1898. 



THE AMERICAN BEE-KEEPER. 



161 



pose, who extract unripe honey, carry 

 it to a town some distance away, and 

 nffer it at unreasonably low rigureb, 

 while honest honey producers in that 

 v^icinity are offering nice honey at liv- 

 ing prices. That, coupled with an un- 

 ^er supply, is keeping prices down. We 

 [lave never produced enough honey in 

 the United States to create a general 

 lemand, and until a general demand is 

 reated prices will rule low. The law 

 Df supply and demand does not yet ap- 

 ply to honey. — Ruralist. 



Separators or no separators, fence 

 3r no fence, plain sections or sections 

 with bee-ways — well, it sets my head 

 n a twirl. The finest comb honey put 

 on this market is produced by a bee- 

 keeper that never uses separators or 

 fences, but uses plain sections set a bee 

 space apart in the super. Bees go all 

 around the sections except where they 

 rest on the bottom of the super." — C. A.. 

 Bunch in American Bee Journal. In 

 the .July number of the American Bee- 

 Keeper, Editor Hill requests this picket 

 to launch his idea in regard to a better 

 filled section which I mentioned in n 

 former note. You get the whole of my 

 idea, Bro. Hill, in the above paragraph 

 copied from Mr. Bunch's article; that 

 is, full and free communication all 

 around the section. And as to super 

 construction to thus hold the sections 

 in proper place, I think I am sufficient 

 of a mechanic to know it is practical 

 although I have not tested it. — D. W. 

 Heise, in Canadian Bee Journal. 



Yellow jackets have been more nu 

 numerous this season past than ever 

 before known in Oregon and they have 

 been an almost unbearable pest in 

 many of the farming communities, 

 swarming into houses like flies, sting 

 Ing all who dare to molest them in 

 their raids upon sweet things and 

 meats upon the table, they being vo 

 racious eaters and carrying off meaf 

 like starved hounds. They have been 



especially destructive on bees, hanging 

 about the hives in droves and carrying 

 off the honey-laden bees as they re- 

 turned to their hives, by the hundreds, 

 in many instances killing entire colo- 

 nies of bees. A farmer's wife who has 

 fought these audacious little highway- 

 men by all the methods heretofore 

 known, hit upon a plan this season 

 which soon freed her neighborhood of 

 yellow jackets. Her plan was to set 

 out glass fruit jars half filled with 

 sweetened water, which attracted the 

 insects by the hundreds and, entering 

 the glass jars, were unable to get out. 

 When she first put out the jars they re- 

 quired to be emptied several times dur- 

 ing the day, so many yellow jackets 

 having been captured, and in a short 

 time scarcely a yellow jacket was to be 

 seen about the premises. — Range and 

 Ranch. 



Bees and Horticulture. 



The value of the honey bee to the 

 horticulturist is hardly realized by 

 many who are engaged in fruit grow- 

 ing. The setting of fruit that will stay 

 on the tree depends chiefly upon proper 

 pollination, and in this work the bee is 

 largely instrumental. There are, of 

 course, other instrumentalities, but 

 none perhaps so effective. Experi- 

 ments at the Oregon station with the 

 peach throw a good deal of light on 

 this subject. A number of peach trees 

 were forced into bloom under glass in 

 November, and a colony of bees was 

 placed in the house with the trees as 

 soon as the bloom began. For several 

 days a heavy fog prevented the bees 

 from working, but on the fi'-st bright 

 day that came, the bees went to work 

 and continued at it as long as there 

 was anything on the trees to work on. 

 The result was that at the stoning sea- 

 son, the time when unfertilized fruit 

 drops, not a peach fell from the trees, 

 and the crop was so heavy that it had 

 to be severely thinned. As a check 

 test, one tree was so protected that the 



