MO 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTUEE. 



Nor. 



ARE THERE ANY SEASONS THAT WILL 



NOT AFFORD A PROFFTARLE 



CROP OF HONEY? 



ARE BLASTED HOPES THE FAULT OF THE SEASON, OR 

 THE BEE-KEEPER? 



£N the August No., p. 358, you say that, iu the 

 poorest seasons, you have never failed to get a 

 fair crop of honey, or something to that effect, 

 and rather imply that the failures are the fault of 

 the bee-keepers, and not the seasons. I know, of 

 course, it does us no good to complain of the bad 

 seasons; but, at the same time, shall we not call 

 things by their right names? If the season is such 

 that our bees do not swarm, nor lay up surplus hon- 

 ey, why not say so? Now, I will state my manage- 

 ment for the season through and would like to know 

 if you or anyone else could have done better. I had 

 20 stocks, spring count. Ten of them were not re- 

 duced by dividing at all last year. All were well 

 surrounded with chaff all winter, and, until in May, 

 all had trays of Root candy over their frames from 

 early in March until about the first of June. Three 

 were divided in early spring, and have been kept so 

 the entire season for queen-raising. Two were very 

 weak, and I only expected them to build up into 

 good stocks, which they have done. The remaining 

 24 were in fair, but none of them in extra strong, 

 condition, and were at first run for surplus honey. 

 The brood was spread, and empty combs given as 

 fast as my judgment dictated; and, as soon as I 

 thought best, I put on the boxes. A few of the best 

 had the upper-story Simplicity with the 5(1 sections, 

 starters and separators. A few more had the double 

 Simplicity with empty combs for the extractor, 

 while the rest, about 15, had the 23-lb. crate with 

 sections. Two as good stocks as 1 had, had each one 

 brood frame with 8 sections below; but neither one 

 of them put any honey in those sections, worth tak- 

 ing out, yet they have been in there all the season. 

 Not one stock in the apiary nearly filled its capacity. 

 Of the crated ones, the best one gave about SO 11 is. 

 Fully half of them gave nothing. One took all the 

 wax of the fdn. starters out, and, I presume, used it 

 below for brood cappings. Of the double-story Sim- 

 plicities, each stored a little, but I did not get a nice, 

 filled section in the whole apiary. I thought they 

 were filling np too much in the brood-chambers in 

 the latter part of June, and I extracted about 190 

 lbs.; and about the last of July I took about 150 lbs. 

 of poorly filled section honey, which makes the full 

 season's crop. 



I got no natural swarms, and made but 3 artificial 

 ones before Aug. 1st, when I began to divide, and 

 have halved each stock but one. Aug. 17th I had one 

 natural swarm, and that to this day is a mystery, as 

 I had divided it about a week before. It had a 

 young hatched queen, but I can never tell where 

 she came from, as I could find no remains of a cell, 

 but found some cells unhatched. I shall go into 

 winter-quarters with about 00 stocks, not over large, 

 but mostly young bees, as I have nearly all young 

 queens, and they are laying finely yet. 



THE SEASON. 



The early part of the season was pretty dry— at no 

 time a severe drouth, but too dry for vegetation to 

 do well; since then it has been tolerably wet, but 

 nothing seemed to produce much honey. White 

 clover was scarcely anything, and the bees did not 

 seem to get much from what there was. A sidehill, 

 in sight of me, in '77 and '78, looked as if it had two 



inches of snow on it; but last season and this it did 

 not show the least bit of white. Through July and 

 half of August there was scarcely any honey-bloom ; 

 but buckwheat has been fair, and now that is gone, 

 and nothing more to come this fall. 



A. A. Fradenburg. 



P. S.—l shall have to feed fully one-half of my 

 bees to winter through. 



Port Washington, O., 1880. 



Friend F., although it may be a little diffi- 

 cult to tell just where you erred, and, al- 

 though it may seem, as you state it, that you 

 did all that could have been done, do you not 

 think some older and more experienced hand 

 might have secured a fair crop, right in your 

 locality? Suppose, for instance, you had 

 made no attempt at increase, but, on the 

 other hand, had doubled up your stocks un- 

 til you had reduced the 29 to 15 or even 12 

 powerful colonies, and had used all the latest 

 appliances for getting honey and keeping 

 down increase, even with such a season as 

 we have had, would it not have been possi- 

 ble for you to have made 1000 lbs. of comb 

 honey that would have brought, scarce as it 

 now is, from $200 to $2-50? J f I am correct, 

 this is the plan upon wnich Doolittle works 

 for comb honey, and L. C. Hoot for extract- 

 ed honey. The above is the plan adopted 

 where no increase is desired. If increase is 

 wanted, you may be just as well off as you 

 are ; but the showing of the season's work 

 is hardly as plain a success, in the eyes of 

 the world. Besides, as you have increased 

 and divided, there is some danger of losses 

 during the coming winter. 



POISONING REES. 



HAVE BEE-KEGPERS ANY REDRESS? 



fT becomes an upleasant duty for me to write you, 

 from the fact that the purport of this letter 

 J is to tell the troubles of another. Mr. Peter 

 Klasen, a neighbor living about a mile from me, in 

 the corporation of Huron, has had his bees poisoned. 

 The particulars are as follows: Mr. Krock, a fellow- 

 townsman, has a vineyard. He claimed that Kla- 

 sen's bees were spoiling his grapes, and told Klasen 

 to keep them at home. Klasen told him it was an 

 impossibillity, and he says that he offered to pay the 

 damages. But no; he said he would not have the 

 bees there under any consideration. A few days la- 

 ter, Klasen noticed that his bees were acting queer- 

 ly, and many were dead. Mistrusting that some- 

 thing was wrong, he repaired to the vineyard, where 

 he found the cause of the bee-slaughter. It was 

 boards placed around the vineyard, with Paris 

 green or London purple mixed with sweetened wa- 

 ter. It killed many before they could get away. 

 It seems that Krock was expecting Klasen, and was 

 waiting for him, and ordered him off the place, and 

 raised a club to strike him. Klasen then drew a 

 revolver and threatened to shoot him if he struck 

 him. This led to a lawsuit. Klasen sued him for 

 damages, and was defeated. He is now intending to 

 carry it to a higher court, as it was before a justice 

 the first time. Mr. Klasen is one of your patrons, 

 who has accumulated about 70 swarms of Italian 

 bees. They have been doing well under his manage- 

 ment, and are the fruit of many years of labor and 

 study. I visited him the other evening at his home. 

 His topic for conversation was, as usual, bees. Said 



