72 



1 HE AMERICAN BEE-KEEPER. 



factory proof that the honey bee was 

 highly honored by the nations during 

 the dark ages. 



The honey harvest in Western 

 Wisconsin proved a short one for 

 1891. The fall crop was a total fail- 

 ure, and in consequence there was no 

 late breeding, excepting where arti- 

 ficial feeding was practiced, and 

 reports from all directions show that 

 the death rate among bees was very 

 great during the past winter. 

 Yours, etc., 



Stephen Roese. 



Maiden Rock, Wis., April 8, 1892. 



Editor American Bee-Keeper, 

 Dear Sir: In your last issue I see 

 that the subject of hives, box or mov- 

 able frames, predominates. Now there 

 has been for the past twenty-five 

 years a constant advancement in all 

 the ways of work to gain a livelihood. 

 The farm is worked by machinery, 

 which if taken in the field twenty-five 

 years ago, people would have said the 

 farmer using it was crazy; yet the 

 advancement in farm machinery keeps 

 w r alking along, and why should we 

 progressive bee-keepers go back to the 

 days of box and straw hives any more 

 than the farmer should go back to the 

 days of wooden plows and drags made 

 of logs with nails driven into them? 

 Of course I do not mean to say that a 

 bee-keeper should get all the new 

 riggings that are put on the market, 

 but I say that this is an age of ad- 

 vancement, and our industry should 

 not fall behind. 



The great question with bee-keepers 

 to-day is how to sell their honey at 

 the ruling prices and be able to make 

 a living at it. In order to do so we 

 must have machinery in the bee-yard 



that will lessen the labor of the bee- 

 keeper on every pound of honey pro- 

 duced, and also increase the amount 

 gathered by each colony. With the 

 old box hive or gum it is very near 

 impossible to bring all the colonies up 

 to the same strength at the beginning 

 of the honey flow as they should be in 

 order to acquire good results, and with 

 the old box hives wdiat could we do in 

 the line of bettering our stocks? It 

 would be a rather hard job to raise or 

 introduce queens. Even this should 

 be considered by all to be sufficient 

 reason for giving preference to frame 

 hives, for the future of the honeybee 

 depends like cattle, horses and sheep, 

 on the introduction of new blood into 

 our bee-yards. 



Certainly we do not want to take 

 any steps backward ; we rather want 

 to walk right along, only keeping in 

 a practical path. Give the past its 

 just dues, and strive to make the 

 future grander by far in all things, 

 bee-keeping especially. 



Yours, etc., 



D. G. HlGLEY. 



Hartford. X. Y„ April 10, 1892. 



W. T. Falconer Man'f'g Co., 

 Gentlemen: I enclose check for the 

 amount of bill. The goods have come 

 and are the finest lot of bee-hive 

 material I have ever received. 

 Hastily yours, 



G. H. Knickerbocker. 

 Shekomeko, N. Y., April 19, 1892. 



Ed. American Bee-Keeper, Dear 

 Sir : I would like to have you answer 

 through the columns of the American 

 Bee-Keeper, or have some of your 

 readers give their opinion as to the 

 cause of bees becoming queenless 

 after swarming. I will give a little 



