lOO 



March, igio. 



American Vee Journal 



make something on honey. I myself haye 

 sold a fancy or best grade of section honey 

 for 15 cents per section to the retailer not 

 over 5 or 6 years ago. but the price is down 

 now. and is likely to stay there for these 

 reasons; 



First, too many in the business; second, 

 no combine or union; third, some States 

 can, or do. produce honey cheaper than 

 others; fourth, selfishness and mistrust also 

 hinder a producers' union. Please bear in 

 mind that I am not in favor of any combine 

 or auythint; else that helps one side and 

 crushes the other. A combine is one way to 

 get better prices, but how are we going to 

 get it? 



The other ivay is to fall out; that is. to 

 keep right on the same way producing honey 

 until we find out that it is done only at a loss 

 all the time, and uuit the business. Then 

 you will see the price go up again to a profit. 



You say. see the price of eggs, butter and 

 beef. I tell you. it did not pay to produce 

 them, and the farmers went out of them. 

 When grain went up they went to raising 

 what would pay better. I. for one. had to 

 quit the poultry business when grain went 

 up lo the high prices where it is. Although 

 I am equipped to accommodate 800 layers. I 

 don't think that t would quit until I had to. 

 Maybe I will have to go to saving, so you will 

 see that the trustsare at the bottom of it all. 



Take the beef-trust for one. The investi- 

 gation says they are entitled to a 15 percent 

 profit, so I understand. Whether that is 

 once a year or on every transaction I can't 

 say. and I rather think it is the latter. Look 

 at the enormous profit, and if per annum it 

 is still greater than the law allows a money- 

 lender. 



I will say there is yet a living price for me 

 in the production of honey, or in other ways 

 I get out of it all I put in. which I did in the 

 poultry business. 



I hope that the spirit of good fellowship 

 will enter every man's heart, and that' God 

 will bless us and our bees. 



Lewis A. Oertel. 



Gloversville. N. Y.. Jan. 28. 



Poor Season in 1 909 



Last year's honey season was a very poor 

 one in this part of the country. There was 

 no white clover honey, though considerable 

 blossoms, but the bees paid no attention to 

 them. There was lots of honey-dew. and a 

 little white honey in the fall. The winter 

 losses of the bees are very heavy. 



Rushville. 111.. March 2. W. E. Mason. 



Apiarian Experience and Admonitions 



I have kept bees in a small way for a 

 period of about 20 years, and .vill give some 

 of my experience, and try to give some ad- 

 monitions that ought to be a benefit, espe- 

 cially to the beginner or those contemplat- 

 ing bee-keeping. 



As intimated, I have never been an exten- 

 sive bee-keeper, but have kept from 6 to 45 

 colonies in connection with farming, and for 

 the benefit of those contemplating bee-keep- 

 ing. 1 will say that in proportion to the 

 amount of capital invested and time con- 

 sumed, my bees have paid as well as or bet- 

 ter than anything else on the farm, besides 

 furnishing to me pleasure and an experience 

 worth many dollars. 



I have kept bees in three States: First 

 when a young man in central Illinois, when 

 I supposed all one had to do with bees was 

 to hive the swarms and "take out" the 

 honey (and it is a fact detrimental to bee- 

 keeping, that a great many who keep bees 

 still have the same idea I had then); second, 

 in central Arkansas; third, in Kansas; and 

 at last I have again got back to Illinois within 

 i«) miles of the beginning place. So last fall 

 I bought 9 colonies of bees as a starter, and 

 being very busy and getting very sick later. I 

 neglected to fix them for winter, as I had 

 anticipated land which no bee-keeper should 

 neglect), and as the cold has been severe 

 and continued. I fully expected my neglect 

 to cost me the price of the bees. Hut since 

 the weather has moderated. I find they are 

 alive, even to a late swarm that is in a 

 double-walled hive, which had only about 

 one-fourth of the brood-chamber filled with 

 comb, and which I had aimed to unite with a 

 colony last fall. As they had fared so well 1 

 concluded to try to save them so as to have 

 the queen in the spring, so I fed them a few 

 pounds of sugar syrup a few days ago. And 

 here it might be in order to admonish the 

 beginner, who perhaps did not take the pains 

 to see that each colony had an abunnance 

 of stores last fall, that when he can catch 

 an occasional warm day, it would be a good 

 lime to peep into a few colonies late each 



evening so as not to excite any robbing' and 

 feed any colonies that might be short of 

 stores. Perhaps some of the best colonies 

 stored about everything in the super, and 

 when you took that off they had about half 

 enough to winter on. and so may perish. 

