Mav. 11>I3. 



American ~Bee Journal 



were not so many on the outside of No. 2 

 after tliat, and I saw no swarming from N(j. i. 



July i-tli.- I put supers on No. s hive, 

 although I couldn't see where the bees were 

 going to get the material to build out their 

 10 foundation brood-frames and their super 

 foundation. 



Aug. 15th.— No J swarmed again, small 

 swarm, and they »vont off. 



Aug. i8th. — The same colony swarmed 

 again, but they went back. 



Aug. 2ist.— The bees tried to swarm again. 



Aug. 2^th.— The bees went out to a maple 

 tree, but went back to the hive again No. 2 

 hive'. It was raining most of the day. 



Sept. ist -Two swarms came out of No. 2 

 hive, one small and the other good size. 

 They were on low bushes, and I dumped 

 them into two bo.\es. They stayed there till 

 Sept 5th, when I tried to put them back, 

 some into each hive. 



Sept. t)th.— The bees that I dumped into 

 hive No. 2 went off, but I had no reason to 

 think that those 1 put into the other two 

 hives did not remain, the bottoms looked 

 fuller. 



Sept. nth.— Took super off the parent hive. 

 Only ( divisions were entirely capped. The 

 outside frames were not more than half 

 filled out. and with very little honey. 



Sept. 20th. I had been away for 5 days, 

 and the night I returned I found the front of 

 the parent hive, from which I had taken the 

 supers on the 13th. covered thick with bees. 

 I didn't know whether it meant another 

 swarm or not. but I smoked them all back 

 into the hive. The next night there were not 

 so many, but I repeated the process. The 

 third night there were still fewer, and I did 

 nothing to them. 



Oct. 2d. Took super off of No. 2 hive. 

 There were more sections filled than from 

 No. I hive. 



Oct. ath.— Looked the i hives through. No. 

 ^ hive, which had had some feeding for i" 

 <lays, one to 8 .-Xlexander feeders, showed 

 some brood just laid, and I think enough 

 sealed honey tor the winter. No. 2 hive 

 had food enough, a little uncapped, but no 

 brood. No. i no brood. This was the hive 

 into which I put 4 frames of fresh founda- 

 tion. One frame on the outside was filled 

 with perfectly clear, beautiful honey, but I 

 left it for them. I found no brood, but I 

 didn't look entirely through, for they began 

 stinging me througli my gloves. I had killed 

 some drones in the hive, examined pre- 

 viously to this, and 1 wonder if that made 

 Iliem ugly. 



Oct. lath. — Looked in No. < hfve to see how 

 the eggs looked that I found. 



Oct. lath — On Oct. Rth I couldn't see that 

 they had developed at all. Then I put them 

 into winter Quarters, one hive into a dark 

 room in the stable. The hive stands to one 

 side of a south window, on a shelf, and I have 

 made a run to a half inch opening at the bot- 

 tom of tfie window. The hive is tied up 

 with a blanket. The other 2 hives have win- 

 ter-cases over them, and are put into a rain- 

 tight long box. The hivesstand 4 feet apart, 

 6 inches back from the front of the box with 

 a run to the open; the box stands a foot 

 from the ground. The frost is likely to go 3 

 feet deep. Mrs. Ciiari.es A. Spofford. 



New York. March 10. 



Surely, you had your own time with 

 swarming. Please do not, however, 

 expect an infallible rule for the pre- 

 vention of swarming, but you may, at 

 least, be told some thingsthat will help 

 you to avoid such swarming by the 

 wholesale in the future. Let us follow 

 up seriatim your story so interestingly 

 told. 



You did well to give the bees shade 

 and air. But it was not so well that you 

 moved them half a mile May 22, at a 

 time when they had been working 

 busily on fruit-bloom ; for being moved 

 so short a distance, too many bees 

 would return to their old location to 

 be lost or to join some colony near 

 there. "The process of moving was 

 rather bungled." Likely that was good 

 rather than bad ; helping to make the 

 bees mark their new locality. At any 

 rate, the bees built up pretty well, or 

 they would not have swarmed June 18. 

 Nothing abnormal about their swarm- 

 ing at that time. 



When the bees swarmed June 18, you 

 put a lot of the bees into hive No. 2, 



together with the queen and 4 frames 

 of brood. That was a bad move. Right 

 then and there was your chance to take 

 such steps with the bees as might have 

 put a stop to the foolishness of any 

 more swarming. You should have put 

 only one frame in No. 2 with the queen, 

 preferably one of the poorer frames of 

 brood. Be sure to do that the next 

 time you are placed under the same 

 circumstances. Then set No. 2 on the 

 old stand in place of No. 1, and set No. 

 1 close beside No. 2 (no matter at 

 which side), both hives facing the same 

 way. A week later take No. 1 away 

 and set it on a new stand, little matter 

 where, so it is 8 feet or more from the 

 old stand. That's all ; the bees will do 

 the rest. 



