AUGUST 15, 1915 



THE PERENNIAL WHITE ASTER IN WINTER STORES 



683 



l:V I). W. TAYLOR 



For seven or eight years I have had from 

 six to twenty colonies in Louisa County, 

 A^irinnia. This is in tlie Piediriont region, 

 about 500 feet above the sea — a poor loca- 

 tion for spring honey, as white clover usu- 

 ally fails, but with large quantities of aster 

 and a good deal of goldcnrod. The aster 

 is the variety with white petals and yellow 

 center — the kind 1 see everywhere in the 

 East, a perennial growing well on sour 

 land, about two feet high on poor land and 

 four feet on good land. 



At the same lime as the aster, there is 

 available a large quantity of goldenrod of 

 the short-branch headed variety which my 

 bees seldom or never touch. The tall-grow- 

 ing single-spike headed variety is fairly 

 abu!idant, and they work on it freely. 



I'sually my bees are quite light by Sep- 

 tember, but during the aster and goldenrod 



season tliey work diligently and I he hives 

 get very heavy. 



I winter on the summer stands, simply 

 contracting the entrance and putting a 

 super full of leaves on top of the hive. I 

 have had single and double Danzenbaker 

 Wives and ten-frame hives. 



My winter stores are always mainly aster, 

 I feel sure, because the bees work vei-y 

 strongly on it, and when it is coming in one 

 can smell the odor a hundred yards away. 



I have never had the slightest trouble 

 with wintering — never lost a colony by 

 dysentery or anything of that nature. Once 

 or tAvice I have failed to winter a colony or 

 two, but am sure that they were not queen- 

 right to start the Avinter. Of course, in my 

 locality bees are able to fly a number of 

 times during the winter. 



Washi)]gton, D. C, 



ASTER PUTS THE WIN IN WINTER 



I$Y C. P. BUCHER 



T always look to the astere to build up my 

 colonies for winter. They have sometimes 

 built up so strongl}' from aster that I have 

 had a few swarms. I have seen four or five 

 frames of brood the first of October, and 

 every one knows Avhat that means — a pile 

 of young bees for winter. 



1 have wintered from 20 to 40 colonies, 

 and have not lost half a dozen in sixteen 

 years. One winter in this time they went to 

 be<l November 30 and never got up until 

 March 5. I began to feel a little uneasy 

 about them. Of the thirty that I wintered 

 (hat year only one was dead, and I got the 

 largest crop of honey the season following 

 that I ever harvested. 



I never .saw any aster honey amber in color 



except when it was mixed with goldenrod. 

 It is seldom that one gets aster honey in its 

 pure state ; but last year and four years ago 

 i had no honey any lighter in color than 

 that from the aster, nor any heavier in 

 body. It was so thick that it was very hard 

 to cut out of the sections on a cold morn- 

 ing, and when the weather gi'ows cold one 

 can hardly cut it at all. 



Last year we sold 500 sections and 200 

 l)ounds of extracted in less than ten days, 

 all from aster, and it Avas so light that it 

 looked like wliite-clover honey. 



In this locality Ave haA'e the Avhite aster. 

 J. L. Byer says the aster Avith him is blue or 

 ])urple. 



Undenvood, Ind. 



WHERE ASTER WINTERS WELL 



BY RAAVLEIGH THOMPSON 



Our bees came through the winter in 

 excellent condition Avith a few exceptions. 

 ()ut of forty colonies Iavo are Aveak and 

 two died — due to failure of queens, I think. 

 Both Avere young queens, but they did not 

 breed up last fall as did the others. On 

 account of the prolonged illness and recent 

 death of my aged parents, Avith Avhom my 

 son and myself Avore living, our bees re- 

 ceived little attention in the fall and spring. 



For Avinter stores the bi-ood-frames Avere 



almost solid Avith aster honey, gathered 

 mostly from a Aveed that our Pennsylvania 

 Germans call " Basum-reisich." It begins 

 to bloom here about the middle of Septem- 

 ber, and continues until severe frost kills 

 the plant. Sometimes the floAV from this 

 Aveed is abundant, last fall our bees making 

 considerable surplus. 



Not for the purpose of getting into print, 

 but in vieAv of Avhat the editor. Dr. Miller, 

 J. L. Byer, et al., have to say about aster 



