THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



GUI 



ror the American Beo JoumaL 



Cellar vs. Out-Door Wintering. 



N. L. MINOIl. 



I think that tlie air of a cellar be- 

 comes poisonous and tlius kills tlie 

 bees. I have read the discussions in 

 the Bee Journal about the cause of 

 bee-diarrhea. A neighbor lost some 

 bees by diarrhea caused by eating 

 poor honey, or from vitiated air. JJad 

 honey has" the same effect on bees as 

 raw or green vegetables has on cer- 

 tain persons when the latter eat them. 

 There has never been any bee-diar- 

 rhea in my apiary. I have often re- 

 moved old combs from the hives and 

 melted them into wax, and replaced 

 them by frames of foundation. Those 

 of my bees that had clover or fall 

 honey in their hives, wintered all 

 right. Some bee-keepers in this 

 vicinity, who extracted all the good 

 honey and fed sugar syrup, lost all 

 their bees. 



I think that some kinds of honey 

 contain medicine which the bees re- 

 quire in winter. I noticed a sick dog 

 searching for " dog-grass," which he 

 ate, and it cured him. I believe bees 

 need some medicine in winter, and 

 that it is found in their natural stores. 



My bees are now in splendid condi- 

 tion, and are ready for work, but the 

 weather is too dry. Many correspond- 

 ents of the Bee Jouunal who win- 

 tered their bees in the cellar last win- 

 ter, sustained heavy losses, and I do 

 not believe that bees should be kept 

 in cellars where they can be safely 

 wintered on the summer stands. 



Clarksville,d Mo., Aug. 21, 1885. 



For the American Bee Journal. 



Sees and Olucose. 



L. C. WHITING. 



Seeing an extract in the East Sagi- 

 naw News, copied from the Chicago 

 Daily News, and originally written 

 for the Detroit Free I'ress, I sent the 

 following explanation and had it pub- 

 lished as an offset to that story, which 

 was written in the style of Peck's 

 bad boy, and was evidently a bur- 

 lesque or something worse, on the part 

 of the author. 



For instance, the Avriter said the 

 bees were being fed glucose, and to 

 prove it pointed out a barrel labeled 

 grape sugar. Now grape sugar, if 

 dissolved, would turn-Jback into sugar 

 again before he had time to sell it, 

 and would not be the color of honey, 

 and of course be unsalable. To a 

 bee-keeper the case (if there was any 

 truth in it at all) stands like this: 

 Bees, as a rule, only rear brood when 

 honey is coming in. There is a time 

 in the summer, after white clover has 

 gone to seed, that there are no flowers 

 to yield honey for several weeks. 

 Bee-keepers have learned that it 

 pays to teed back poor honey during 

 this dearth of blossoms to keep the 

 queen laying to rear workers to gather 

 the honey that comes later. This is 

 probably what the Detroit bee-keeper 

 was doing. The life of a worker bee 



in the honey season is very short, 

 from 60 to 90 days. If the flow of 

 honey ceases for 30 days, nearly half 

 the bees in the hive will have died 

 from old age. Those unacquainted 

 with the short life of the worker-bee 

 think some disease has killed them. 



Bee-keepers feel after such a winter 

 as the last that they have about 

 enough to contend with without 

 being advertised as selling glucose 

 for honey. We sometime will have 

 a law tliat will compel persons to sell 

 things for what they are or forfeit 

 their goods, and the .sooner the better. 



East Saginaw, ot Mich. 



For the American Bee Journal* 



Systems of Bee-Management, etc. 



TV. H. STEWART. 



On page 491, Mr. D. L. Shapley 

 says : •' If each one who writes for 

 the Bee Journal would give a care- 

 fully prepared statement as to how 

 he manages bees, both during sum- 

 mer and winter, I think it would help 

 any one just starting in the business, 

 and also old bee-keepers, for the 

 methods used in one locality might 

 prove destructive in another. I think 

 this would give information so that 

 one could tell what would be best in 

 that locality in which he might wish 

 to start au apiary." 



