wintering. Breeding can commence in 

 February and when the old bees disappear 

 there remains a fine lot of young bees ; 

 these will stick to the hive and not swarm 

 out even if the old bees should go. 



Wm. Clement. 



Waco, Texas, April 5, 1879. 

 I can handle bees sucessfully and get a 

 plenty of honey, but after a little fun and 

 sweet, early in the spring, all the rest is too 

 bitter and too hot for use. After keeping 

 through the winter the peppery taste leaves 

 it, but the bitter remains. Can you, or any 

 of the bee-keepers give a receipt to cure 

 the bitter in my honey? We think the 

 bitter comes from horehound, which is very 

 common about the older towns, and the hot 

 from a large weed with the common name of 

 "brush weed." We have nothing but corn 

 and cotton in the fields to make honey out 

 of. No basswood, clover, nor buckwheat, 

 nothing but the wild prairie flower and the 

 willow, except a week or two, early, when 

 the fruit trees are in bloom. 



E. P. Massey. 



[Mr. JR. Corbett gives the following as a 

 cure for "hot" honey. "Boil it, taking off 

 the scum, and put it into a bright pan or 

 kettle. This will not change its color, but 

 will render it palatable, so that it will not 

 disagree with the most delicate stomach." 

 For the bitterness we have no recipe at 

 hand.— Ed.] 



Fairport, Mo., April 8, 1879. 

 A man has traveled through this section, 

 claiming himself to be one K. C. Kidder, 

 from Burlington, Vermont, giving lessons 

 and lectures on bee culture ; also claiming 

 to be agent for the Bee Journal, and sell- 

 ing rights for patent hives. He is an im- 

 poster and all bee men should be on the 

 watch for him. A. H. Sylvester. 



[He is a regular fraud, and should be 

 given a wide berth.— Ed.] 



Mendon, Mich., March 7, 1879. 

 Last spring I fed grape sugar to my bees, 

 and my family ate plentifully of it, as they 

 would of maple sugar. 1 discovered no bad 

 effects from it. i had 8 colonies, and in- 

 creased to 29, and received nearly 1,000 lbs. 

 of honey. The bees are now all lively and 

 healthy, and were wintered on their summer 

 stands. 1 believe grape sugar is perfectly 

 harmless as food for man or bees ; yet, I 

 shall never use it again, and would advise 

 every honest bee-keeper not to touch it, as I 

 would advise every one not to touch liquor 

 or tobacco, because it will do ten times the 

 harm that it will good to the business of bee- 

 keeping and honey-producing. All adulte- 

 ration of honey should be stopped, and all 

 chance to accuse bee-keepers of doing so 

 should be prevented. These are my reasons. 

 I would advise all who wish to Italianize, to 

 buy dollar queens, rather than tested ones ; 

 for the former will lay about $3.00 worth of 

 eggs while being tested, and if pure she and 

 her brood are worth $5.00. If she is not pure 

 she and her brood are worth at least $3.00 ; 



so you are $2.00 ahead, and can try again. 

 But if you buy the latter, the breeder has 

 this brood, and if pure, an extra dollar, too; 

 if not pure, he has a hybrid colony for $1.00. 

 I might enlarge, but you say " boil down." 

 1 hope your correspondents will take the 

 hint, instead of " boiling up" and giving us 

 nothing but vapor. If they would, how 

 much room they would make for valuable 

 reading. In these long articles the reader 

 is lost in the wilderness of words and 

 phrases, and seldom gets the idea, getting the 

 weight of the article, instead of the weight 

 of the argument. E. B. Southwick. 



[ The object in obtaining Italian queens is 

 to Italianize— not to hybridize ! Therefore, 

 the time consumed in testing is "lost time!" 

 The brood obtained from a hybrid queen is 

 a troublesome nuisance, instead of being a 

 valuable acquisition. The queen and her 

 brood, instead of being worth $3.00, as stated 

 above, are not worth one cent, so far as ac- 

 complishing that for which the queen was 

 obtained. Of course, all will "do as seemeth 

 them best," but we have no use for untested 

 queens.— Ed.] 



Vandalia, Mich., March 5, 1879. 

 In 1877 we commenced bee-keeping with 

 12 colonies, and by the aid of good reading 

 matter we have made it a success. In 1878 

 it rained during apple bloom, and we had to' 

 feed them till white clover came. This 

 bloom was cut short by drouth, and we got 

 no honey from it after July 15th. So we had 

 only a month in which to get surplus, but in 

 this short time we extracted 1,000 lbs., and 

 increased to 48 colonies. We sold all our 

 honey at home at 10@15c. per lb. We stimu- 

 lated in the spring by feeding sweetened 

 water, reared our queens, and increased by 

 building up nuclei. In November we put 

 straw in the tops of the hives, and put in 

 the cellar, where they have remained ever 

 since, seemingly in good condition. The 

 straw in the top of hive is 4 inches deep, and 

 is held down tightly by the top-board, and it 

 is surprising to see how all the moisture col- 

 lects, passes through, and forms water under 

 the top-board, while the bees and under part 

 of the straw seem to be dry. We want no 

 better absorbent than this. We keep the 

 cellar close and dark in the day time, and 

 open at night when it is warm. 



C. F. & F. E. Smith. 



Albion, Mich., April 14, 1879. 

 1 put 35 colonies in cellar under house and 

 they are all strong but one ; there were a 

 few bees and those we put into another 

 colony. Another lot of 55, one mile from 

 here, that we purchased last August, with a 

 few others we put into another cellar, and 

 they are all right but 3; good and strong, 

 better by one-half than those of last year. 

 1 don't think they have used up more than 5 

 lbs. of honey per hive yet. I don't want 

 over 10 lbs of honey in the hive to winter. 

 It is a plenty for the hive that I use, while 

 the Langstrotn needs 30 lbs. I only want 

 10 lbs. in the Michell Adjustable hive, be- 

 cause I can pack or line them all round the 