 Many of the best colonies are lost in this 

 way by the careless man. A very satisfac- 

 tory way to feed them is to slip out 2 or 3 

 frames and fill one side with sugar syrup 

 \ ou can use less frames by filling both sides, 

 but lay the side you have filled over an 

 empty frame while you fill the other side. 

 I he worst objection to this method is it is a 

 little hard on the man who wants to sell his 

 bee-feeder. There is danger of the beginner 

 thinking he must buy everything advertised 

 before he can keep bees. When I first went 

 to Kansas I supposed I could not keep bees 

 unless I had a cellar or double-walled chaff- 

 hives. But during a term of 7 vears I win- 

 tered my bees by putting a cheese-cloth over 

 the brood-frames, and then put on the super 

 filled w'lth dry leaves, and made a wind- 

 break of fodder on the west side. I did not 

 lose a colony in 7 years by this method, and 

 we had as low as 24 degrees below zero. So 

 to any bee-keeper no farther north than a 

 line running through central Kansas, Mis- 

 souri, Illinois, and so on. this is as much ex- 

 pense as he really needs to go to in order to 

 winter his bees successfully in single-walled 

 hives on the summer stands. 



Here it might be interesting to note that 

 the only colony I ever lost from cold was in 

 central Arkansas, the cause being we had a 

 cold spell of unusual length and severity for 

 that climate, and the bees could not break 

 the cluster to get to a new supply of honey; 

 and having consumed the honey on which 

 they were clustered, they perished sur- 

 rounded by plenty of stores. This was the 

 best colony I had in a lot of 40. 



Moultrie Co.. 111. E. G, Hanna 



Chunk Honey— Bees Wintered Well 



I notice in the discussion of chunk honey, 

 one writer said that he believed the dealers 

 in bee-supplies were discouraging it in order 

 to sell goods. We don't like to hear people 

 slandered that way. Such is not the case in 

 this country, at least. We have two custo- 

 mers who like the chunk honev. but the 

 majority claim it is not so neat for the table, 

 and they dislike to have the candied honey 

 which is in the bottom of the vessel. We try 

 to have some chunk honey each season, but 

 last year was almost a failure with us of any 

 kind. 



We have the section-holders with a strip 

 of wood on top. and by taking thin super 

 foundation one can put in a starter. My 

 brother made the pieces first; they can be 

 used for several years. These pieces of 

 honey can be put in a tight box. and kept 

 just as easily as in sections. We find that 

 there is from a pound to a pound and a half 

 more on one of these strips than in four sec- 

 tions, but, of course, one must try to please 

 people, which, sometimes, it is hard to do. 



We have 43 colonies, but as the white 

 clover was so near a failure, and we had an 

 early frost, our bees did not pay expenses; 

 but they have wintered well, and we are ex- 

 pecting to make something another season. 

 Had it not been for the honey-dew we would 

 have been compelled to feed our bees in 

 midsummer; as it was, we fed only 120 

 pounds of granulated sugar. 



Ollie Green. 



Worthington, Ind., Feb. 21. 



Last Season Too Dry— Starting New Bee-Keepers 



The season of iijofj the spring How was good, 

 but the fall flow was the poorest we have 

 had in a long time. It was too dry. I did 

 not have to feed any; some of the best col- 

 onies filled one super, but if it had been a 

 good season they would have filled ^ or more. 

 or an average of about 40 pounds each from 

 the fall flow. The spring was the same. 



I work for honey only, both comb and ex- 

 tracted. I have 10 out-apiaries, and expect 

 to make more increase. I have a good home 

 market, and it has outgrown my suppls-. I 

 think I will keep more bees and try to sup- 

 ply the home market. 



I ho|ie Mr. C. L. Grigsby, of California, 

 will give the readers the description of his 

 non-swarming methods, because the swarm- 

 ing season is on us; it will start here the 

 latter part of next month. 



