THE AMERICAN APICULTURIST. 



197 



of iK'Ci'Ssity they can only l)e consiiincrs. 

 Tims ri^ht Ikmv coiin-s in iinnt.jier factor in 

 tills qucsiioii, wliicii is tlio (I'-lcl or supply of 

 honey. In ivality we must l)c,'iin willi \\\v. 

 Held, or in otiior wonls place tiiat lirst, for 

 without the tlfld or lioney flow we have 

 no use for the l)ees. AVitli a continuous and 

 «ninterrn|>ted lioney-llow within two miles 

 of the hive durini? the time which ii bee 

 lives, I think that a bee miiiht easily ijather 

 one ounce of nectar, which would take 

 only ir.OO bees to liaiher 100 pounds. Of 

 this anjount it wouhl take at least 25 

 pounds to supply the wants of the colony 

 duriiic: the time that tlie bee was livinj:;, 

 and unless the nectar was thicker than we 

 get it here, it would take tiiree pounds of 

 this nectar to make one pound of honey. 

 So then we should have 25 pounds of honey 

 as the product of KiOO bees duriui; their 

 life with an uninterrupted flow of nectai*. 

 While tills mii^lit be possible, yet there are 

 two thinijs which make it improbal)le : the 

 tirst being, as already stated, that the 

 honey flow does not continue long enouuli, 

 and the second, that the yield would not 

 be suflicient within two miles ot the apiary 

 so that the bees could work to the best 

 advantage. In 1871, I had a colony wliicli 

 on May 25, I estimated to contain 4000 

 bees. This estimate was made by count- 

 ing all the bees on a given surface of comb, 

 and then dividing the amount of comb 

 covered with bees by tlie space counted, 

 when the quotient was multiplied by the 

 number of ijees counted on the first sur- 

 face. The next day was a fine one, and 

 apple trees were yielding honey as well as 

 I ever knew them to. At 7 a. m. the bees 

 began to go to work, and at 8 a. ji. I found 

 that ou an average sixty loaded bees were 

 going into the hive each minute. One was 

 caught and killed, which I found upon dis- 

 secting had a fair sized drop of honey in 

 the honey-sac. B}' a careful estimate and 

 weighing I found that it would take about 

 3000 such bee-loads to make one pound so 

 I concluded that 4000 bees were good for 

 the gathering of one pound of nectar each 

 hour, besides caring for the interior of tiie 

 hive. Before a bee had left the hive in the 

 morning. I had weighed the same so that I 

 could tell, when night came, how much 

 honey the colony had gained. They 

 worked right along at the average rate of 

 60 per minute till 4 p. M., Avhen they be- 

 gan to slacken up, and at 5 p. m. all had 

 quit work for the day, as the sun had gone 

 back of a cloud soon after 5 p. m. At dusk 

 that night I weighed the hive again, say- 

 ing, as I did so, that if my estimate was 

 correct, it should weigh eight pounds 

 more than it did in the morning. I found 

 it weighed eight pounds and nine ounces, 

 thus showing that I was not far out of the 



way. But what was a great surprise to 

 me was tiiat, when weighed the next 

 morniuL;', I found that eight pounds and 

 nine ounces gain h;id gone down to three 

 and one-finirth pounds, thus showing 

 that the nectar just from the flowers was 

 not all honey l)y any means. After this I 

 became infatuated with the idea that there 

 could be as much honey obtained from 

 apple blossoms as from basswood, if I 

 could only get the population of the hive 

 up to 40,000 instead of 4000 ; so I began 

 trying to get my bees strong early in the 

 spring, but after an entire failure of apple 

 honey for tiie next three years on account 

 of cold rainy weather, I gave the matter 

 up, only trying to get the bees strong, so 

 as to take advantage of the generally good 

 weather in the l)asswood harvest, as we 

 have but little white clover here. The 

 point I wish to make is : First we have the 

 field or location we are in, of which we 

 should have a thorough knowledge; next 

 we have the bees to get in large numbers 

 just in time to take advantage of the main 

 honey-flow of our field; and, third, that a 

 bee is of little value as a honey-gatherer 

 only as it can be placed in the field of ac- 

 tion just in the right time. In this way 

 the quantity of honey which a bee can 

 gather in a lifetime becomes of interest to 

 us, that we may work assiduously to have 

 that lifetime come when our field is yield- 

 ing honey. — Exchange. 



Written for the American Bee Journal. 



Bee-Diarrhoea. 



The result of experiments made to dis- 

 cover tile cause of it. 



Br G. R. Pierce. 



QuKRY 5G4 reads thus : " During De- 

 cember, January and February of the win- 

 ter of 1884-5 I lost 700 full colonies out 

 of 900 located in five apiaries .... The 

 frames and combs were badly smeared 

 with excreta where there were a few bees 

 and queen left . . . The winter of 1885-86 

 was the same with 600 colonies. The 

 winter of 1886-87, all of 400 colonies came 

 through to February. They commenced 

 dwindling then, and went down one-third 

 . . . The past winter has been the same. I 

 have some fifteen or twenty colonies that 

 have withstood all these winters, and have 

 come out good every time under the same 

 conditions. 1. Have you had this expe- 

 rience? 2. What is it? 3. How can I 

 stop it? — Illinois." 



The above is the substance of Query 



