1873.] 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



283 



and kept breeding until into December. I did 

 not feed the others, and they stopped breeding 

 before the 1st of October, on account of the 

 scarcity of forage. 



" We have had an unusually severe winter, but 

 I do not think it was the winter that has des- 

 troyed our bees, but the previous summer; for 

 there seemed to be no honey in the flowers ex- 

 cept about two weeks in white clover season, 

 and I think our bees quit breeding so early, that 

 at the beginning of winter there were scarcely 

 any young bees, and then the extreme coldness 

 ot the weather prevented their breeding. I 

 think that if I had fed my stocks ten or fifteen 

 pounds of sugar-syrup each in September and 

 October, I might have saved nearly all of them. 

 I have now over twenty empty hives, or hives 

 without bees in them, for they are pretty well 

 stocked with comb and som£ honey. 



" A great many stocks have died here with 

 from ten to sixty pounds of honev, and combs 

 all clean. A few of mine died with the dysen- 

 tery, but I think it was because the old bees, 

 dying off, left the swarm so small that the cold 

 weather gave them the disease. 



" I found a small swarm to-day on a bush 

 that had left somebody's hive, and I hived them 

 in one of my hives which had plenty of honey, 

 and they seemed all right ; so I have two to 

 start with again. I have also engaged one or 

 two other stocks, and shall try and fill my hives 

 again this season, if it is a good one. One man 

 near here says, if he loses all he has now, he 

 will knock down the first man that says " bee " 

 to him. He had forty-five last fall, and now has 

 only three or four, some of them having left 

 their hives within the last few davs. leaving 

 plenty of honey. I am not discouraged, however, 

 as I believe I know the causes of the loss and 

 how to guard against it in the future, partially, 

 anyhow. I am in hopes that we shall have a 

 better season than we had last year." 



J. F. Love, of Cornersville, Tenn., writes, 

 April 21st, 1873: 



" My bees are in as fine condition as you ever 

 saw, considering the lateness of the season; 

 two-story hives are filled with brood below, and 

 four or five frames above." 



T. A. Waite, of Morning Sun, Iowa, writes, 

 April 24th, 1873: 



" After the long, cold winter we have had, it 

 is still snowing to-day, the 24th of April. This 

 winter of 1872-3 has been the worst for winter- 

 ing bees out of doors that we have had in Iowa 

 for thirty years. I have traveled over Iowa 

 considerably this spring, examining bees for 

 information and instruction. From my own 

 observations I have come to the following con- 

 clusions: 1. That over seventy-five (75) per 

 cent, of the bees that were neglected on their 

 summer stands in Iowa are dead, caused by 

 severe protracted cold. So much frost accu- 

 mulated that the bees became either damp or 



chilled, causing the dysentery, and a great many 

 died of starvat on with plenty of honey in the 

 hive, because warm days enough did not occur 

 for them to leave the cluster for food. Hence, 

 the necessity for winter hole? in the comb. 3. 

 That all the bees that were left out till the last 

 of December and then put in winter quarters 

 where they suffered with cold and froze enough 

 to freeze potatoes, are worse than those on the 

 summer stands. 3. That all the bees that were 

 put in a good dry cellar in November, before 

 there was any weather severe enough to make 

 them in a bad condition before. putting in, have 

 wintered successfully, where they had ample 

 upward ventilation, and the cellar remained a 

 few degrees above freezing point, and perfectly 

 dark. 4. That most of the cellars in Iowa 

 would have chilled to death any bees, put in on 

 Mr. Hogmer's quart plan. What would have 

 become of the thirty stands he put in the cellar 

 with less than one pint each one winter? Caa 

 any one tell us? Can any one take less than 

 half a pint or a pint after the middle of April, 

 such a spring as this, and breed into a good 

 swarm? I have had twelve years experience in 

 bee-culture, with movable comb hives, and don't 

 want any quart swarms in the fall, for winter, 

 nor any with less than one pint in April." 



Dear Journal. — I see from the " reports 

 that there has been, in some localities, almost as 

 great fatality among the bees the past winter as 

 in the winter of 1871-2. As mine did so much 

 better the past winter than the previous one, I 

 will "report'' them by way of having a few 

 more favorable reports, as well as so many un- 

 favorable ones. 



To go back a little— the fall of '71—1 had 

 thirty-five colonies. Being busily engaged in 

 securing a crop of seventy-five tons of grapes, I 

 did not examine my bees till quite late. I then 

 found many of thesn weak in numbers, and a 

 few with but little stores. It was too cold to 

 unite them, so I decided to prepare a room in 

 our basement-story and put one-half of them in 

 it. Not to particularize, the result was that all 

 but three put in the house died. Those three, 

 badly diseased and greatly reduced, were only 

 saved by taking into a warm room, giving clean 

 combs and putting them on their summer stands. 

 Eight out of seventeen left outside died, and 

 only two that were not diseased. So, out of 

 thirty-five colonies I had left, ten very weak 

 ones, and two good strong ones. By making 

 the strong ones furnish brood for the weak 

 ones, I succeeded in building them all up to 

 pretty fair colonies by the 1st of June. I built 

 up one colony that did not have half a pint of 

 bees, until it sent out the first swarm of the sea- 

 son, without doing any damage to the strong 

 hive from which I supplied it. Having plenty 

 of empty combs I secured over 1,000 pounds of 

 honey and increased my stock to twenty-five. I 

 should have said that nearly all the hives that 

 died left plenty of honey. 



