712 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



Nov. 8, 1901) 



the hive. These cleats are intended for covers or rims to 

 telescope '2 inch over the hive, as well as for hand-holds. 



I tier up my bees ill the cellar three and four hi(,'h, if 

 necessary. I place them H inches above the cellar bottom, 

 on scantlingr which are resting on brick, and I do not allow 

 the scantling- or hives to touch the walls of the cellar. I 

 have had as high as 247 colonies of bees in this cellar at one 

 time with success, losing none butqueenlcss colonies, which 

 I would just as soon lose as not. For several years I have 

 lost but one or two colonies each year in wintering, (iive 

 me good, strong colonies with 20 pounds of honey each, and 

 I can go to sleep at night knowing that my bees are coming 

 thru, tho we may have zero weather for months at a time. 



The bottoms of my hives are nailed fast to the body. 

 The hive-entrance is left open '.xl2 inches. The honey- 

 boards arc left on the hives with a quilt or muslin cover well 

 propolized on the boards. They have no upward ventila- 

 tion, but I am of the opinion that it would be better if there 

 was more room between the frames and bottom of the hive. 



I place my bees in the cellar about Nov. 20, and leave 

 them until the forepart of April, or until they can gather 

 from black alder, black willow, and the soft maples. 



St. Joseph Co., Ind. 



No. 4. Interesting Notes on Europ(;an Travel. 



BV C. P. DADANT. 



BEFORE I leave Geneva I must mention the pleasant 

 surprise we had there. We staid but a day, and, in the 

 morning, as I walkt away from the breakfast table, in 

 the Hotel Suisse, I found myself face to face with Mr. J. T. 

 Calvert, the business manager of the A. I. Root Co. I was so 

 muchastonisht to find him there that I had to hear his voice 

 before I recogni/.ed him. I knew he was in Europe, but 

 thought him far away. He was with the Christian En- 

 deavor people, and they had just completed a tour of Switz- 

 erland, while we were beginning ours. As you will readily 

 imagine, we had a good, long talk about Europe, and about 

 the possibility of our meeting again, which we did at I'aris, 

 later on. 



So we started on our trip thru Switzerland, and the first 

 night was spent at Fribourg, where we were lucky enough 

 to happen on the evening of a concert by the world-re- 

 nowned organs of their cathedral. I had heard church or- 

 gans many times before, but none such as these. They are 

 said to be the finest in the world. The church is lighted 

 only sulliciently to allow the visitors to find their way to 

 the seats with a very few dim lights, and in the darkness 

 of that imposing edifice one listens with wonder to music 

 which runs from the frightful sounds of a terrific thunder 

 and wind storm to the sweetest strains of the Alpine horn 

 from thedistant mountains. We only spent an hour there, 

 but we were both, my daughter and myself, so entranced 

 with the music that we thought we had been there but half 

 of that time. 



The following day .saw us at Berne, the capital of the 

 Republic, and we visited the new Federal Palace, saw the 

 parks, paid our compliments to the Bernese bears, and crost 

 a few of the suspension bridges over the Aar River, which 

 winds about the city at the bottom of a deep gorge in the 

 manner which seems to be customary with the Swiss 

 streatns. It makes the land.scape very picturesque. 



From Berne we went to Thun and crost the Eake of 

 Thun on a steamer to Interlaken, with mountains on both 

 sides, and the Jungf ran and its snowy summit in the distance 

 ahead. The town of Interlaken, with the two lakes of 

 Thun and Brienz on either side, with half a dozen inclined- 

 plane railroads ascending high peaks within half an hour's 

 ride in almost any direction, with its fine hotels,and rugged 

 -surroundings, seemed to us to be the very center of the tour- 

 ists' excursions. And there is no lack of tourists anywhere, 

 especially English and Americans. 



Well, we took in the trip to the Jungfrau, or rather to 

 the .spot that was nearest to the Jungfrau by rail, inclined- 

 plane railroads, and went up beyond the line of the pines 

 where nothing but a little short and velvety grass grows. 

 For a few days bees were entirely forgotten, yet I must say 

 that I found profuse blooms and bees at work upon them, 

 almost as far as the station called Kleine Scheidegg, which 

 is but a mile or two beneath the eternal snows of the peaks, 

 and about 8,000 feet above sea level. 



