THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



323 



WEEKLY EDITION 



OF THE 



^^-^.^E^S^EO^i^,^^^ 



PUBLISHED BY 



THOMAS G. NEWMAN, 



EniTOIl AND PHOPltlETOIt, 



926 WEST MADISON-STREET, CHICAGO, ILL 



Weekly, t§'J£ a year ; Monthly, SO cents. 



Vol. XXI. May 27, 1885. No. 21. 



APICULTURAL NEWS ITEMS. 



EDITORIAL AND SELECTED. 



C. "Weeks, Clifton, Tenn., has sent ue his 

 spring: Price-List of queens, bees, etc. 



CIiafT Paekliig.— " Cyula Linswik " has 

 again wintered her entire apiary (61 colonies) 

 without loss. They were paclsed on the sum- 

 mer stands. 



An Exoliaii^e remai'ks thus: "The rules 

 say; Spring is the best time to move bees. 

 If, however, one settles on your necli in mid- 

 summer, you need not waituutilne.xt spring 

 before moving it." You had better not be 

 too an.vious to remove it; you may wish you 

 had let it tiy away of its own accord. Some- 

 times it " leaves a sting behind." 



Fine Work.— We have several samples 

 of "dovetailed sections" from Dr. G. L, 

 Tinker. They are made of white poplar, and 

 sawed at the rate of one-hundred per min- 

 ute, or 00,000 pieces in a day. If such " rapid 

 sawing " and " fine work " have before been 

 accomplished, we have not heard of it. They 

 show su]>erb workmanship and make a fine 

 appearance. 



How to Propagate and Grow Fruit, 



by Charles A. Green, contains over 50 illus- 

 trations and two colored fruit plates. A 

 ti4-page book, price 50 cents, telling how to 

 propagate and multiply strawberries, rasp- 

 berries, blackberries, currants, gooseberries, 

 grapes, quince, peach, apricot, plum, cherry, 

 pear and apple. It tells how to lay out a 

 garden or fruit farm— how to plant, culti- 

 vate, trim, etc. For sale at this office. 



Humble Bees are being exported to New 

 Zealand, in order to fertilize the red clover 

 there. A correspondent in the ScicDtiflc 

 American remarks : "This is not the first 

 shipment of bumble bees ; the same experi- 

 ment was tried with .\ustralia some years 

 since, and with success. It is a fact that 

 without the l>uml)le bee, in two years we 

 would be without clover— one of the best 

 fertilizers known to agriculture. Few bum- 

 ble bees live over the winter, and their num- 

 ber is not sufficient to fertilize the first 

 growth of clover, as not more than 5 per 

 cent, of the first crop has seed ; but by the 

 time the second crop comes on, the bees have 

 increased, and as a consequence we get seed, 

 with sappling clover. 



liOHt 50 Colonies.— The Flint Ghihc re- 

 marks as follows: "W. Z. Hutchinson, of 

 Koij-crsville, lost about . 50 colonics of choice 

 Iices during the late winter, leaving him 

 about 'ir> colonies. He has already ordered 

 eno\igh to increase his stock to about !I0 col- 

 onies. Mr Hutchinson boliovcs the honey 

 market will be active and prices good, owing 

 to the enoi-mous losses during the past sea- 

 son, and hence he does not iiesitate to re- 

 invest." 



AplK Dorsata, says the L'Aiiicnltnrp of 

 Italy, is not so much to be dreaded, after all. 

 It is not more aggressive than the Italian 

 bee. The editor adds : " A learned natural- 

 ist traveller will publish a description of the 

 bees of India, which will rectify many errors 

 chiefly concerning the Ai>h dorsata, which 

 has certainly been mistaken for some large 

 wasp of that country. The Apis dorsata is 

 not any more aggressive than our Italian 

 bee. The specimens which he has sent to 

 the Museum of the Apicultural Society of 

 Milan, especially the males, are very fine ; 

 all the body is of a clear yellow, including 

 the antennse ; the head and the eyes are 

 white." 



C. H. Dlbbern, in the H'csfcni Phncinan, 

 remarksthns: "The foolish story started by 

 Prof. Wilej' as a ' scientific pleasantry,' that 

 honey-comb was now made in Chicago by 

 machinery, filled with glucose and neatly 

 sealed up by passing a hot iron over it, and 

 sold for ' pure honey,' has long been ex- 

 ploded ; but is still being persistently re- 

 peated. Those of us who have ever made a 

 pound of foundation know how utterly im- 

 possible it would be to accomplish this feat. 

 If it could be done it would not resemble 

 comb honey, and could not be used to deceive 

 the most unwar.v. Comb honey never can 

 be successfully imitated by any scientific 

 methods." 



