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American Vee Journal 



out among the hives, which he over- 

 looked while working in a great hurry, 

 and that on his return five days later 

 he found it and another frame of honey 

 near by, and that it was unmolested by 

 robbers. I also found that another 

 one of my apiarists had raised the cov- 

 ers of the hives over one inch for ven- 

 tilation, thus exposing honey, and it 

 had not induced robbing. I thought 

 this remarkable and worth relating. 



[It is well to tell the beginners that 

 such things happen only during a 

 heavy harvest. Bees seem to prefer 

 the nectar of flowers to honey already 

 gathered. — Editor.] 



Our Mountain Home 



The cottage here shown is the writ- 

 er's summer home at Mountain City, 

 Ga., located on the edge of the Blue 

 Ridge Mountains. It is here I expect 

 to spend the remaining summers of 

 my life. 



We have a natural gap through the 

 mountains known as Roburn Gap, 

 throu4h which runs a railroad. The 

 mountain views from the slo v going 

 train are perhaps not excelled any- 

 where. The fresh pure, cool mountain 

 air is always circulating, making the 

 summer climate ideal, the thermome- 

 ter registering close to 90 degrees all 

 the time. The pure cool mountain 

 spring water is abundant everywhere. 

 Delicious fruits of almost all kinds are 

 plentiful. Just at the rear of my cot- 

 tage I have a small orchard which 

 supplies us with fruit, and at the rear 

 of this rolls up Massingale Mountain 

 to a height of about 4000 feet. It has 

 a bald peak where the writer spends 

 many pleasant hours enjoying the sur- 

 rounding mountain and valley scenery. 



Apiary Work 



It is not the time of the season yet to 

 slack up on apiary work, but if it has 

 been well kept up from early spring a 

 week's vacation could be taken and en- 

 joyed. We have not ceased apiary work, 

 such as requeening, making increase, 

 building up the weaker colonies, and 

 getting all ready for the summer flow. 

 In fact, we have done this all along 

 while taking off honey, and we have 

 every colony in fine trim for the flow, 

 which is now on. 



If other beekeepers have not done 

 this they should do it at once, in order 

 to harvest some honey at the end of 

 the summer flow and be prepared for 

 the fall flow, and get in good condition 

 for winter. In the great cotton belt 

 supers should be cleaned and prepared, 

 using full sheets of foundation in 

 frames or sections. 



The Crop and Market 



As a whole the spring crop of honey 

 has been about an average in Dixie, 

 and naturally the market is a little dull 

 at this lime. Many beekeepers hav; 

 still considerable honey on hand un- 

 sold, and are offering it a few cents be- 

 low the usual price. This is a mistake, 

 for it does not increase the sales, and 



a little later, when the market is more 

 open, it will move at the regular prices. 

 There is no use to lower prices when 

 the market is dull. Let the supply 

 mpve some and you will get your price. 



There has been a large crop of honey 

 gathered in the mountain sections. 

 This is the cause of the dullness of the 

 market. This home supply will soon 

 be gone. 



Conducted by J. L. Byer. Mt. Joy. Ontario. 



Prospects Not the Best 



July 13, and hardly a pound of clover 

 honey in the supers, and the clover is 

 through blooming for the season. 

 Briefly, this sums up the situation in 

 this section, and from reports received 

 from other localities, I fear things are 

 not much better in many places in the 

 province. Basswood may yield some 

 honey in some localities, but as it is 

 not open yet no definite information 

 will be available for 10 days at least. 

 We look for none from that source 

 here in York county, owing to scarce- 

 ness of trees, and from the fact that 

 not half of the trees we have are going 

 to bloom this year. At the north yard 

 the prospects for basswood are fair, 

 and we are hoping that some nectar 

 will come from the bloom, so that we 

 will at least have some white honey. 



At opening of clover bloom the hives 

 were heavy with honey gathered from 

 hard maple, many colonies having from 

 10 to 25 pounds of this honey in the 

 supers. If the hives were all weighed 

 today, I doubt if they would average as 

 heavy as they did a month ago, even if 

 not a pound of this early honey was 

 extracted. This will give the readers 

 an idea as to what a dearth of nectar 

 we have had. There was not a day 

 during clover bloom that one could 

 open hives for any length of time with- 

 out robbers nosing around. Prospects 

 are on an average for a buckwheat 

 flow, provided we get some showers, 

 but at the best in our locality we ex- 

 pect little more than enough for winter 

 stores. 



The failure of the clover crop nat- 

 urally hits the man hard who is de- 

 pending upon bees alone for a living, 

 and in seasons like this the man so 

 situated wishes he had a few acres of 

 garden truck to put his time in, and 

 incidentally bring enough money to 

 pay expenses, but in seasons like last 

 year he would not be able to attend to 

 any other kind of work, and with labor 

 hard to secure, it is quite a problem as 

 to just what course to take. One thing 

 is sure, the men who have more than 

 one string to their bow will, this sea- 

 son at least, have reason to be thank- 

 ful. 



While things look blue just at pi es- 

 ent for the specialist beekeeper, we 

 should not forget the business is an 

 uncertain one, and seasons like the 

 present have occurred before and will 

 come again. One redeeming feature 

 of the present situation is that many 

 who have seen visions of "easy 

 money " in beekeeping will now know 

 by actual experience, which is a better 

 teacher than rosy pictures of the busi- 



ness, that there are two sides to the 

 question, and even if in some years the 

 colonies do yield comparatively large 

 returns for capital invested, seasons 

 like the present help to materially pull 

 down the average of profits. 



In many parts of Ontario people 

 have gone " bee crazy," and the sale of 

 beekeepers' supplies has reached enor- 

 mous proportions. If conditions are 

 at all general over Ontario, as I have 

 reason to believe, I venture to say that 

 75 percent of the foundation, hives, etc., 

 that have been purchased have not 

 been used, and will be carried over 

 until another year. 



Rearing Queens and Requeening 



Having little to do in the line of 

 work that comes along with the honey 

 flow, my intentions were to try and 

 rear a few queens for home use. But 

 the weather has been so changeable, 

 and the dearth of nee tarso pronounced, 

 that nothing has been done at this dale 

 (July 13). With the bees dragging out 

 the drones, prospectsfor queen-rearing 

 are not very good to the novice in the 

 business, and I feel like waiting until 

 buckwheat starts to bloom, hoping that 

 it will do enough better than the clover 

 to allow one to work in comfort among 

 the bees. 



During buckwheat bloom is a splen- 

 did time to do requeening, no matter if 

 you buy or rear your queens, and any 

 failing queens, or queens old enough 

 to be likely to fail next spring, should 

 at this time be superseded, if not earlier 

 in the season. 



Odor of American Foulbrood 



After reading what E. G. Carr has to 

 say about the odor of the two kinds of 

 foulbrood, page 236 of the American 

 Bee Journal for July, I think his olfac- 

 tory nerves are all right. Certainly I 

 found, as he says, that in well devel- 

 oped cases of luiropean foulbrood one 

 could smell the characteristic oder 

 some distance from the hives, and only 

 once can I recollect anything like that 

 with American foulbrood. In that 

 particular instance, a whole apiary of 

 about (10 colonies was simply rotten 

 with American foulbrood, the owner 

 having ignorantly spread brood from 

 diseased colonies into others early in 

 the season. The glue pot odor could 

 be smelled any place in the yard if on 

 the windward side, but that is the only 

 time I can recollect anything like it. 

 Unquestionably, in Ontario at least, 

 European foulbrood has a decidedly 

 uastv odor. 



