1872.] 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



141 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



Washington, December, 1872. 



We trust that there will be a very large attendance 

 of beekeepers at their National Convention, to be 

 held at Indianapolis, on December 4th, 5th, and Oth. 

 For railway arrangements see page 144. We hope to 

 be able to furnish an early report of the proceedings. 



We have received many letters from subscribers of 

 the American Bee Journal acknowledging the great 

 benefit they received from articles that have from 

 time to time appeared in the Journal, but there are 

 some, it seems, who have not received any benefit 

 from the Bee Journals, but have actually met with 

 misfortune through taking the papers. We give be- 

 low the contents of a letter recently received : — 



"I ask you to discontinue my paper. * * * * 

 Bees seem to be of no value to me any longer. My 

 bees nearly all died last winter. I have been taking 

 the three principal Bee Journals of this country for 

 the last three years, and am getting further back 

 every year, hence this order." 



The American Beekeepers' Guide, by E. Kretch- 

 mer, Cobury, Montgomery Co., Iowa. The above 

 manual was received too late for notice in the Jour- 

 nal of last month. It contains, in a condensed form, 

 a large amount of practical matter derived from the 

 experience of both American and German beekeep- 

 ers. It has, what so many works on bees have not, 

 a very full index, so that the reader is enabled readily 

 to find anything contained in the volume. 



We have received a fine lithograph drawn on stone 

 by P. Moran, entitled " Goat and Sheep." Single 

 copies, in black and tint, can be had at 50 cents and 

 chromos at 83.00 each, by addressing A. Lovell, care 

 of N. W. Ayer & Son, 733 Sansom street, Philadel- 

 phia, Pa. 



COREESPOKDENCE. 



Last winter and spring bees in this locality 

 nearly all died in the summer, they done very 

 well. 1 commenced in the month of May, with 

 seventeen hives, and I got in boxes of surplus 

 honey four hundred pounds hundred weight, no 

 one in this section of country can any year oet 

 as much surplus honey as 1 get ; my plan is arti- 

 ficial swarming, I take one hive or swarm from 

 two hives. John McLaughlin. 



Tyronne, Ontario, Oct. 14, 1872. 



Report from Minnesota. 



Bees did not gather hardly honey enough to 

 live on, until the first»of July, since then we 

 have had one continual honey harvest until frost 

 came. Consequently we had but few swarms. 

 Extracted three times, and have now supers full 

 of sealed honey. C. C. Aldrich. 



Mr. Editor : — I shall endeavor to give you 

 and the readers of the American Bee Journal 

 a sketch of my bee business for the last six 

 months. 



I commenced last winter with GO swarms of 

 bees, and lost 53 through dysentery. The entire 

 community here is stripped of bees, one man 

 lost 119 out of 125 ; another lost 30, all he had. I 

 could figure up 500 stands of bees that died in 

 two towns. I bought 70 stands last May, so 

 now 1 have 107 stands. This has been the 

 poorest season for bees that I have seen since I 

 have been in the business. It has been very 

 dry here for three years. I will not get over 

 4,0C0 pounds of honey in all. About 2,C00 

 pounds box honey ; the rest extracted. 



I find it a poor policy to rely on natural pas- 

 ture altogether. R. Miller. 



Melugin, Lee Co., 111., Sept. 9, 1872. 



I wish to say I am a recruit ; have strapped 

 my knapsack on my back, subscribed for three 

 Bee Journals, bought a Langstroth hive, and am 

 marching on to victory. I have been trying the 

 old method of bee warfare long enough, have 

 been laid hors du combat in every engagement 

 until I got the Langstroth Hive, and the first 

 shot I take fifty pounds of box honey from one 

 hive without a sting. A lady comes in and asks 

 " what do you ask for box honey? " two dollars 

 I replied. "I will take two boxes right." 

 Here I am reminded I am partly in debt to the 

 Journal for this success, and my subscription 

 must be out, so here is your part of sales, Mr. 

 Editor. Give us another year and consider me 

 in for the war, for I propose to fight, and while 

 bees and myself inhabit this county. 



Ira Green. 



Lapier, Mich., Oct. 31, 1872. 



Bees have done very poor this season, but 

 little honey has been gathered and of a poor 

 quality, swarms were not quite as numerous as 

 last year, one-half of these will not have honey 

 enough to winter on, more than one half the 

 bees perished in this section last winter. 



Yours. &e., James Harvey. 

 Pitcher, Chenango Co., N. Y., Oct. 28, 1872. 



I submit the following report. 

 Number of stocks last spring, mostly weak, 10 



Number of stocks, this fall, 26 



Net weight of box honey, . . . lbs. 1,200 

 Net weight of bees and stores, Nov. 



2d, 1872, lbs. 1,255 



D. P. Lane. 

 Eoshkonog, Wis., Nov. 6, 1872. 



Editor Journal. — Two years ago, while at 

 Boonsboro, Iowa, I was informed by Lewis 

 Davis, of that place, that the bees worked strong 

 on watermelons. This year I planted quite a 

 large patch, which yielded a great quantity of 

 melons, and. all through this month, when the 

 weather was warm, the bees have worked on 

 them strong. I cut them once in two, and the 

 bees took most of the inside out. I would like 

 to have beekeepers try it another year and report 

 the result. W. H. Furman. 



October 20, 1872. 



