THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



777 



liave actually taken a whole deer 

 <except the skeleton and hide) in two 

 or three days' time. 



A neighbor has more than an acre 

 of grapes on which he has never 

 seen a ripe grape since he planted 

 them, and they were planted long 

 before any number of bees were in 

 the vicinity. The place is thick with 

 quail while the grapes last. lie does 

 not lay it to the bees, either. 



I have never seen the bees, to any 

 extent, on grapes, until picking time ; 

 then the grapes get more or less 

 broken, and while they are in the 

 Ijoxes, waiting for the wagon, the 

 bees almost swarm on them. 



Napa,*o Calif. 



ror tne Anaencan Bee JoumaL 



Bee-Keeping in Sweden, etc. 



nJ. STALHAMMAR. 



This year, here in Sweden, has been 

 a poor one for bee-keeping, both as to 

 honey and swarms. So far as it con- 

 cerns myself, I do not care for swarms 

 — only for honey ; but in this country 

 the colonies of bees generally are too 

 few, and so the bee-keeper wants 

 swarms. 



THE rOLLEN THEORY. 



I am indeed astonished that sucli a 

 clever bee-keeper and close observer 

 as Mr. James Ileddon, would insist 

 upon such a theory as pollen being 

 tlie cause of bee-diarrhea. If it were 

 true, not a single bee wonld have 

 existed for centuries back. The bees 

 want nitrogenous food as well as 

 carbonic (in winter but very little), 

 because when living— when eating — 

 they wear their organisms, and want 

 to restore them. But how is it when 

 breeding begins in the early spring V 

 Is it then proper to feed them with 

 this food, even then, if the tempera- 

 ture is not warm enough V Why do 

 the bees " dwindle " away in the 

 spring ? In the autumn the breeding 

 stops too early, and begins in the 

 spring too late, thus the bees are too 

 old — worn out— they cannot live. Of 

 cours^ the bees want the pollen in 

 the hives, and always having suf- 

 ficient honey in the frames above 

 them, they will never touch the pollen 

 when not wanting it. 



TOP VENTILATION. 



Why try to ventilate the top of a 

 hiveV Look at a colony in a straw 

 skep, with a hole in its top in which 

 to put a plug. How do the bees 

 arrange it for themselves V They 

 cover with propolis the whole inner- 

 side of this skep, and especially every 

 opening around the plug to get rid of 

 any opportunity of ventilation there 

 If upward ventilation is used, the 

 heated air from the bees will rise 

 and be lost. At the top the bees will 

 have it quite tight and warm. But the 

 liive-entrances should be very large 

 The colony, if strong, will keep the 

 entrances open; if not strong they 

 cannot keep up sufficient warmth 

 consequently they will diminish them 

 with propolis. 



We have killed more bees by want 

 of air than by cold. When the colo- 



nies have young queens and young 

 workers, and the tops and the walls 

 of the hives are very warm, with suf- 

 ficient stores and plenty of air below, 

 and with no disturbances of any kind, 

 no bees will be lost, however cold the 

 winter may be. I believe that it is 

 impossible to kill bees by cold when 

 not disturbed, and when they have 

 their stores above them, even when 

 placed in hives made of thin boards 

 and without a bottom. 

 Gothenburg, Sweden. 



Wot the American Bee JoumaL 



Report for 1884-85. 



G. C. GREINER. 



The beginning of last winter found 

 us (myself and brother) in possession 

 of about 14U colonies of bees ; with 

 the exception of a few nuclei, they 

 were in such condition as we, under 

 common circumstances, expect bees 

 to winter without any serious loss. 

 The continuous cold weather, es- 

 pecially in the latter part of the win- 

 ter, however, reduced our stock at 

 such a rate that on April 1 we had 

 only 91 colonies left. 



The past spring was also extremely 

 cold and backward ; the first pollen 

 was brought in on April 21 — 11 days 

 later than it generally appears— after 

 which our bees were again confined 

 to their hives for weeks at a time. 

 The early fruit-tree blossoms did our 

 bees no good, and when warm weather 

 came at last and clothed the apple 

 trees in their snowy garments, the 

 bloom was of such uncommonly short 

 duration that our bees did not re- 

 ceive very much benefit therefrom. 