Bee-Keepers In Gerinauj'.— From Sep- 

 tember !) to 15, the annual meeting of the 

 Austro-German Central Bee-Keepers' Asso- 

 ciation, will bring together 400 to 500 mem- 

 bers. Mr. Lehzen, of Hanover, enumerates 

 the associations in Germany and the number 

 of members in each one, as follows: " Cent- 

 ral of Gumbinen, 488; Circle of Siegen, 500; 

 BaiticCentral (in Pomerania), 950; Central of 

 the Province of Hanover, l,.'iOO; Central of 

 the Marches, 900; Central of Sehleswig-Hol- 

 stein, 400; Seven United Associations of two 

 Hesses, etc., 1,200; Central of the Great 

 Duchy of Saxe- Weimar and neighboring 

 country, ^80; Central of the Provinces of 

 Saxony, Thuringe, and States of the Grand 

 Duke of Anhalt, 1,'^00; Central of Mechlem- 

 burg, 000; Central of Bromberg, 500; Baden, 

 1,700; Cammin, 3,.500; General of Silesia, 

 2,242; The Gernuin Club of Frankfort upon 

 Main, 2,242. Total, 16 principal groups, num- 

 bering 15,880 members— all readers of pro- 

 gressive periodical publications." How do 

 these figures appear when contrasted witii 

 American bee-keepers? We have many more 

 apiarists than Germany, and yet not a quarter 

 of them pursue progressive methods, read 

 a bee-i)aper, or attend bee-keei)ers' conven- 

 tions. We have the territory, the flora, and 

 the bees, but the iire-killcrs here outnumber 

 the practical and progi-essive, and when they 

 do not kill the bees by their mismanagement, 

 they ruin the honey markets by their ignor- 

 ance and indiscretion. 



The AVIilte Sulphur Sprtngti, situated 

 In Fredeiick County, Virginia, is a summer 

 resort conducted by Mr. E. C. Jordan, one of 

 the most enthusiastic lieckeepers of Vir- 

 ginia, and is open from June 1st to Oct. 15. 

 We have received several pamphlets setting 

 forth the value of the use of those mineral 

 waters. If anj- one desires to olitain a copy 

 of it, they nuiy be obtained at this office, or 

 of Mr. Jordan, at Stephenson's Depot, Va. 

 Honey is abundantly supplied on the tables 

 for guests. 



Bees and P<*aohem. — A correspondent in 

 the Liiiiilnii (Irii-den, from Wales, remarks as 

 follows : " I know of no better way of se- 

 curing a heavj- crop of poaches and nectar- 

 ines, than by ptitting a colony of bees in the 

 house when the trees are in bloom. This has 

 been iny practice tor several years past in 

 the case of a house in which the trees come 

 into flower in March, and the result is alwaj'S 

 satisfactory. When the bees are in the house, 

 we never brush the flowers or shake the trees 

 in the hope of fertilizing the flowers ; this 

 work is left entirely to the bees, and they do 

 it efl'ectually. I have thinned 900 small nec- 

 tarines from a tree which covers a piece of 

 trellis 4 yards square, and several hundred 

 more will have to be taken off before the 

 crop is a safe and ordinary one. This, I 

 think, is proof enough as to theadvantags of 

 employing bees, and those who think such 

 work does the bees harm make a great mis- 

 take, as they thus get a supply of food before 

 it is plentiful out-of-doors; and I have noted 

 that I have for 2 years secured ~my first 

 swarm and earliest-filled sections from the 

 peach-house bees. I may add that I have a 

 good many colonies of bees, and in ray opin- 

 ion they are useful in a garden at this season, 

 and when managed on the movable-frame 

 system, they are both interesting and profit- 

 able." 



AVild Bees In Oregon.— The Portland 



Xews mentions the following incident : "A 

 short time ago Samuel. Asa, and Joe Hola- 

 day, of Scappoose, took a trip over to the 

 Lewiston river, in order to look into the re- 

 sources of that region. They found it a most 

 Ijeautiful country, and one that offers many 

 inducements to settlers. The part ^'isited 

 lies ofl" in the direction of Mount St. Helena, 

 and is composed of l>oth timber land and fine 

 open tracts which al)ound in game, large and 

 small. While encamped on the river, they 

 disco\ered an olijeet that was as novel and 

 interesting as it was beautiful and striking. 

 In their rambles through the pine woods, 

 they suddenly came upon a fallen tree across 

 the path which, on insiiection, they found to 

 be hollow. Through a knot-hole they could 

 see something white, and at once began to 

 investigate. They sawed into the log and 

 were surprised to find that the whole interior 

 of the log was filled solidly with honey. 

 They at once brought from their camp some 

 of their vessels to fill with this sweetest of 

 all nature's productions. Their buckets and 

 pans were soon filled. Then they sawed off 

 another length of the log, and found it still 

 solid with the honey. This they repeated 

 and took from it honej- until they had opened 

 up 10 feet of pure, lovely honey, which 

 yielded a eiunb that was in many places 4 

 inches thick. Of this find they carried away 

 180 pounds, which they declared was the 

 finest they ever tasted, being far richer than 

 the tame honey which they produce." 



