1871.] 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



99 



bees strongly manifest grief or distress for the 

 loss tliey have sustained — that is, about one 

 hour after the old queen was taken away. 



4. The bees must be well fumigated with to- 

 bacco and sprinkled with sugar water ; and the 

 queen besmeared with honey taken from the old 

 hive, if such is to be had. 



5. The queen must not be rudely thrust among 

 the bees ; for all hasty or violent movements 

 cause momentary irritation, placing her in 

 jeopardy. She must be gently presented, un- 

 confined, and allowed to mingle with the masses 

 without a struggle. 



G. The operation should be undertaken in the 

 evening, a little before dusk, as bees are more 

 peaceably disposed then than earlier in the day. 



7. The bees, with the introduced and now ac- 

 cepted queen, must remain togethei", confined in 

 the unfurnished hive, till the evening of the fol- 

 lowing day. Then hunger, and the desire for 

 better accommodations, will have effectually 

 subdued the rebellious temper of every indi- 

 vidual, and rendered the new home and the 

 new queen quite desirable objects to them. 



[For the American Bee Joarual.] 



Novice. 



Dear Bee Jotjknal : — We are very thankful 

 to be able to write to you again. After six 

 weeks of outdoor life, and an almost exclusive 

 diet of beesteak, we feel so much improved, that 

 vve began to conclude our "mission" is not 

 finished l>y considerable. 



Mr. "B. Lunderer," thinks we are not a talk- 

 ative person. (By the way, we really wish we 

 deserved the high comiiliments he paid us,) 

 and we wish to say to him and manj' others, 

 that Novice certainly has the will, though not 

 the poiO'T, to talk and to answer all the letters 

 written to him. Our present ill health is very 

 much owing to the mental strain neci'ssary to 

 treat every one civilly and give inquirers the 

 attention they should have ; until a day in the 

 woods, where we were secure from seeing any 

 one, was a positive luxury. 



In regard to our basswood forest, in one of 

 our rambles we discovered a forest of fifteen 

 acres, which the owner had sufhcient good sense 

 to fence up from all stock of every kind, for six 

 or seven years, so that young timber of every 

 description had gi-own up unmolested. We were 

 overjoyed to find there thousands of young 

 basswoods, from one inch to fifteen feet high ; 

 and we are going to commence transplanting 

 right away, removing a shovelful or more of the 

 wild wood mould with each tree. 



The piece of woodland mentioned looks like a 

 mine of wealth to us, and we hope it may prove 

 such to its enterprising owner. 



Mr. " B. L." before mentioned, hopes we may 

 h;ive reverses, &c., enough to keep us from be- 

 coming egotistical. Bless your heart, " B. L." 

 and a host of others, we only think we shall 

 have to tell the whole truth, however humiliating. 



We wrote you two months ago, Mr. Editor, 

 that we had sold about two tons" of honey, and 



besides had nearly all the upper stories of our 

 hives filled with combs of sealed honey, for 

 making all short stocks good for the winter. 

 Well, we know our index scales had shown a 

 regular decrease in weight, weekly and almost 

 daily, since the middle of July ; but still we some- 

 how hoped that other stocks had d(?ne better, 

 until about the first of October, when we found 

 that the index stock had about consumed the 

 thirty pounds left in the hive when we stopped 

 extracting— the drouth this fall, and other ad- 

 verse causes, having totally spoiled our usual fall 

 pasturge. 



Of course prompt meaures should have been 

 taken at once, to see that none were in danger of 

 starving, but we put it off until about a week 

 ago. (We should like to charge what follows to 

 "ill health," or sometJiing, or somebody else; 

 but the plain truth is we were careless and put 

 it off — something that will never do in bee- 

 keeping), when we found that No. 1, was 

 starved dead — with the very best queen too, in 

 all our apiary. She might have been saved, but 

 was neglected and forgotten until dead. This 

 roused us up. We went to work and hitched 

 our index scales to every hive, and found we 

 should have to feed over a thousand pounds to 

 put all in good order. 



We thou'jht we fed promptly all that were in 

 danger, but when we came to No. 12, we found 

 it " silent in death." Thus was another of our 

 best stocks gone, and the one that was emptied 

 last of all in July. We tried reviving as before, 

 but it was too late. The queen (a fine one, and 

 probably next to No. 1) was still alive, and a 

 dozen or two of bees that gathered or stole 

 enough to keep alive. These we put in a cat^e 

 over another hive " ad interim.'^^ Next day she 

 had got out of the cage, and was killed of course. 

 "Clearly an accident!" many would console 

 themselves with saying. But there was no acci- 

 dent about it ! A beckeei^er has no business to cage, 

 queens so carelessly thai they can crawl out, nor to 

 perform any operation with bees in such a 

 miserable ' ' slip shod ' ' way. We feel sick when- 

 ever we think of it. 



Some stocks had no honey ; so we must 

 give them twenty-five jjounds, and say ten 

 additional to enable them to secrete wax to seal 

 it, raise brood, &c. With the old Novice feeder 

 or any feeder we ever saw, it would take a youth's 

 time and no end of vexation and stickiness, to 

 get it done. The idea was intolerable, with 

 sixty-three hives to supply. Of course our 

 thirty-two story Langstroths were better off, 

 but they all needed feeding some— that is, after 

 we equalized the sealed honey. 



We had one barrel of honey left, for which we 

 then had received an offer at twenty cents per 

 pound, coffee sugar syrup can be made for a 

 little more than ten cents. 



Now right here we protest that if anybody 

 else concludes to do as v/e did, and fails, do not 

 blame us nor say we recommended it. From 

 many previous experiments, we concluded to sell 

 the honey and feed coffee sugars, twenty pounds 

 to a gallon of water and four teasi)oonfuls of 

 cream tartar, to prevent crystallization. 



Our index scales had shown that a colony of 