Svvitzerland is certainly well fitted for bee-keeping, for 

 all of its uplands are pastures, and many of the slopes in 

 the valleys are in meadows composed of different plants 

 which bloom profusely. The mode of agriculture of the 



Bernese Alps is very peculiar, and puzzles the traveler who 

 looks for a large number of cattle in a country where every- 

 thing is meadows. But no cattle are to be seen about the 

 farms at this time. During the winter the cows are kept in 

 the valleys, well stabled in the village barns, and fed on 

 the hay gathered in summer. As soon as spring opens they 

 are put into the hands of a shepherd, who takes them up the 

 hills, and drives them farther and farther up as the snow 

 disappears, so that when summer comes they are all on the 

 cliffs away up above the pines, each cow with a bell, herded, 

 milkt and sheltered among the precipices on the heights 

 just below the snows of the peaks. 



In the meantime, the farmers in the valley below har- 

 vest two crops of grass from their fields and store it in lit- 

 tle sheds- broad-roof " chalets " — built here and there and 

 everywhere, all along the slopes. This hay is fed to the 

 cattle as they come down awaj' from the snows at the ap- 

 proach of winter. It is in this manner that they have 

 solved the protjiem of removing their crop from often inac- 

 cessible fields. So there is an almost perpetual travel with 

 the cattle from the valley to the mountain in the spring, 

 and from the mountain back to the valley in the fall. The 

 short, but thick and tender grass, growing on steep hill- 

 sides, among rocks and bushes, in ditches, and, in fact, in 

 places where a man can hardly hold himself upright with- 

 out a support, is all cut, cured, and put away, and is said to 

 pay well for the labor involved, altho I am sure that our 

 average American farmer would not think it worth the 

 trouble of harvesting. 



Apiaries are numerous, and as the Swiss farmer is very 

 fairly educated, movable-frame hives are much used. Nearly 

 all the honey is extracted, as in France, for the reason that 

 it sells best in that shape. 



In most of the Swiss hotels where we stopt during our 

 trip, we were served extracted honey at the breakfast table, 

 the early breakfast usually consisting of milk and coffee 

 with bread, toast and butter. I have since been told that a 

 great deal of adulterated honey is sold under the name of 

 " mellose," but I must say that what I ate at different times 

 seemed to me to be excellent honey, for it had the fiavor, 

 the consistency, and the sweetness, of the true article. 

 Their best honey is harvested from esparcet, but they have 

 also a great deal of alfalfa, rape, mustard, and an abun- 

 dance of fruit-bloom, besides the wild flowers of the mead- 

 ows that I have mentioned previously. 



Our ascent on the inclined-plane railroad to the Jung- 

 frau's new electric road was the pleasantest of our trip. 

 The road follows the windings of the Linth — a precipitous 

 stream formed from the water of the melting snows — to 

 Lautcrbrunnen, thence it ascends the edge of a cliff on the 

 left, and from hill to hill reaches Wengern, Scheidegg, 

 where the electric road branches off' and goes down again 

 on the opposite side in an irregular circle to Grindelwald 

 and back to Interlaken. When we reacht Lauterbrunnen, 

 where we had a 40-minutes stop, I spied a small village 

 thousands of feet over our heads on the right, with a cable 

 road leading to it by an almost straight route. I askt some 

 one the name of that village. "It is Murren," was there- 

 ply. I felt rather sorry that we had not decided to go that 

 way, it seemed so high up. But soon after that the train 

 started up the opposite hill, and I was so busy admiring the 

 frightful way in which we were leaving the tall pines like 

 green spots under our feet — as each of the little engines, 

 with its single car of human freight, pusht us up farther 

 and farther — that I forgot all about Murren. When we ar- 

 rived at Wengern, I saw a few clustered houses away down 

 below us on the opposite hill, and askt again what village 

 that was. " It is Murren." Our ascent had been so rapid 

 that I did not realize till then the dreadful height we had 

 traveled. 



Those far-up mountain-peaks, which seem to be lost in 

 the clouds, and entirely remote from civilization, are never- 

 theless daily visited by thousands of people. The train on 

 which we made the ascent was divided into five sections, 

 each of one car and one locomotive, each section about 200 

 feet from the next, so that in the windings of the ascent 

 we could easily see one section above us and one belbw. I 

 calculated that about 200 people were with us at that hour, 

 and as there are three or four trains each day, and hundreds 

 of pedestrians besides, who take great pride in walking 

 every inch of the way, I am satisfied that over a thousand 

 people made this trip the same day that we did. But when 

 the snows are reacht few are the lovers of danger who go 

 farther. 



But go up ever .so high you will be sure to find the in- 

 evitable dealer in picture postal-cards, alpenstocks, and St. 

 Bernard dogs. Everybody gets the postal-card [craze, for 



