1G2 



THE AMERICAN BEE-KEEPER 



July 



dead. I don't believe that more than one 

 in ten is alive this spring?, and before 

 I left I visited Mr. E. Ki-etchmer of 

 Red Oak, and I can well remember 

 my first visit at his place when I was 

 a small boy. He was running a small 

 saw by horse power at Coburg, Iowa. 

 He opened several hives' in which were 

 queens from Italy and I purchased 

 ray first Italian queen from him and 

 took her home, 75 miles in a buggy 

 and I still own some of her direct line 

 decendants. They are still gentle 

 htistlers, although it has been over 30 

 years. 



The rains that brought up every seed 

 of white clover kept the bees from 

 getting fall honey so the bees are gone 

 with the promise of a wonderful crop 

 of white clover. 



A very few fed their bees and such 

 are ready to reap a great harvest. 



About the middle of March I left 

 Iowa and made no more stojis until I 

 reached Utah. 



A 4 »♦♦»♦»♦♦♦♦♦ M ♦ M M ♦♦♦♦♦ 4 »♦♦ • 



I found bees in the narrow vall(\vs 

 where alfalfi was grown. One Llay 

 our train ran off a switch and delayed 

 us several hours at Price, Utah, and " 

 as it was a mild day I found some bee- 

 keepers. 



They claimed that their greatest 

 trouble was that the bees would not 

 swarm, only three swarms from 50 

 colonies in three years. They got al- 

 most all extracted honey. One woman 

 said she got hardly any crop last sea- 

 son. She only sold 04 cans (60 pounds) 

 of honey last season from 50 colonies. 

 I asked her how much she considered 

 a crop, and she said "three or four 

 cans per colony." I guess this is 

 enough for the present, and later I 

 will tell what I saw in Idaho, Wash- 

 ington. Oregon. Central California and 

 here in Southern California. 



Fraternally yours, 



Thos. Chantry. 



THE 



Bee -Keeping World 



I 



AUSTRIA. 



The opening of International Apia- 

 rian Exhi1)ition. held in Vienna, occur- 

 red April 4, ]©03. 



From an address delivered on this 

 occasion by Dr. Paul Beck, the fol- 

 lowing may be of Interest to American 

 readers: "The bee-keepers in Austria 

 number about 160,000, and keep in 

 round nimibers 1,000.000 colonies of 

 bees. They produce 6,000,000 pounds 

 of honey and 40O.onr> pounds of 

 wax. The service the honey bee I'en- 

 ders the floral world is of greater im- 

 portance than the honey and wax they 

 produce. 



An advertisement in Xeue Freie 

 1^'esse contains this: The monopoly 

 of how to make and to sell su.aar-hon- 

 ey, equal to hive-hone.v in taste, aro- 

 ma and color, for sale cheap by, etc. 



GERMANY. 



Schleswig Holst-Bztg advises to es- 

 tablish a drinking fountain for the 

 bees. A shallow dish is to be placed 

 in a sunn.v corner filled with moss 

 then filled with water. It also says, 

 that besmearing the brood frames with 

 vaseline or parafHn will prevent the 

 bees glueing them together with 

 propolis. 



Straw is still used extensively in the 

 construction of hives l)y the bee-keep- 

 ers of Germany. 



W. Fitzky. in Centralblatt.holds that 

 the eiiualizin.g of colonies in spring 

 is a good thing, and sa.vs the bee-keep- 

 ers in the Heath have it down so fine 

 that their bees cast all prime swarms 

 within a week. Confusion arising 

 from the mixing up of prime and after 

 swarms is thus avoided. 



