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THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



April 23, 



was about ready to hatch. The queen hatched out all right, 

 but the bees would not let her tear down the cells that they 

 were buildinpt, so she swarmed out, taking about half of the 

 bees with her, thus forming swarm D. 



Later I divided the old colony A, taking out enough brood 

 and bees to make swarm E; this swarm I exhibited at our 

 County Fair, showing the process of building queen-cells. 



Still later (June 29) the old queen A had the hive full of 

 bees and 14 frames of brood. I then took a new hive and put 

 in it three frames of brood from swarm C ; this I put on the 

 old stand A, and I shook the old queen and all her bees into 

 It. I then divided the 1-t frames of brood belonging to the 

 old queen, putting them into two new hives, and set them on 

 the stands of B and D, letting those swarms furnish bees to 

 the hatching brood, and forming colonies F and G. Now I 

 have seven good, strong colonies of bees, and all of them built 

 up entirely from the old colony A and her increase. I have 

 taken a little over 500 pounds of honey from those seven 

 hives, the old colony A furnishing more than double the 

 amount of any of the others, and each of them gathered 

 enough honey to winter on. Now, if any of our bee-keepers 

 can beat this, or come near to it by natural swarming, they 

 can do more than I can. 



For the past three years I have tried a few colonies on 

 the natural-swarming plan, with very unsatisfactory results. 

 Some of the new swarms do very well, but some of the old 

 colonies do very little, and they never average half as much 

 any season as the non-swarmers. 



I have practiced the non-swarming system 11 years with- 

 out a single failure. I mean that the results each year have 

 been satisfactory financially. Of course, we all have a few 

 colonies every year that don't build up or do much. This 

 seems to be one of the questions that we cannot account for. 

 I generally requeen those poor ones by, or before, the last of 

 June, with good results, as a rule. 



To make a success of dividing or non-swarming, requires 

 some practice. By the non-swarming system we can rear all 

 our queens from the very best stock. It will be seen that in 

 every instance I have reared all the new queens from the old 

 queen A, besides many others for other new swarms. This 

 old queen is three years old, and they have never built a 

 queen-cell in the old colony. Those bees are leather-colored 

 and 4-banded. I have many others as good as those, and 

 none of them ever swarm, as long as they have room or empty 

 space in the hive. I divide as early as it is practicable, then 

 I strengthen them up and give them room. 



In running for comb honey, I find the Ferguson-Lang- 

 stroth hive, as a rule, easy to get the bees up into the sections 

 before they get too crowded in the brood-chamber. When I 

 want to get the bees into the sections, I smoke them up late in 

 the afternoon, and close the slides from 12 to 24 hours, or 

 until I get them working in the sections. 



THE 10-FRAME LANGSTBOTH HIVE. 



There are some points in favor of the old standard 10- 

 frame Langstroth hive : 



First, it is a good winter hive, holding sufficient stores to 

 last the bees through the winter, and if they are properly 

 packed and ventilated, they will come through all right. In 

 running for comb honey the hive is the right length, breadth 

 and depth to hold 56 sections. I know of no hive with the 

 boxes and frames all of the same size and shape, and that is 

 so well adapted for comb honey as the Langstroth, and if we 

 run out of sections, or if we wish to change and run for ex- 

 tracted honey, the frames and hives will fit as they may be 

 desired ; and if we have strong colonies and a good houoy-flow 

 it Is the best adapted and the best paying hive to run 

 three stories. A deeper hive would not be practicable, and if 

 we use loose bottom-boards we can divide quickly, or Lave the 

 brood and honey in any part of the hive that we may desire. 



BENEFITS OF COMB FOUNDATION. 



One reason why my bees always pay well, is because I use 

 considerable fou:idation. I never put an empty frame into a 

 hive. Too many of our bee-keepers do this, but to tell the 

 truth I do not know but that a bee-keeper that never uses 

 foundation should be called a "bee-owner" instead of a "bee- 

 keeper." A long article could be written on the benefits of 

 foundation to bee-keepers. It not only causes the bees to 

 build straight combs, but by a liberal use of foundation the 

 bees will never crowd out the queen, for she will always have 

 room to lay eggs. If we take two colonies of equal strength, 

 and use foundation on one and none on the other, the one 

 having the foundation will gather more than twice as much 

 honey as the other in the same time, as from 2,000 to 3,000 

 bees can work on a sheet of foundation easier than 200 can 

 work on a bare top-bar. Salt Lake City, Utah. 



