1873.] 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



161 



lected all the money. He was afraid he had got 

 into the same fix here, as he thought he had 

 fully explained all he knew about securing honey 

 several times. 



Br. Bohrer. In order to secure the greatest 

 amount of honey, it was necessary, 1st. To have 

 a good locality; 2d. Good seasons; 3d. Strong 

 colonies of bees ; 4th. A good movable comb 

 hive of some sort ; 5th. An extractor. To se- 

 cure the most box honey, the closer the boxes 

 can be put-to the bees the better. Bees should 

 be stimulated early in the season so as to get 

 them strong. He fed syrup when necessary, but 

 queens could be induced to commence breeding, 

 even in the cellar, by opening the hives and 

 handling the sheets of comb ; it roused up the 

 bees and set them to work. Bees may be set 

 out sometimes as early as February or March ; 

 seldom has any in his cellar in April. Carries 

 them out in the day time. 



Mr. Tupper thought there was less confusion 

 among the bees when they were set out at night. 



Br. Bohrer. If the weather gets cold again 

 after setting them out, he takes them back. 



W. B. King, of Ky., said he got two hundred 

 and eighty pounds of comb-honey from one hive 

 of bees. They were gray bees, not Italians. 

 The honey was in frames, not boxes. All the 

 comb they had was nine frames full, with strips 

 of comb on the others for guides. The hive had 

 twenty-four frames in all, on the principle of 

 Adair's and Gallup' s "New Idea," but the model 

 of the hive was in the patent office before they 

 published it. The bees made all the comb for 

 the surplus except the strips. As the combs 

 first given were filled up, he spread them apart 

 in the middle, and inserted between them the 

 empty frames with comb-guides. If a top apart- 

 ment was used on the hive, he preferred to have 

 itall in one, because if divided into two or more, 

 it required more bees to keep up the animal heat 

 necessary to keep up the temperature in so many 

 apartments. Bees will store more honey in a 

 single chamber than in many, and he found that 

 if top boxes were more than seven inches deep, 

 the bees were slow to commence work in them, 

 as they had to go too far from the normal cluster. 



Mr. Wilkinson, la. Will bees construct comb 

 from sugar syrup as well as from honey ? 



Br. Bohrer. Had bees to build comb when 

 fed on syrup in the winter ? 



Mr. Moon. Prepares his honey-boxes with 

 pieces of comb in them, which induces the bees 

 to begin work. He gets his boxes as close to the 

 cluster of bees as possible. In answer to Mr. 

 Wilkinson's question, he said, he once kept bees 

 in a dark room for fourteen weeks, and had 

 twenty boxes filled with honey ; it was all deposi- 

 ted in comb made from sugar alone. He ex- 

 hibited it at the fairs, and took premiums with 

 it as the best honey. 



Mr. Southworth, of 111. Had a considerable 

 quantity of comb and honey made from sugar 

 during the past season. 



Mr. Moon was at Mr. Southworth's and as- 

 sisted him in feeding the sugar syrup to his bees. 

 The honey from it was taken to the Illinois 

 State Fair, and had the premium awarded to it 

 as the best box honey. 



Mr. Shipley made syrup of A, No. 1, coffee 

 sugar, and fed it to liis bees in troughs, after 

 cold weather, filling the troughs with a quart of 

 the syrup twice a day. The bees took it all, 

 and thus he strengthened up all his weak colonies. 



Mr. McFatridge, of la., moved his bees to 

 the pasturage. He put on upper chambers 

 when he moved them to a poplar grove. When 

 the linden bloomed, he moved them to a linden 

 wood. Sixty hives gathered a ton of poplar 

 honey, and two thousand four hundred pounds 

 of linden honey. 



Mr. Mitchell tried two colonies of bees on Mr. 

 Hosmer's plan, two years ago. Strengthened 

 them by early feeding, and they stored a surplus 

 from fruit blossoms. Threw it out with an ex- 

 tractor. He kept no account of the quantity, 

 but the yield was immense. 



Mr. Wheeldon, of la., thought there should 

 be more caution in setting the example, or ad- 

 vising the making of honey from sugar. Many 

 persons suspicioned extracted honey now, and 

 if the 'idea gets out that beekeepers are making 

 it out of sugar, it will be further injured in 

 reputation. 



Mr. Merrill. This matter of selling molasses 

 for honey, and the statement going out that such 

 honey has taken premiums at State fairs, will 

 degrade bee-keeping and injure the business of 

 honest beekeepers. 



Mr. Southworth said he did not make a busi- 

 ness of having honey made in that way, nor had 

 he ever sold any of it. When it was exhibited 

 at the fair, it was tasted on the ground by the 

 awarding committee and others, and pronounced 

 the best honey they ever tasted. 



Mr. Moon. Every well informed beekeeper 

 knows that honey cannot be profitably made 

 from sugar at the present prices. The waste is 

 so great, that it costs too much. If sugar could 

 be had for three cents a pound, it might pay for 

 the labor, but there would be no profit. He did 

 not speak of it to recommend it to beekeepers, 

 but to convince the gentleman who asked the 

 question, that bees could produce wax from 

 sugar. 



Br. Bucas said, in 1871, he took enough 

 honey from his apiary, in two months, to pay 

 for his bees, queens, hives and extractor. With- 

 out the extractor, he would have brought his 

 apiary in debt. The extractor will pay. The 

 pure extracted honey is more healthful than the 

 comb honey. Wax is indigestible by the hu- 

 man stomach, and is injurious. There is no 

 acid that will dissolve it. 



Mr. Wilkinson would not advise feeding 

 sugar to be stored as honey, but it might be 

 profitably used early in the season to have comb 

 constructed to hold' the honey from flowers. 



The business committee made an additional 

 report, which was adopted. 



The time and place for holding the next meet- 

 ing of the society was referred to the business 

 committee. 



Mr. Hosmer introduced a resolution recom- 

 mending to the beekeepers of America, a list of 

 journals and publications devoted to bee-culture, 

 which, after some discussion, was referred to the 

 business committee. 



