AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



615 



ment. My bees averaged about 70 

 pounds per colony. I now have 52 col- 

 onies, having lost only 2 colonies the 

 past Winter. We have four months of 

 working season for bees here, with a fine 

 variety of forest flowers — nrst the black 

 locust, the poplar, basswood, sumac, and 

 sourwood, all of which are plentiful. I 

 have purchased 300 acres of forest near 

 some fine clover farms. My bees are all 

 blacks except 2 colonies, which are said 

 to have produced 100 pounds of comb- 

 honey each the past season. I expect 

 to give bee-keeping a fair trial. 



W. M. Scruggs. 

 Tracy City, Tenn., April 16, 1892. 



Bee-Keeping in Oklahoma. 



1 have 4 colonies of Italian bees in 

 good condition by feeding last Fall. I 

 tliink this is a pretty fair bee country 

 now, and it will be better in the near 

 future, owing to alfalfa, which, I think, 

 will be a staple crop here. There is a 

 continuous light flow of wild honey 

 from March to November. First is elm ; 

 second, wild plum ; third, dwarf wild 

 plum, and plum and red bud all together ; 

 fourth, the dwarf dogwood ; fifth, a 

 species of dwarf willow, in May, which 

 yields heavily for about 20 days ; then 

 we have the "chitem" tree, which 

 yields nectar quite freely in July. We 

 have various wild flowers that yield 

 more or less all through the Summer, 

 and plenty of golden-rod in the Fall. 

 Bees did not do very well last season, 

 on account of too much rain in June and 

 July, and too little in the Fall. 



RuFus Williams. 



Crescent City, Okla., April 25, 1892. 



Changeable Weather — Basswood. 



During the past Winter the weather 

 was very changeable here, and in Jan- 

 uary my bees were very uneasy ; I think 

 that was the worst month with bees 

 here. I put 50 colonies into the cellar, 

 and took out 28, and they are down to 

 25 now. Some of my bees died with 

 lots of good honey in their hives, and a 

 good part of them run short of stores. 

 They all had as many pounds of stores 

 as the Winter before, and one year ago 

 my bees came through in good condition. 

 Mr. Snow, one of my neighbors, put in 

 125 colonies last Fall, and has now 65 

 left. The wind has been in the east 

 nearly all the time here for the last 30 

 days, and so chilly that it would take 

 tlu' native Punic bees to stand the bleak 

 winds this Spring Heavy colonies are 



all right, but the weak ones are starving 

 with the cold. 



I see on page 544, Mr. J. C. Lilli- 

 bridge thinks the basswood yields must 

 be larger in Illinois than in Pennsylva- 

 nia. I am not acquainted with Mr. 

 Lillibridge, but I was in Port Allegany, 

 Pa., 12 years ago last New Years, and 

 I used to live in Eldrid, McKean county. 

 Pa., before the war; if I remember 

 rightly, the most of the honey timber is 

 hemlock trees, with other timber, that 

 bees do not get much honey from. 



Mark D. Judkins. 



Osakis, Minn., April 27, 1892. 



No Other Fills its Place. 



I cannot do without the American 

 Bee Journal. I take four other bee- 

 papers, but the Bee Journal comes 

 once a week, and none of the others fills 

 its place. Bees are swarming now. 



J. D. GiVENS. 



Lisbon, Tex., April 20, 1892. 



Wintered Fairly Well. 



My bees did fairly well the past Win- 

 ter, though I lost 25 per cent., but had 

 I been home to look after them I think I 

 would not have lost so many, if any. It 

 is a very cold Spring here ; the fruit is 

 just beginning to blossom. I hope we 

 may have a better season for honey 

 than the last was. D. E. Norton. 



Independence, Mo., April 28, 1892. 



Prefers the Italian Bees. 



I notice on page 549, that Mr. P. D. 

 Jones says that the black bees are the 

 best for comb- honey, yet he will keep on 

 buying Italian queens, when he is con- 

 vinced that the blacks are the best, and 

 they are the cheapest by far, rang- 

 ing in price from 25 cents to 50 cents 

 each. How does he keep his black bees 

 pure '? I will admit that a good hybrid 

 bee will gather nearly as much honey as 

 an Italian, and more than any native 

 bee of America. I wonder if Mr. Jones' 

 black bees do not build " steps" in their 

 comb-honey, or does he have a continual 

 honey-flow? If not, I think his comb- 

 honey is very wavy, caused by the bees 

 capping cells not drawn the same length 

 as those in a flow of honey ; and, above 

 all, the black bees will let the moth into 

 their hives, besides swarming to death. 

 These are my reasons for not preferring 

 the black bees, and I do not order black 

 queens, because I think the Italians are 

 the best. F. C. White. 



Farmers' Valley, Nebr. 



