forage in my apiary, I can say, that hav- 

 ing resided in Oxford for over 20 years, 

 I have scarcely known anything by ex- 

 perience of the so-called bee disease. 

 May not my exemption be owing to the 

 fact that when honey was plenty, my 

 bees had only such as was gathered 

 before Autumn. And when it was not, 

 they were supplied with good sugar 

 syrup. The experience of last winter 

 showing again that this fatal distemper 

 has prevailed under the most varied cir- 

 cumstances, as to the kind of hives used 

 and methods adopted for protecting the 

 bees, seems strongly to indicate that it 

 is mainly caused by late gathered honey. 

 Those who have suffered so heavily, 

 may next fall, extract such honey and 

 supply its place with sugar syrup, or 

 honey extracted earlier in the season- 

 leaving a few colonies to winter on their 

 late gathering, so as better to test the 

 matter. 



Most of the points in the article in 

 the last number of the American Bee 

 Journal on spring feeding, are well 

 taken, provided the bee-keeper does not 

 supply his bees with water in their 

 hives — but where this is done, I con- 

 sider stimulative spring feeding almost 

 a vital necessity, in districts where early 

 strength is usually indispensable to 

 profitable bee-culture. Where liquid 

 food is given, it may be made thin 

 enough to supply what water the bees 

 need, or this water may be put in a 

 comb easily accessible. 



In extracting, I always supply from 

 a pail of water, one of the outside 

 combs, and saved, for honey gathering, 

 the labor of thousands of bees. My 

 neighbor, Mr. I). A. McCord, has an 

 ingenious device which may be called a 

 lamp-wick water-feeder. The bees suck 

 the water from a bottle, through a wick 

 which passes through a cork. This 

 water feeder may be kept under the 

 chaff cushion where it will always be 

 warm and accessible even in very cold 

 weather. The bees can thus liquify the 

 candy on which they are incessantly 

 working, and are not lost by water ex- 

 cursions in unsuitable weather. Timing 

 some water gatherers this spring I 

 found them to be about twice as long in 

 loading up, in chilly weather, as when 

 weather and water are both warm. 



In a country as extensive as ours, the 

 conditions of successful bee-keeping are 

 so various, that it is often quite impos- 

 sible to lay down rules which shall be 

 applicable to widely different latitudes. 

 Prof. Cook in his apiary at Lansing, 

 Mich., finds that flour feeding is of 

 small importance — the natural pollen 

 being usually abundant as soon as bees 

 are able to work in the open air. In 



Southern Ohio, however, flour feeding 

 is often almost a necessity. In some 

 seasons the bees use it largely before 

 the pollen buds open. This season 

 severe cold destroyed them just as the 

 bees began to use them, and but for the 

 flour, breeding would have been sus- 

 pended in most of our hives for nearly 

 a month — most of our colonies having 

 consumed all they had on hand. A 

 week ago I examined the combs of more 

 than 20 starved colonies in this vicinity, 

 and found in them all, less pollen than 

 I have often seen in two combs in 

 Massachusetts. Inregions of abundant 

 autumn forage, pollen is often gathered 

 in excess of the wants of the bees. 

 Some old English authors complain of 

 what they call these injurious " slop- 

 pings " in the combs of old colonies. 

 Ten years ago, late frost in this region, 

 so completely destroyed the pollen sup- 

 plies, that I had to resume flour feeding 

 late in May ! Some colonies had already 

 began to devour the uncapped brood. 



If our colonies in this region were not 

 strong in honey gatherers by the last of 

 May, the more colonies we have, the 

 more money we are liable to loose. On 

 the contrary, a slow increase of bees in 

 the spring may be desirable in regions 

 where there is little early forage, and 

 where usually the late summer and fall 

 gathering constitutes the main crop. In 

 such regions the "quart of bees" theory, 

 provided you can safely winter that 

 number of young bees, may not be so 

 far out of the way , as many have thought 

 — while colonies stimulated to early 

 strength may use it only to eat up ail 

 their stores, and die unless they are fed 

 largely. I give the experience of a 

 friend on this point. In the month of 

 May he moved his large apiary from 

 Northern Ohio to Iowa. His colonies 

 were in just the condition in which he 

 had found them most profitable in his 

 old home. In his new location, he 

 found no white clover, nor indeed any- 

 thing on which his bees could subsist. 

 They consumed all their stores— many 

 died and all would have perished but 

 for extensive feeding. When the bass- 

 wood and fall supplies came on, the 

 survivers gave him a large surplus. As 

 matters were then, how not to have his 

 bees breed early, was to him the most 

 important problem and he kept them 

 buried in their winter clamps as long as 

 possible. When I visited him, he 

 showed me a line of white clover more 

 than half a mile long which sprung up 

 from seed sown by him in one of his 

 walks. 



Having seen apiaries from Maine to 

 Mexico, I increasingly realize that in 

 our instructions to beginners, the best 



