1^96. 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



453 



market, and no man, nor set of men, has a right to shut him 

 out of it. No, sir, Mr. D., I do not object to the coming of 

 any one. The freer men are, the better ; and being left free, 

 not hampered by useless laws, if I cannot hold my own in com- 

 petition with the world, if needs be, I am willing to go to the 

 wall. And though I go down and sink into oblivion and eter- 

 nal forgetfulness, I will not whine. 



" Does he not know that bee-keepers are being robbed ?" 

 No, I do not know anything of the kind. It is a great deal 

 easier to call men " robbers " than it is to correct the real Ills 

 that beset human life. One can sneer about so-called states- 

 meu with much less trouble than he can be a statesmen. 

 There is entirely too much of this charging dishonest motives 

 and methods upon men in high authority. God has not left 

 the world to sin and vice, neither are all men corrupt who do 

 not agree with you and me. It seems to me that it becomes 

 men and women who profess to be followers of Him who weut 

 about doing good, to look for the bright side of life, and not 

 be eternally holding up the bad, and crying "thief," "rob- 

 bers," etc. What effect must such tossing about of words and 

 phrases, attributing bad motives to our rulers and law mak- 

 ers, have on the rising generation ? It seems to me it cannot 

 be anything but bad. 



1 trust this cry "in plain language" to the "humble 

 ones," and the great as well, from one who has been a 

 "watchtuaii on the towers of Zion," may have its proper 

 effect, and that hereafter we may believe in real truth, and in 

 the fullest sense that "The earth Is the Lord's and the full- 

 ness thereof." St. Joseph, Mo. 



Wintering on Langstroth Frames on Ends. 



BY THOS. THURLOW. 



On page 343, Mr. R. L. Taylor's report reminds me that 

 I promised to let you know how my bees wintered on Lang- 

 stroth frames standing on end, and I will now proceed to do 

 so, as I have kept a memoranda from the time I put them into 

 winter quarters uutil they were taken down in the spring. 



Oct. 15, 1895, there being little brood in the hives, and 

 that capped, and in the central frames, the manner of fixing 

 a hive for winter was as follows : 



Taking a hive off of its stand and setting it on the ground 

 alongside, a floor is placed on the stand and then a body put 

 ill posltioD ; then a bridge !}.£ inches wide, on the floor, inside 

 the body at the entrance, then the inside case (which has an 

 inch high entrance across one side at the bottom) is set on the 

 floor close against the bridge, an equal distance from each 

 side of body ; the frames are then taken from the hive aud 

 carefully set in the case on end, seeing that the queen and all 

 the brood goes along, until full. 



(The frames rest on two strips %-inch thick, with V's In 

 the top edge, to keep the frames spaced rightly, and are high 

 enough to keep the end of the top-bar M inch from the floor, 

 are fastened to the case, and run from front to back, so the 

 frames are crosswise to the entrance, and the case is )4 inch 

 higher than the upper end of the top-bar. The upper end of 

 the frames are spaced with a light strip of wood with notches 

 cut in it, to slip onto the frames easily.) 



Another body is then put on, and granulated cork filled In 

 all around, flush with the top of the case; then two or throe 

 thicknesses of bagging, cut a little larger than the top of the 

 inside case, are laid on top of the same; then an empty sec- 

 tion-case is put on top of the bodies, and a cork cushion put in 

 it; the cover comes last, and one hive is fixed for winter. 



The bees remaining in the old hive are brushed down at 

 the entrance, and the spare frames put away for spring. 



All my colonies were so fixed, and each had about 15 

 pounds of honey ; that was far from 40 pounds, as B. Taylor 

 recommends in a late number of the American Bee Journal, 



but it was enough and to spare, as I have not been able to get 

 all the spare frames of honey left out in the fall back into the 

 hives this spring, but have had to use frames of empty comb 

 to give the queen room. 



Last winter was a hard winter here, not much snow, but 

 more than average cold and windy ; after the first week in 

 November the bees were not able to fly until Dec. 21, when 

 they had a good flight, and cleaned out their dead, which were 

 very few, and they flew a little until the 30tb, after which 

 the next time they got out was Jan. 30, 1896, when they 

 cleaned house and " went to bed " again until Feb. 15, then it 

 was quite warm, and I looked them over. In 12 out of the 

 14 hives the bees were at the top of the frames, which verifies 

 what I said last year, that bees will get to the top of the 

 frames in winter where it is the warmest, and leave capped 

 honey below them ; almost all of them had capped brood. 



March was a hard mouth ; the 28th was the next flight 

 they had, then I looked for brood, but found very little; the 

 bees looked bright and dry, the inside of the case perfectly 

 dry, and not a sign of dysentery did I see all winter. 



On Nov. 25, 1895, I weighed the hives very carefully, as 

 I was curious to know just what they would lose in their new 

 winter arrangement; on March 28 I weighed again, and this 

 is their exact loss after four months of cold and windy winter : 



Nov. 25. March 28. Loss. 



No. lbs. lbs. lbs. 



1. 76M 69^2- T 



2. 71Ji 65J4 5% 

 8. 69 62 7 



4. 70 62% 7K 



5. 69}^ 621^ IH 



6. QQ]4 59 7Ji 



7. 72M 64 Sli 



Nov. 25. March 28. Loss. 



No. lbs. lbs. lbs. 



8. 72 65 7 



9. 74M 67>i 6% 



10. 74M 67M 6% 



11. GSVi 62 6% 



12. 71% 64% 7 

 IS. 75K 68 7M 

 14. 70k' 64% 5K 



The average loss was 7 pounds, or only 2% pounds he- 

 tween maximum and minimum loss, and wintered on dark fall 

 honey. 



Now, what do you think ? Is It a good plan for wintering, 

 or no better than many others'? I have never seen anything 

 in the American Bee Journal that I remember equal to it. 



This has been a poor spring here for bees ; they get very 

 little honey from red maple, fruit-bloom or locust, and the 

 nights have been so cool all along that brood-rearing has been 

 kept back more than I ever l<new before. White clover has 

 now been in bloom two weeks, and there is no surplus honey 

 yet ; if the weather prophet does not give us hot weather 

 pretty quick, the honey crop in this vicinity will be non est. 



Wiring Brood-Feames. — I don't know how other people 

 string wire into brood-frames, but I invented this plan, and 

 the wire does not kink and bother : 



First, string a frame, then take the wire out, then take a 

 strip of board about an inch square, a little longer than the 

 wire (say 6 inches), drive two wire nails near each end, just 

 the length of the wire apart, take a spool of wire, fasten the 

 end to one nail and wind round from nail to nail as many 

 lengths as you want, and fasten the end ; then take any kind 

 of a string and wrap around the stick and wire from nail to 

 nail about a dozen turns, and fasten ; then cut all the wires 

 on the outside of the nails ; tack the strip to the edge of a 

 bench, wire up, clamp a brood-frame to the bench at the end 

 of the strip, draw out a wire, and string into the frame as you 

 draw out. 



Tightening Sections in Cases. — The book says to 

 tighten sections in cases " put a wedge between the follower 

 and side of the case." Don't do that. Use a piece of light 

 band-iron about % inch or % Inch wide, and about 7 inches 

 long; bend it in the middle flat ways, so it will be in the 

 shape of two parentheses, convex sides outwards ; two for 

 each case, between the follower and side of the case ; they 

 allow the sections to swell or shrink as the weather pleases, 