I hope a more experienced bee-keeper than 

 I will give us an instructive talk on the 

 advantages and disadvantages of encourag- 

 ing more people to keep bees. I have had 

 some sad experiences in getting some people 

 started. They did start— that is all. I'hey 

 got the best of hives and fixtures, but did not 



have time to read a bee-paper, or any of the 

 bee-books, and have never studied anything 

 on the subject. They said that it w'as no 

 use; tliey had all the good, nice honey they 

 could use, and some to sell. They just had 

 the common black bees, and thought they 

 were good enough, and that they could not 

 afford to pay $1,00 or more for better stock. 

 He may sell a few sections of comb honey 

 and, not knowing the market, let it go for 

 less than It is worth, and it may not be 

 graded right, and so hurt the market which 

 we have worked so long to build up. 



And. again, you have a home yard and 

 most likely you have some of your best 

 queens there; you have worked for vears to i 

 weed out the old box-hives and black bees I 

 tor 2 miles around, and over, so that vou can 

 get almost all of your queens purely" mated 

 and have an ideal place to rear queens for 

 the out-apiaries. You have succeeded in 

 doing so at no small expense; this is worth 

 remembering, and as all preparations are 

 made to requeen all your out-apiaries from 

 your home yard from some choice queens 

 you are looking into the future and thinking 

 you are in shape to do something in bee- 

 keeping. You already have as many colo- 

 nies as your location will support- but be- 

 hold, unexpected to you. here comes orie of 

 the bee-keepers " that you have given 

 some encouragement, with almost a dozen 

 colonies, and puts them within a stone's 

 throvy of your apiaries. Of course, he has 

 the right, and you can't help yourself. He 

 has black bees and does not want any bet- 

 ter, and does not know that there is a way 

 to improve the stock. Try to get him to buy 

 sorne good queens, and he will just laugh 

 and say that his bees make as good honey as 

 yours do, and about as much, I can't see 

 anything in that for me. 



The above is from experience. I would be 

 glad to hear from others on this subect. I 

 say, give us better bee-keepers, and those 

 who depend upon bees for a livelihood. 

 1 here is not one bee-keeper in 40, through 

 this section, who reads a bee-paper. What 

 must be done? John W. Cash. 



Bogart. Ga.. teb. 21. 



Transferring Bees— Do Bees Reason? 



Last year was not a very good one for me 

 I secured about 35 pounds to the colony and 

 increased from 8 colonies to 16. and doubled 

 back in the fall to 11. The fall flow was very 

 light. Bees stored very little over enough to 

 winter on, but the prospects are good for 

 this year. White clover is looking fine at 

 this time, 



I had quite a funny experience last sum- 

 mer. I had 5 colonies in bo.x-hives to trans- 

 fer. I transferred, or tried to. at least, one 

 of them, and could not find the queen, so I 

 opened another one. and did not find a 

 queen in that one. but lots of eggs and brood 

 in both, so I put all in one hive, but the baes 

 all left and went to the other hives, so the 

 man that they belonged to transferred the 

 other i the next day. and out of 5 colonies he 

 got only 2 medium colonies. But after I 

 went into the first one I knew it would not 

 do to transfer them for there was very little 

 honey coming in. but he had bought the 

 Langstroth hives and would have them 

 changed, but it was a bad job. It was the 

 worst luck I ever had. I have made many 

 changes, but those were the nearest to a 

 failure I ever made. 



Do Bees Have Reasoning Power? 



I have seen this question in some of the 

 bee-papers. I do not say they do or not. but 

 I have taken notice of bees going to an old 

 location and then going straight to the new 

 one. Last summer I had 2 colonies on top 

 of a house and moved them down on the 

 ground about 100 feet away. It rained 2 days ^ 

 after I moved them, and for 4 or s davs after M 

 they were moved I noticed bees coming to ^ 

 the old stand and circling around, and then 

 going direct to the new location. Whether 

 this is reasoning or instinct. I do not pretend 

 to say. I would like to hear from some one 

 who is better informed. 



The bees in this locality have had a flight 

 about every III days or 2 weeks all winter. 1 

 do not know what condition thcv are in, for 

 I have not looked inside of anv of them yet, 

 but can soon. Soft maple begins to bloom 

 here the last of this month. 



Princeton, Ky., Feb. 5 L. S. Dickson, 



Bee-Stings and Rheumatism. 



On paRc 119 (1909) Mr, J. D. Kaufman has 

 something to say about bee-stings and rheu- 

 matism. He also gives us a query as to the 

 riddance of vermin from his live stock. 



With the creation of a cause, birth is given 