 On the contrary, colonies kept dying 

 at a fearful rate, so that on June 9, 

 immediately after apple bloom, the 

 91 colonies were again reduced to 41. 

 Among these was Only one colony in 

 prime condition, about 20 from 

 medium to good, and the balance — 

 one-half of the whole— from weak to 

 almost nothing ; many of these latter 

 we did not expect to be in existence 

 after a week or two. 



The outlook for the season had 

 never been so discouraging, and we 

 hardly knew what plan to pursue. 

 Outside of the few colonies we had 

 about 100 hives with their contents of 

 combs left, and to receive some benefit 

 from these we decided to work our 

 bees for increase mainly. 



As " there is no loss without some 

 small gain," the departure of our 

 legions insured us a good opportunity 

 to give the combs a thorough looking 

 over ; the old and imperfect combs 

 were made into wax, all drone-comb 

 cut out and patched with worker- 

 comb, those combs that were not 

 built clear down and attached to the 

 bottom-bars were also spliced out, 

 and, in short, all combs were made as 

 perfect as possible. Of course all 

 these combs contained more or less 

 honey, as we generally find in such 

 depopulated hives, which would have 

 made the handling very disagreeable, 

 if not impossible, and to get them in 

 good condition we let the bees clean 

 them out. A little shed, which we 



had built a short distance from the 

 apiary for that purpose, we used for 

 hanging up from 2 to 4 sets of combs 

 at a time, (after uncapping, as would 

 be done for extracting), and replaced 

 them as fast as the honey was carried 

 away. In this way the bees had all 

 the honey they could use, and the 

 result was surprising; even the 

 weaker ones seemed to be trying to 

 outstrip the strongerones in breeding 

 up. Some instances we noticed where 

 the outside combs of weaker colonies 

 tliat could hardly cover more than 14 

 or fi the number of their combs, were 

 nicely filled with eggs. 



At first we had some fears that this 

 poor honey, which was sour, watery, 

 bad smelling, etc., might have a bad 

 effect on the bees, but our fears, 

 however, were more imaginary than 

 real, we believe, for our bees are at 

 this date (Nov. 23) in most excellent 

 condition. 



It took nearly five weeks to get all 

 our combs cleaned out, which brought 

 us just about to the basswood open- 

 ing ; our colonies were then in such 

 condition that, with tlie exception of 

 8 or 10 of the weakest, all presented, 

 upon examining them, a hive full of 

 bees, tlie combs nicely matched and 

 capped on top, and the balance of the 

 frames full of brood. In this condi- 

 tion, it is our opinion, bees, will do 

 equally well according to their 

 capacity, whether the hives contain 

 6, 8 or 10 frames. 



On Sunday, July 12, the first bass- 

 wood honey was brought in, and for 2 

 or 3 days it was like a stream of honey 

 pouring into our hives ; then, all at 

 once work stopped for 3 or 4 days 

 almost entirely, a feature we never 

 experienced before. The heat was 

 extreme, the hives were fairly black 

 with bees, but very few were flying, 

 and we imagined that the heat had 

 evaporated the honey. We felt some- 

 what disappointed about that time, 

 ami began to fear that another poor 

 season would fall to our lot. But 

 suddenly business was resumed again, 

 and our bees seemed to be bound to 

 make up lost time. They continued 

 for about 10 days, when the bass- 

 wood failed ; after that they worked 

 a few days on l)uckwheat, but the 

 rainy, cold weather set in and closed 

 the lioney harvest for the season. 



According to the record kept on 

 each hive, our crop consits of 2,438 

 pounds of comb honey in two-pound 

 sections, 2-51 pounds in untinished 

 sections, and 40 gallons of extracted 

 honey, amounting to 3,109 pounds for 

 the crop. 



Among the weaker portion of our 

 41 colonies were 8 that did not pro- 

 duce any honey nor swarms ; they 

 just lived, and it took until the close 

 of the honey harvest to get them in 

 condition for business. Three of the 

 stronger colonies were used for queen- 

 rearing, so that the above amount of 

 honey was the actual product of 30 

 colonies, or \0r>% pounds, on an aver- 

 age. We have now, after uniting all 

 the nuclei which we did not consider 

 strong enough for wintering sep- 

 arately, 109 colonies in good condition, 

 the increase being 08 swarms. 