POISONOUS HONEY— DO BEES GATHER IT? 



"APISVIRUM" in all HONEY. 



Novice desires the readers of the Bee Journal, who keeps 

 bees where mountain laurel grows, to speak as to the whole- 

 someness of honey gathered from it. He gives a very good 

 description of mountain laurel as it grows hereabouts. It 

 grows in great abundance on the mountains of Pennsylvania ; 

 and the bees work some on it, but not enough to get much 

 surplus from it. I believe the honey has never been known to 

 injure any one here, nor does it seem to have any deleterious 

 effect on the bees. The leaves of the shrub are generally con- 

 ceded to be poisonous. I never knew cows to eat it here, but 

 sheep, left to their own resources too early in the spring, have 

 been known to eat it, and it generally resulted in giving the 

 owner a job of picking the wool off their dead carcasses, too. 

 The blossoms are generally considered to be harmless. The 

 boys, living near enough, gather and sell great quantities of 

 them to the city folks, and I have never heard of any one 

 being poisoned by them. 



Like Novice, I, too, am somewhat skeptical about poison- 

 ous honey. I would like to see some of the so-called poisonous 

 honey sent to a chemist for a chemical analysis. I have known 

 horses to be made very sick .by being turned into a nice field 

 of clover, and have heard of them even dying from the same 

 cause, but that would not warrant any one in saying that 

 green clover was poisonous. The danger was in the eating to 

 excess of feed to which they were not accustomed. 



As a matter of fact, there is more or less poison in all 

 honey, as in nearly everything else we eat. The mite of 

 poison that the Author of Nature has compounded with the 

 various things we eat, is as necessary and indispensable to our 

 well-being as any of their other properties. All honey contains 

 more or less Apis vinun, which, as a drug, is a powerful and 

 deadly poison. If we consider the very small amount of this 

 poison that is injected into the body by the sting of a bee, and 

 note the effect on those that are not used to being stung, we 

 may have an idea how powerful this poison really is. 



When I first began keeping .bees, a sting within two or 

 three inches of the eye was sufficient to nearly close it, and the 

 effect would last for a day or two, but now I am so inoculated 

 with this poison that it has little or no effect. In those days, 

 too, if I ate honey with any degree of excess, a violent pain in 

 my stomach was sure to follow. This, too, passed gradually 

 away on becoming used to honey. Now, if I had not been in- 

 terested in bees, and had bought honey of uncertain source, 

 and had been seized with violent cramps In the stomach 

 shortly after eating it, I might well have been excused for 

 saying and thinking that the honey was poisonous. It is 

 owing to the presence of Apis vlrum in honey that so many 

 people are benefited by its use. 



The Apis vinirrt makes honey really a medicine for sev- 

 eral diseases. If more honey was used there would be less 

 backache and kidney trouble ; so says Dr. J. M. Wallace, late 

 of Cleveland, Ohio, but now of this city, for whom I have ex- 

 tracted considerable Apis virum. He says it is one of the 

 most potent of drugs in the treatment of kidney diseases and 

 Bright's disease, and many others. He says that the virtue 

 ot Apis virum is becoming better known and appreciated by 

 the medical fraternity, day by day, and that it will be used in 

 much larger quantities in the future than heretofore. 



I collected and sold considerable Apis virum last season, 

 and have two orders standing now to be filled as soon as pos- 

 sible. I intend to try to work up an extensive trade in Apis 

 virum. I have invented a device for extracting it from the 

 bees without injuring them, and by which I can extract as 

 much in one hour as a small army can do with tweezers. If 

 the readers of the Bee Journal are interested, and want to 

 know more about this department of bee-culture, I will de- 

 scribe it more fully some other time. Ed. Jollet. 



Franklin, Pa. 



[Yes, we all want to know how you manage to make the 

 " tail " end of the bee more profitable than its tongue end. But, 

 then, why shouldn't the " business end" be all that its name 

 implies? — Ed.] 



POISONOUS HONEY FROM IVT. 



In reference to the article on page 146, about poisonous 

 honey, I can't agree with Novice. Why ? Because I know 

 that bees do collect honey and store surplus from ivy. Why 

 do I call it ivy ? Because I want to make a distinction be- 

 tween what we call mountain laurel and ivy — the bush that 

 bees collect poisonous honey from. 



I would not have written this if it had not been called for, 

 but bee-men ought not to sell such honey In any form what- 



