The age of the queen, the strength of the 

 colony, the yield of honey and various 

 other things, have something to do with 

 drone comb building, and when left to the 

 free exercise of their instinct, they will 

 change from worker to drone or from drone 

 to worker comb, just as "the spirit moves 

 them." 



Luck with Bees.— I don't know what's 

 the cause of it, but I never have any luck 

 with cows. 1 always give them lots of 

 feed, but it don't seem to do them any good; 

 they get the " horn ail " or the " wolf in the 

 tail," and they never do us a bit of good. I 

 never had any luck with early lambs; the 

 ewes don't give much milk, and the half of 

 them won't own their lambs. Now, reader, 

 how does this sound ? I think that many 

 of you will say, " You make your own 

 luck." I suppose you are right, so far as 

 the cows and lambs are concerned, but 

 when it comes to the bees it's all luck there. 

 If the bees don't go into the honey boxes to 

 work, or if the swarms go to the woods af- 

 ter you have hived them, or if you go to 

 your " best colony " and find worm-eaten 

 comb and no bees, it is all luck. The bee- 

 keeper is not to blame. 



Light, Pleasant Employment. —In 

 this respect bee-keeping is not different 

 from many other vocations. It requires, 

 during the honey season, that regular, cease- 

 less attention which must be given to any 

 business to insure success. If 12 hours' 

 (Doolittle says 16) work per day in hiving 

 swarms, changing sections and extracting 

 honey is light work, and if handling a col- 

 ony of cross hybrids is pleasant work, then 

 " light, pleasant occupation" is not a mis- 

 nomer. 



Large Profits.— These reports usually 

 come from two classes of persons. First, 

 those who report the amount of honey ob- 

 tained from their best colony and say noth- 

 ing about the poor ones. Second, those 

 who are interested in the sale of some pat- 

 ent hive and are willing to tell any kind of 

 a falsehood for the purpose of advertising 

 their " wares." In 1876 my apiary of 15 

 colonies might have been reported as fol- 

 lows : Best colony, $34 ; best 3 colonies, 

 $S0 ; poorest colon v, $00 ; poorest 3 colo- 

 nies, $10; average of the 15, $12.— Exchange. 



For the American Bee Journal. 



Euonymus as a Honey Plant, &c. 



J. W. HUDSON, M. D. 



I have never seen the Euonymus spoken 

 of as a honey-producing plant or tree. The 

 Euonymus is used with us for hedging, and 

 a beautiful one it makes. If not trimmed it 

 flowers about June 1st, and remains in 

 bloom about a month. It blooms very pro- 

 fusely, and bears a beautiful red berry of 

 which poultry and birds are very fond. I 

 have a portion of a hedge, about 50 feet in 

 length, which has been permitted to grow 

 for several years without being cut in. The 

 plants are now from 10 to 15 feet in height, 

 and are densely covered with bloom. Bees 

 and all honey gathering insects flock to it 

 from morn till night. As to the amount of 

 honey it yields I cannot say ; can only 



judge from eagerness with which the bees 

 " go for it," and they work all day. So this 

 beautiful evergreen can be made both orna- 

 mental and useful. I always read with in- 

 terest the articles published in the Ameri- 

 can Bee Journal, but was particularly 

 well pleased with Mr. G. M. Doolittle's ar- 

 ticle on "Management During June," gin 

 the present (June) number. Will you give 

 us, or get some one qualified to do so, in- 

 structions how to keep drones through the 

 summer, by some other method than mak- 

 ing the colony queenless? Have used 

 small trianguiar pieces of the thin flat- 

 bottomed foundation as starters in section 

 boxes, and am delighted with it. 1 can see 

 no objections to the use of it in this way, 

 when such small pieces are used. I cut it 

 into squares of about 1% i»-» then cut diag- 

 onal^ giving the triangular pieces. The 

 bees do not simply add to, but they work 

 over the foundation, drawing out the cells 

 and remodeling the whole shape of piece, 

 soon giving it an elongated shape with 

 neck-like attachment to section. The bees 

 have commenced on starters in every sec- 

 tion, building more or less comb, in racks 

 that have been in only a week, while in 

 some sections without starters they have 

 done nothing, though racks have been on 2 

 and three weeks. May not the use of these 

 starters do away the necessity of separa- 

 tors ? If so, it will be a gain, as bees work 

 in sections sooner without than with sepa- 



May'esville, S. C, June 18, 1879. 



For the American Bee Journal. 



Treatment of Foul Brood. 



HAMILTON H. HURNARD. 



Very many thanks for sending me the 

 recipe for foul brood, which I shall try, but 

 I have succeeded pretty well in the follow- 

 ing ways : Some 1 tried taking out affected 

 combs and replacing them by clean worker 

 combs ; others I tried taking away all their 

 combs, shutting them up for 36 hours, then 

 giving them new hives, clean combs and 

 feeding them for a short time ; with others 

 I tried the following: 500 grammes carbon- 

 ate of sodium, 10 to 30 grains salicylic acid 

 in 4 gallons of warm water, in this I dipped 

 combs with bees adhering, just as I took 

 them from the hive, changing hive at same 

 time for clean one. But of the three meth- 

 ods, shutting them up for 36 hours seemed 

 the most effectual. This is a very disas- 

 trous year for bees; it seems worse than 1877, 

 when we had the severe drouth. This year 

 the scarcity of honey is not caused so much 

 by want of the requisite amount of rain as 

 by bad weather, as we have had nothing 

 but cool winds and cloudy weather all 

 through our best time for honey gathering, 

 and the flowers are secreting no honey. 

 Besides, at the present time many are act- 

 ually buying honey and feeding their bees, 

 a thing unheard of as early as the begin- 

 ning of June. I think the whole of this 

 part of California must be included in 

 " Blasted Hopes " this year. 



Los Angeles, Cal., June 11, 1879. 