Perhaps, however, you may be inter- 

 ested to know something about what 

 the bees will do. After the first move 

 most of the bees will be in No. 2 with 

 the queen, while in No. 1 is the brood 

 from which young bees are constantly 



emerging. If you leave things without 

 further change, you may count pretty 

 surely on a swarm issuing from No. 1 

 as soon as the oldest young queen is 

 ready to go with it. But when you 

 move No. 1 to a new stand, especially 

 if you do this in the middle of the day 

 or after it, while the young bees are 

 having a playspell, all the lield-bees 

 that leave No. 1 that day, and for a day 

 or two afterward, instead of returning 

 to No. 1 will go back to the old place 

 and join No. 2. This will so discour- 

 age No. I tliat the oldest virgin will be 

 allowed to destroy all the rest, and 

 there will be no further swarming. No. 

 2 having received all the bees of the 

 swarm, and a lot of fielders be>ide, will 

 be in tine condition to store a lot of 

 lioney in the supers if there is any 

 honey to store, with no thought of any 

 swarming. If your bees are at all rea- 

 sonable bees you may count pretty 

 safely on their carrying out this pro- 

 gram. 



EfiR Western ^ Bee-Keeping 



Conducted by Wesley Foster. Boulder. Colo. 



Pueblo County Bee-Keeping 



Pueblo county is not an agricultural 

 looking county. The waste land and 

 unirrigated range predominate over 

 the irrigated land to such an extent 

 that most folks would say that for 

 farming the county is no good. But 

 where irrigation is practiced alfalfa 

 will grow luxuriantly, and sweet clover 

 lines the ditch banks. There are at the 

 present time perhaps 100 bee-keepers 

 in Pueblo county, with perhaps 3000 

 colonies of bees. This is not half the 

 bees that were in the county in years 

 ago, and not a quarter the number of 

 colonies which could be kept. Ameri- 

 can foul brood — which happens to be 

 the only kind we have in Colorado, the 

 European variety having not yet made 

 its appearance — is the principal cause 

 of this loss in bees. Pueblo is the sec- 

 ond largest city in Colorado, with 

 about 80,0011 people, and, of course, the 

 city controls the county. With a con- 

 dition of this kind, the country ques- 

 tions will be the last to be settled. It 

 is hard to convince the county officers 

 of the needs of the country bee-keeper, 

 if the officers are not directly in con- 

 tact with rural conditions. 



The .Arkansas river runs from the 

 western border of the county to the 

 eastern, a distance of about .jO miles, 

 through the center of the county, and 

 the countv is h(\ miles wide from north 

 to south, so that with a county of this 

 size, if there is much uncultivated land, 

 the county may be of considerable im- 

 portance from a honey-producing point 

 of view. 



The city of Pueblo lies nearly in the 

 center of the county, with the honey- 

 producing territory branching out in 

 five different directions, and following 

 in the main the irrigated valleys. To 

 the west of town, up the valley of the 



Arkansas, is Swallows and Beaver, near 

 the Fremont county line ; to the north 

 of Pueblo lies the Fountain valley 

 through which flows the Fountain river 

 or creek from the foot of Pike's Peak. 

 F'ountain creek flows into the Arkansas 

 river at Pueblo. Quite a little farming 

 is done with the help of the water from 

 this stream, and Eden, the first station 

 north of Pueblo in this valley, would 

 suggest that it was a very fruitful sec- 

 tion. 



To the east of Pueblo, down the Ar- 

 kansas valley, is the best honey-dis- 

 trict, because it is-the most e.xtensively 

 farmed. .*\vondale, Nyburg, Boone, 

 and Nepesta, are all surrounded by 

 farming lands, and bees thrive on the 

 alfalfa, sweet clover and cleome. 

 Cleome is more plentiful in the Arkan- 

 sas valley than in any other section 

 of Colorado. Mr. H. A. Danielson, 

 with about 20(1 colonies, is located 

 at .Avondale. Harvey Said, who lives 

 in Pueblo, and carried off first prize at 

 the State Fair on extracted honey, has 

 bees near Avondale. Mr. Said placed 

 the glass jars containing the honey in 

 the sun during the warm part of the 

 day for about a week before taking to 

 the fair, and these jars had not begun 

 to show any signs of granulation three 

 months after bottling, while a jar of 

 the same honey not e.xposed to the 

 sun's rays was white and solid. This 

 honey of Mr. Said's was the whitest 

 honey I think it has been my privilege 

 to see. 



Mr. O. L. Reed lives about 7 miles 

 east of Pueblo, and was formerly coun- 

 ty bee-inspector ; he now has but a few 

 bees, giving most of his attention to 

 raising celery and cauliflower, which 

 he ships as far as Kansas City and 

 Omaha. He raises from 1000 to 1800 

 dozen bunches of celery to the acre, 

 and it brings him from 35 to 55 cents a 



