1372.] 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



41 



warm to cold, spring weather, more bees will be 

 lost through this treatment. Stocks, having 

 honey, I do not feed ; they can take care of them- 

 selves. With ns, colonies should gather their 

 principal supply from buckwheat, as they seldom 

 obtain honey in quantity from clover, and heath 

 flowers. {Ericaceae.) What is obtained from rape 

 is generally used by the swarms. Only in good 

 years, such as previous to 18(58, is there a surplus 

 of rape and clover honey in our stocks ; far more 

 abundant is buckwheat honey. The best and 

 heaviest young swarms will always be those near 

 a good field of buckwheat. It begins to dower 

 about the end of June, and continues till the 

 beginning of August. They will always obtain 

 for themselves an abundant supply for winter. 

 It will often equal the parent stock. 



In rich buckwheat regions, the parent stock 

 will swarm once and often twice, has already 

 gathered something for its support, are soon over 

 their swarming period, while earlier swarming 

 parent-stocks, when, as it often happens, the 

 weather is unfavorable, and the pasturage gives 

 no full yield, have to endure three weeks of 

 idleness after swarming, and often when finished 

 have neither bees nor honey. 



As an instance of the yield of honey in this 

 locality, I give you the product of my apiary for 

 three years, which were counted good ones. 



Stocks.. Honey. Wax. 



1^68 32 1000 lbs. 50 lbs. 



1869 34 400 " 23 " 



1870 34 750 " 37 " 



The years 1868 and 1870 concur. The differ- 

 ence in the yield of the two years lies in this, 

 that I had stronger swarms and disturbed them 

 less. On account of the unfavorable spring of 

 1870, and the failure of the rape crop, and too 

 little feeding, my bees did not swarm only in 

 July — on the 23d I received two first swarms ; 

 afterward all went well. The swarms and the 

 parent stocks reached in weight 60 lbs. ; after 

 that, on the 27th and 29th of June, from neces- 

 sity, they had to be fed. 



J. Bauman, Mayor. 



Hei'.egenstedten in Holstein. 



[Translated from the Bienenze'tung.] 



The Defence of Comb Closets. 



For twelve years I have used the movable 

 comb system, and have tried many methods to 

 preserve the combs from the attacks of the moth, 

 till I at last made the discovery that when you 

 hang the combs free in the air, the moth will 

 not disturb them ; and as soon as it is warm 

 enough in spring, I take my combs out of the 

 empty hives, where they were stored for the 

 winter, and hang them upon a rack, two inches 

 apart, in a strong draft under the roof, and not 

 one comb has been visited by a moth. 



Where the use then of chests, sands, ashes, 

 bran, &c, the packing and unpacking, and the 

 use of the Extractor, which even does not wholly 

 clean the combs, and leaves unnecessary work 

 for the bees in removing from the cells the ma- 

 terial used in filling them? 



I allude above to empty combs, for of course 

 those containing pollen and honey dare not be 

 placed in the open air, as the bees would discover 

 them ; and they cannot on the other hand lie 

 placed in chests, in ashes, sand, &c, where ants, 

 wood-lice (Blatta onentales) would surely rind 

 them out and destroy them, even if mould, 

 claiming them for his own, would render them 

 valueless. 



Combs containing honey and pollen I preserve 

 in a comb closet, which will hold one hundred 

 frames. Hereby I have the convenience to have 

 at hand in a moment the needed combs. Truly, 

 I must often look after them and fumigate them, 

 to protect them from the moth, &c, find to drive 

 away and destroy the ants, but this is much 

 pleasanter than unpacking chests, and soiling 

 the clothes, wilh ashes, bran, &c, losing time and 

 breaking combs. Therefore, honor to the comb 

 closet. 



Moreover, "De nustebus w>n est despuiandHm.'" 

 Teofil Zukowski, Forester. 



Budeicitz in the Buckoioina, May 27, 1872. 



[For the American Bee Journal.] 



Gallup's Reply to Furnian. 



In the May number Mr Furnian goes some- 

 what into figuring, and says he supposes Gallup 

 wanted to draw him out, so that the rest of the 

 beekeepers might have a little fun. I was in- 

 formed that at the State convention he went 

 almost crazy, so that it took the combined efforts 

 of the chairman of the convention and Mrs. Tup- 

 per ^w'ho has, we understand, a peculiar faculty 

 of quieting his nerves), to prevent his committing 

 suicide or doing some other harm to himself. 

 Now, why this terrible agitation and excite- 

 ment? Gallup and Ilosmer barked loo loud. 

 The little man had gone into a sort of Rip 

 Van Winkle sleep as regards beekeeping, and 

 on awakening he heard such a loud barking or 

 braying from Gallup and Hosmer that he was 

 entirely beside himself, and hence his excite- 

 ment. 



Now he requests me not to be offended at him, 

 and to tell you the plain facts, Mr. Editor, I 

 have actually laughed in my sleeve so much 

 since reading his article, that one set of sleeves 

 is entirely worn out. He no doubt will say, I 

 wore them out piling brush. The sleeves are 

 worn out, no mistake about that part. Mr. 

 Furnian, in his figuring, has made a slight mis- 

 take of a few thousands ; he has deducted 

 nothing for honey or pollen. When he says that 

 a queen occupies a hive of two thousand cubic 

 inches with brood, we suppose that every practi- 

 cal beekeeper understands how that is occupied. 

 Every comb is occupied with brood, but not 

 every square inch. It is also occupied with 

 honey and pollen for winter supplies, especially 

 in tlie honey gathering season. Now, we must 

 deduct one-third for honey and pollen, and then 

 we will see that in a hive of four thousand cubic 

 inches, we have a trifle less than four thousand 

 eggs per day, for twenty-one days, supposing the 

 four thousand inch hive is occupied in the same 



