1917 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



369 



honey from raspberry. No finer 

 honey was ever produced than they 

 were putting into shipping cases at 

 that time. They have a very success- 

 ful system of comb honey produc- 

 tion, though their style of hives is 

 not in general use. The particular 

 tiling which first attracts attention is 

 their supcr-coa.xcr, which was de- 

 scribed in the October, 1916, number 

 of this Journal. It is a super of very 

 shallow frames which is keiit filled 

 with honey all the time and never ex- 

 tracted. When the colonies are 

 strong enough for supers, in spring, 

 this coa.xer full of honey is placed 

 over the empty super and the bees 

 rush into the super without delay. 

 It does away with the necessity of 

 bait combs or other bother. In case 

 colonies are short of stores, these 

 little supers of honey are always 

 ready, and by placing one on top of a 

 hive the job of feeding is done in a 

 jilTy. 



To give an idea of the way rasp- 

 berries yield, their record of hive 

 on scales for a few days in 1917 is 

 copied here. This is an outyard, and 

 there are blanks, from failure to visit 

 the yard every day, as well as some 

 rainy days when no honey came in. 



July 5 — Gain 12 pounds 



July 6 — Rain 



July 7 — Gain 10 pounds 



July 8 — Gain 8J<2 pounds 



July 12 — Gain 6 pounds 



July 13 — Gain 9 pounds 



July 14 — Gain 6 pounds 



July 15 — Gain pounds 



July 16 — Gain 13 pounds 



All around them is a vast region 

 where the forest has been mostly 

 logged off and but a small part of the 

 land is in cultivation. The raspberry 

 bushes are everywhere, even as they 

 seem to be over most of the wooded 

 country in Northern Michigan. Here 

 also the fireweed grows in great 

 abundance. However, fireweed is not 



dependable like raspberry, as it 

 comes and goes. It frecjuently hap- 

 pens that a long period of dry 



gins to show itself and soon the 

 waste has been covered with a nian- 

 tli- of green. Because of this charac- 



HUBBARD BROTHERS, OF BOYNF. FALLS, WITH A STALK OF 

 FIREWEED. 



weather in stjmmer will so parch ev- 

 erything that it burns like tinder, 

 once a fire is set. Forest fires burn 

 over hundreds of square miles of 

 country up there, leaving little but a 

 blackened waste. Within a few days, 

 following rains, the willow herb be- 



A. G. WOODMAN (center) VISITING 

 THEIR 



WITH THE HUBBARDS IN ONE OF 

 YARDS. 



teristic it gets its name of fireweed. 

 The fire, of course, kills the raspber- 

 ries to the ground, and there is no 

 honey from that plant the following 

 season. The willow herb grows plen- 

 tifully for two or three years follow- 

 ing the fire, when other vegetation 

 gradually crowds it out and it is of 

 less importance every year until 

 there is another fire. 



The willow herb grows luxuriantly, 

 as will be seen in the picture of the 

 brothers with one of these plants be- 

 tween them. It grows from three to 

 ten feet tall and when in bloom is a 

 pretty sight. When it yields they 

 report that it is steady from about 

 July 10 to August 15, and the surplus 

 is very satisfactory. They have av- 

 eraged as high as 87 pounds of comb 

 honey per colony from this source. 

 When, as sometimes happens, they 

 get a crop from both raspberry and 

 willow herb, they do very well, in- 

 deed. The honey stored from willow 

 herb is water white, but has little 

 flavor, being more like syrup than 

 like the characteristic honey from 

 clover or basswood. 



They report the jewel-weed, or 

 touch-me-not, in the bogs as attract- 

 ing the bees in large numbers at 

 times, and yielding considerable 

 honey. 



It is an enormous job to clean the 

 supers and separators preparatory to 

 putting in sections for a season's 

 crop of comb honey such as they pro- 

 duce. They have hit upon the plan 



