40 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



[August, 



bees just as wet, unpleasant weather to a swarm, 

 when the bees set about the destruction of the 

 superfluous queens, apparently because the proper 

 swarming time appears not to have arrived. 



I here give my plan to my honored beekeepiug 

 friends, wishing that it may bring an advantage 

 to their pursuit, and the desire also that they will 

 publish, through the BienenwertharJiaftliche 

 C'entralblatt, the results of their experience. 



Edward Pauls. 



Plettersdorf, near Godesberg. 



[For the American Bee Journal.] 



Various Items. 



Mr. Editor. — The busy season being now nearly 

 over, I have leisure to write a little for the Jour- 

 nal, which is now becoming more valuable on ac- 

 count of our friend Langstroth's many and valu- 

 able contributions. His article in the June No., 

 p. 267, on Artificial Queens, and the one on the 

 "Color of Queens," in the July No., p. 2, corre- 

 spond exactly with my own experience. So well 

 satisfied am I of the correctness of that theory, 

 that I put all my cells in strong colonies, and 

 never cut them out until the tenth day ; but the 

 ninth is soon enough. It is not always safe to 

 wait until the tenth day, for, on these occasions, 

 when I went to cut them out on the tenth day, 

 the first queen had already emerged, and had in 

 one instance destroyed all the cells but two. On 

 another occasion, where there were twenty cells 

 from an imported queen in one frame, the first 

 queen had emerged and destroyed three cells. 



The present season is a very poor one. Early 

 in spring we had every sort of fruit blossom ex- 

 cept peach, but, on account of the cold weather, 

 bees done but. little except from April 14th to 

 May 1st. The weather during that time was 

 settled and very pleasant, but not very warm ; 

 yet bees done very well until June 16th. From 

 that time to the present we have had a very 

 poor prospect for bees, the weather being very 

 dry, especially the last two weeks, very hot and 

 sultry, the grass scorched up, the bees there- 

 fore at a stand still, doing nothing. I had re- 

 duced my stands to some thirty by sales to April 

 20th. By prudent management, I have taken 

 about, 480 lbs. extracted honey, and only about 

 35 lbs. cap honey, and increased the stocks to 

 sixty-three, and have them all except six or seven 

 in fix for winter. Novices must not attempt to 

 do as I have done in such a poor season, which I 

 consider almost as poor as that of 1868. I do 

 not include the Great Novice in my warning, for 

 he is equal to any task with bees, as is evident 

 from his communications in every number of the 

 Journal. 



I have for the last ten days been compelled to 

 feed every nuclei rearing queens, and it is at such 

 times very costly and troublesome ; besides, who 

 can tell the mortification of a queen raiser to 

 have near half his queens meet bad drones at a 

 certain time. A few black stands were brought 

 into my neighborhood last spring, but the black 

 drones are all killed off by this time. 



Had this season been a <jrood one, I had counted 



on an increase to 100 stocks, and at least 3000 

 pounds extracted and 1000 pounds cap honey. 

 This would have been a low estimate, with thirty 

 stands rightly managed in a good season. I only 

 had about live or six natural swarms. All others 

 artificial. 



This season has demonstrated the value of the 

 extractor. Those who had no extractor got little 

 if any surplus honey. There is less working in 

 caps this season than I ever knew since 1868, and 

 yet the body of all my stands was so full that if 

 I had not extracted half, the queen would have 

 been crowded out of her brood nest. The weather 

 on the 20th of June was too cold for bees to enter 

 caps. 



R. M. Argo. 



Lowell, Kentucky, July 11, 1872. 



[Translated from the Bieneuzeitung.] 



Spring Feeding. 



I count judicious feeding in spring as one of 

 the most important duties of the beekeeper, as in 

 many years the success of the honey harvest de- 

 pends on it. Alas, in my locality judicious spring 

 feeding is wofully neglected. What attention is 

 given to it in other localities I cannot say. The 

 clanger of feeding the bees outside of the hive 

 is that instead of increasing they will gradually 

 decrease, and often the colony will be entirely 

 lost, or remain so weak that it will not be in a 

 position to swarm. 



I have often wintered stocks weighing, in au- 

 tumn, including box, fourteen to fifteen pounds, 

 which seldom failed to swarm, and return a 

 good result. After the bad year of 1862, I fed 

 quite a number of my stocks that had consumed 

 all their honey and were not yet able to fly, 

 and they became good strong stocks. When 

 such poverty exists, one must feed by measure, 

 so that they may be enabled to maintain their 

 existence ; and, when they have taken their 

 purifying flight, give them their food about 

 every eight days. How much in every eight 

 days to be given to such stocks, depends on 

 the populousness of the stock, and every one 

 must judge for himself. Dissolved candy can be 

 fed as well as thinner honey ; the former for a 

 month or longer, to those stocks not having a 

 particle of honey, and are unable to bring in a 

 particle of pollen ; still the bees will remain 

 healthy. The candy syrup should not be made 

 so thin, nor should food honey be mixed with 

 water. Feeding by small quantities, as is here 

 usual, is injurious, as it is apt to incite brood 

 rearing, and call for the gathering of pollen, and 

 thus the bees are lost in our cold and changeable 

 spring weather. To thin the food honey with 

 water, as is taught in many books on bee-culture, 

 is unnecessary and often injurious, as it increases 

 the tendency to fly out ; and the bees will thus 

 be defrauded and not obtain that advantage from 

 the food which they should. The opinion prevails 

 widely here that when the bees begin to carry in 

 pollen and are right active, they should be fed 

 with old honey. True, should the weather con- 

 tinue uniform, but in our variable, changing from 



V 



