ants and the bee moth are the most 

 formidable. By my new system I have 

 at last got ahead of them by preventing 

 the ant from entering and the moth 

 from making a lodgment in the hive. 



Bee-keeping in the South is progress- 

 ing by a few apiarists, but it will be 

 several years before the highest stand- 

 ard of scientific apiculture will have 

 become a practical business. When 

 there is pasturage, natural or culti- 

 vated, bees can be made to gather and 

 store surplus honey in this country 

 from 8 to 10 months in a year, which has 

 been practically demonstrated. 80 far 

 as I have learned, bees have done 100 

 per cent, better this year than last. 



I met Friend Eckman, from Rich- 

 mond, a few days since with a fine lot 

 of linden honey for this market, for 

 which he realized from 20 to 25c. per lb. 

 He has 110 colonies of Liguarians, and 

 uses the two-story Lanstroth hive. One 

 of his hives yielded in 10 days 100 lbs. 

 of surplus honey. I met another friend 

 from Oyster Creek selling his button 

 willow honey at the same price. He 

 had 60 colonies of Liguarians, and said 

 he would not take $1,000 for them. We 

 have had an unusual dry spring and 

 summer. 



The Journal is ever a source of 

 pleasure when it comes ; I wish it came 

 every week. I am glad to know so 

 many are getting along well with their 

 bees and making money. Though 

 money is said to be the " source of all 

 evil," then from evil all good must 

 come, hence from the thorny bee comes 

 delicious honey. 



Houston, Texas, June 17, 1879. 



For the American Bee Journal. 



Letter from Kansas. 



N. CAMERON. 



It may be in order, as one of the Vice 

 Presidents of the National Association, 

 to drop you a few lines. It is not, how- 

 ever, for the purpose of resigning, al- 

 though my health is nothing extra. I 

 think, however, it will bear up under 

 the honors and duties of the office one 

 year. The honors are easy, the duties 

 large and the pay small, a state of 

 things that is apt to secure disinter- 

 ested work. I received from you a copy 

 of certain laws passed by the States of 

 New Jersey and Minnesota for the pro- 

 tection of the honey industry. Neither 

 of these laws will be of any use as they 

 now stand. The Minnesota law, while 

 it provides penalties for certain things, 

 it makes it nobody's business to enforce 

 it, and consequently no one will enforce 

 it. The New Jersey law, while it pro- 



vides a way that it may be enforced, it 

 is doubtful whether it will be enforced 

 by voluntary complaint. The best fea- 

 ture of that law is the provision barring 

 action in the courts to collect anything 

 for adulterated stuffs. But the defect 

 of this bill, as well as the other, is that 

 it makes no provision as to who shall 

 determine whether it was an adultera- 

 tion or not. The defendant, for in- 

 stance, would procure an analysis that 

 it was just what it was represented. 

 The plaintiff would have an opposite 

 analysis, both from scientific men; now 

 then, what would be the result ? The 

 case would be dismissed at plaintiff 's 

 cost. What the law needs, to make it 

 more perfect, is a provision appointing 

 a board of health in each county (or any- 

 thing else you have a mind to call it), 

 whose duty it shall be, whenever com- 

 plaint is made to them, to cause an 

 analysis to be made, and then if there 

 is a violation of the law to prosecute, 

 and that the analysis made by the board 

 be evidence in court ; and that it also 

 be the duty of the board to seize 

 and destroy all goods offered for sale 

 contrary to law. Then with the other 

 provision barring action in court, it 

 would immediately throw the loss of the 

 goods on the manufacturers, because 

 merchants would not buy without a war- 

 ranty, and when they found their goods 

 destroyed without any recourse to re- 

 covery, the manufacturers would be 

 very careful they did not violate the 

 law. 



Last winter we drew up a bill and had 

 it introduced in the Kansas legislature. 

 It got so far as to be placed on the cal- 

 endar, from which it was stricken in 

 the committee of the whole. This bill 

 might not have been just the thing, but 

 we did our best with the light we had 

 at the time. Our legislature was too 

 busily engaged in the senatorial con- 

 test to consider any measures in the 

 interest of the people. 



Bees wintered badly here, my own 

 loss being about 60 per cent, and dysen- 

 tery being the cause of mortality. 'Last 

 year they filled their hives with honey- 

 dew. This we would have extracted 

 if there had been a fall honey harvest. 

 This honey-dew was miserable stuff, 

 not much to be preferred to cheap sor- 

 ghum. In looking around through the 

 country we find that some have suffered 

 more and some less. One man had 

 only 8 colonies left out of 85 ; he told 

 me that he had kept bees for 50 years, 

 and never lost any from dysentery. He 

 laid his loss to the snow blowing around 

 his hives and their freezing shut ; nev- 

 ertheless, his hives showed the unmis- 

 takable signs of dysentery. 



