204 



July, 1912. 



Amc>rican Bac Jonrn^ 



the mining camps of Rico, Telluride 

 and Silverton. 



Montezuma county has not a single 

 specialist bee-keeper. Mr. G. D. Taylor 

 has 30 colonies, a bunch of sheep, 30 

 acres of land, and is raising some 

 alfalfa and potatoes. With the county 

 inspection work he will be busy. Mr. 

 Wilkerson is a farmer neighbor of Mr. 

 Taylor's, and has about 3.5 colonies, all 

 in good hives. Mr. Frank Taylor has 

 about i'j colonies of bees, and his time 

 is taken up principally with his ranch. 

 Mrs. Taylor plans to take charge of the 

 bees the coming year. 



At Mancos, 20 miles from Cortez, 

 the remnants of Mrs. A. J. Barber's 

 apiaries are in the hands of T. W. 

 Wattles. Foul brood has decimated 

 the colonies until there are less than 

 20 left. 



Mr. H. M. Barber lives about 4 miles 

 from Mancos, and has some bees which 

 he desires to increase. Mr. Barber is 

 anxious for effective inspection and 

 cleaning up. I met Mrs. Barber's son, 

 and he said that his mother used to 

 sell 20,000 pounds of honey nearly 

 every year. 



This is still a new country and hard 

 to reach, but it is bound to come to 

 the front for it is blessed with bound- 

 less latent possibilities. 



A need of Montezuma county is for 

 a bee-keepers' institute, where the ad- 

 vantages of the movable-comb hive 

 will be shown. Demonstrations in 

 nailing up hives, frames, supers, put- 

 ting up sections and startering sections 

 and frames should be included in the 

 program. The prevention of swarm- 

 ing will need explaining, and the grad- 

 ing and packing of honey should be 

 taken up. If interest can be aroused, 

 such a meeting will be held as soon as 

 can be arranged. 



The Montrose Meeting 



Montrose county, in Colorado, is a 

 comb-honey county. I do not know of a 

 bee-man who extracts as a business. 

 Delta county, on the north, has on the 

 contrary, quite a number of extracted- 

 honey men. The tendency, however, 

 IS strongly toward comb-honey pro- 

 duction. Mr. R. W. Ensley, who owns 

 and operates the largest number of 

 colonies in Delta county, is changing 

 from extracted-honey production to 

 comb entirely. Some lesser bee-men 

 are making the change more gradually. 



The largest attendance at the Mon- 

 trose meeting was about 50 on Friday 

 evening. May 10. Six or 7 bee-men 

 came from Delta county, and 3 from 

 the eastern side of the mountains. The 

 others were all from Montrose county. 

 Mr. Frank Rauchfuss was expected to 

 be present and talk on the application 

 of the Colorado Grading Rules, but he 

 did not get there, and we thrashed over 

 the changes that were made in the 

 rules last December. 



Mr. S. J. Harris, of Olathe, who owns 

 about 200 colonies, and produces comb 

 honey, spoke on the " how " of produc- 

 ing the article, and when he finished 

 speaking the meeting wakened up, 

 asked riuestions, and discussed methods 

 with such zeal that three or four were 

 bidding for the recognition of the 

 chairman at every opportunity. The 



A .Scene in Colorado. 



production of comb honey, at times, 

 was lost sight of in discussing winter- 

 ing, feeding, requeening, etc., but, of 

 course, we have a broad subject in dis- 

 cussing comb-honey production. 



Our meetings will be long remem- 

 bered, if they are turned over to those 

 present, and they feel that general dis- 

 cussion is the most valuable part of the 

 convention. 



The grading of comb honey, accord- 

 ing to the new rules, was about the 

 liveliest subject brought up. The No. 

 2 grade is the lowest grade recognized. 

 Sections that weigh 10 ounces or more, 

 but are fully capped except the outside 

 row, subject to certain other restric- 

 tions that I will not mention here, may 

 be put in this grade; also sections 

 that weigh 12 ounces, with not more 

 than 50 unsealed cells filled with honey. 

 Several members thought that sections 

 weighing 12 ounces, where half of one 

 side was uncapped, but filled with 

 honey, should be admitted to this 

 grade. Others even thought if one 

 whole side was unsealed that it should 

 be No. 2 if the section was heavy. Mr. 

 J. R. Miller stood out for the rules as 

 they now are, while Mr. J. C. Mat- 

 thews held that the rules would render 

 unmarketable a large amount of salable 

 honey for which the rules should make 

 a place. 



I consider the rules as very fair on 

 the whole, and think that sections, even 

 though filled, but half unsealed, are 

 cull honey, and should not be recog- 

 nized in the grades. This does not, 

 however, preventtheir sale as cull stock, 

 and it is probable that some buyers 

 may be glad to get this stock at a price 

 that will equal its worth. It is not best 

 to include such stock in the grades, for 

 we do not want to build our reputation 

 on such honey. The point of Mr. Mat- 

 thews' argument was that he wanted to 

 find a market for this honey, as he did 

 in the past. I do not see where the 

 new rules will necessarily hinder any 

 in this. 



I shall have more to say about the 

 grading rules a little later. 



At the evening session the writer 

 read a paper on "Foul Brood Legisla- 

 tion," and Hon. O. C. Skinner followed 

 with some valuable suggestions on how 

 to get desired legislation, what to ask 

 for and what to expect in the way of 



obstacles. Mr. Skinner is a bee-keeper, 

 owning several hundred colonies, but 

 operating only about 20 at his home 

 place. Mr. Skinner, as a member of 

 the Colorado Legislature, introduced 

 the foul brood bill which successfully 

 passed the legislature. He favors the 

 insertion of a clause prohibiting the 

 keeping of bees in box-hives. 



Mr. Robert E. Foster, Bee-In- 

 spector for Montrose county, gave 

 an excellent talk on the treatment of 

 foul brood. He quickly warmed up to 

 his theme, and spoke right out of the 

 heart experience. (For the enlightment 

 of those who go much on family ties, I 

 will now say that Mr. Foster and I 

 have been unable to find any. But we 

 call each other by first names, which is 

 just as good.) 



The B.\nouet. 



The Entertainment Committee had 

 need of our presence over at a restaur- 

 ant at 10:30 p.m., where we talked bees 

 as much as we could. Some good 

 stories were told. One member of the 

 Montrose association told a rich one 

 on his wife. It seems the lady in this 

 case had been told that a queen emitted 

 a delicate aroma upon being crushed, 

 something similar to a broken vial 

 containing attar of roses, as it were. 

 So Mr. So-and-So gave her a young 

 queen one day — when queens were 

 more numerous than needful — and she 

 pinched the young maiden bee's head, 

 raised the quivering body to her nose 

 for the enjoyment of a delightful per- 

 fume, the queen inadvertently got too 

 close to the nose in question, and the 

 sting was there firmly and securely de- 

 posited. Now, ladies, how would you 

 like to have your husbands tell a storv 

 like this on you when you were present? 



We can not waste time telling what 

 we had to eat, but we were there over 

 an hour, and the 40 or more who at- 

 tended left rather reluctantly. At all 

 times when the meetings were not in 

 progress, little groups of bee-men 

 would be seen standing around on the 

 corners, talking " shop." 



Saturday morning, filling hives before 

 the honey-fiow came in for discussion, 

 and the Alexander plan was winner by 

 a decision of about 10 to nothing. 

 Every one who had followed the plan 

 spoke very highly of it. The loss of 

 bees in ^lontrose countv has been 



