 original, he rarely follows the beaten 

 road of the crowd, but instead has 

 worked out a method of beekeeping 

 suited to his own needs and surround- 

 ings. 



Being confined much of the time by his 

 profession as a teacher, he persuades 

 his bees to give up the old and popular 

 way of increase by swarming and to 

 work on contentedly in his " let-alone 

 hive." The surplus he removes at his 

 leisure in midsummer or perhaps not 

 until the Christmas vacation. He makes 

 his increase in small nucleus hives, 

 often wintering them in these same 

 small hives on an amount of honey 

 that is almost unbelievable. He has a 



LANGSTROTH 