I think that Mr. S. expresses a good 

 idea in the above. It is a leader in 

 the right direction. We all have 

 been giving, as best we could, what 

 we have learned during the many 

 years of bee-keeping, but it has been 

 given disconnectedly, as the occasion 

 seemed to require. Sometimes one 

 correspondent would write an article 

 on wintering in one number of the 

 Bee Journal-, and perhaps his next 

 article would be on the marketing of 

 honey or introduction of queens, and 

 in thus skipping from one subject to 

 another it is almost impossible tor the 

 reader to glean from those scattered 

 items, a full and correct understand- 

 ing of the system which the corres- 

 pondent has adopted. 



I have tried to read carefully what 

 prominent apiarists have written, but 

 I must say that I am not able to tell 

 how either of thein manage through 

 the whole year. It is true that none 

 may be able to give a complete and 

 correct statement of a whole year's 

 work, as many items may be forgot- 

 ten, and an item thus overlooked 

 might be of importance to one that 

 would adopt that particular manage- 

 ment. Again, circumstances are ever 

 changing ; hence what we have occa- 

 sion to do to-day, we may never have 

 occasion to repeat. Furthermore, 

 progressive bee-keepers are constantly 

 learning new and better ways of per- 

 forming the same operations. Thus 

 it is that after each has given his 

 modus operandi as carefully as he is 

 able to do. the reader will be under 

 the necessity of asking many ques- 

 tions, and also many revisional chap- 

 ters will have to be written for the 

 purpose of giving new thoughts, new 

 discoveries, and the results of experi- 

 ments. What we learn to-day is not 



the end of knowledge ; it is only a 

 torch that is to shed a light on lifclds 

 yet unexplored. 



If each writer should give a full 

 statement of his management, no one 

 would kniivv more than all the others; 

 and it would be wisdom to .study care- 

 fully each statement, gh^aning from 

 them all the best points, and then 

 frame a new system ; but this means 

 ■work. No beginner can reasonably 

 expect to be carried into successful 

 bee-keeping '• on flowery beds of ease." 



MY OWN MANAGESIENT. 



It may appear a little queer that I 

 should begin at so unusual a date to 

 give my method of managing my bees 

 through the year ; but I have con- 

 sidered the matter very carefully, and 

 have concluded that to begin at any 

 other date would disarrange the whole 

 work. I will commence at about the 

 middle of the basswood honey-flow. 



If I have nuclei or other colonies 

 that are just starting a plenty of 

 queen-cells, then I am all right; but 

 if not, then I unqueen a few strong 

 colonies, and prepare part of the 

 brood-combs as per Mr. Alley's plan, 

 for the building of plenty of queen- 

 cells. 1 give brood-combs to the old 

 queens, that have been removed, and 

 a few bees, place them on a new 

 stand, and thus form a nuclei with 

 each queen. 



Now to proceed with the work of 

 extracting, as I work my apiary for 

 extracted honey altogether, I have my 

 hives placed in regular rows across 

 the yard, and when I begin extract- 

 ing, I examine the first colony in the 

 first row, and take each one in regular 

 order in that row, treating the next 

 row in the same manner until every 

 colony in the apiary has been at- 

 tended to. 



When I commence on hive No. 1, 1 

 have with me a smoker, a small basket 

 of fuel for the smoker, and a tool 

 made of about 10 inches of the pointed 

 end of an old buggy-spring, having 

 the point ground round and about as 

 sharp as a common table-knife, both 

 edges being hammered or ground to 

 the same sort of an edge for about 5 

 inches from the point. By bendmg 

 this " knife " something like a honey- 

 knife, it can be used to clean wax or 

 propolis from any part of the hive, 

 and prevents the hand from striking 

 against it. I can push the wide point 

 of this " hive-knife," as I call it, be- 

 tween the hive and the cover, and pry 

 the cover loose without marring the 

 edge of the hive, as I would be liable 

 to do with a sharp, narrow tool. 



AVhen the cover is loose, I raise it a 

 little, but not enough to allow bees to 

 run out, then blow in a little smoke, 

 for when bees are busy on basswood 

 they can be quieted with very little 

 smoke. Hold the cover quiet with 

 the hive-knife for a few moments, 

 then remove it, and as you hold it in 

 both hands by its opposite edges, 

 bring it down over the hive with a 

 quick jerk, which will throw all ad- 

 hering bees down upon the combs. 

 With the hive-knife scrape otf all the 

 brace-combs that may have been built 

 in the bee-space between the hive 

 cover and the top-bars of the frames, 



