Vol. X 



Published Monthly by The W. T. Falconer Mfg. Co. 

 AUGUST, 1900 



No. 8 



SPRING LOSSES. 



This is the Season to Guard Against 

 Their Occurrence. 



BY S. M. KEELBR. 



MR. M. F. REEVE, under hoading 

 "Cold Weather Prevents Brood- 

 rearing," page 104, June num- 

 ber American Bee-keeper, says "Com- 

 plaints were made at the Philadelphia 

 Bee-keepers' Convention that the ex- 

 tremes of weather and backward spring 

 prevented brood-rearing to replace the 

 natural losses of the old bees."' 



Now I contend that the tirst and 

 greatest cause of all this set-back was 

 lack of the production of young bees 

 through the last half of July and Au- 

 gust, 1899. I think it could not be con- 

 sidered a hard winter for bees, and at- 

 tribute the great loss to the severe 

 drouth all of last summer. After the 

 frost went out of the ground in the 

 spring there was not rain enough in this 

 section to wet the ground deep enough 

 to plow for corn through the whole 

 season. The ground was so dry and 

 hard that much plowing for buckwheat 

 as well as other crops had to be aban- 

 doned. Bees suffered loss the same as 

 everything else. In many apiaries the 

 bees did not get honey enough to winter. 

 The old bees keep dying ofT the year 

 around and in a good season they will 

 keep up the supply of young bees and 

 more; but last summer, with almost 

 no honey coming in, they nearly stopped 



brood-rearing. As far as they go the 

 old bees will help to keep the brood- 

 nest warm through the winter months. 

 That winters the swarm. But to spring 

 them we need a large force of young 

 bees that were raised last July and 

 August to go into winter quarters. 

 Feed enough in July and August, if 

 necessary, to keep up brood-rearing. 



What say you all ? 

 Chenango Bridge, N.Y., June 30, 1900. 



RE-QUEENING. 



Details of a Cheap and Convenient 

 Method. 



BY P. GREIXER. 



MANY of us bee-keepers, I believe, 

 do not fully realize the import- 

 ance of having young queens in 

 our hives, or else more cjf an effort would 

 be made to secure the advantages young 

 queens afford. 



If we could have a cheap and easy 

 method to re-queen a large portion 

 of our colonies it would be a nice thing. 

 I have again the past season followed 

 such a plan, which was first outlined to 

 me by Mr. H. E. Perry, of Manchester, 

 and which I have somewhat modified to 

 suit my own notion. Mr. Perry utilizes 

 the mother colonies, after having cast 

 their prime swarms, for his purposes. 

 He largely uses shallow brood-chambers; 

 I, half-story hives. Let us suppose a 

 colony to be on three half-stories, all 



