118 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



The Egyptian Bee. 



In relation to these bees, we extract the fol- 

 lowing from a letter recently received from Mr. 

 Woodbury, of Mount Radford, England, known 

 to our readers as the "Devonshire Bee-keeper." 



"Referring to your note appended to my com- 

 munication, which appeared on page 18, vol. 4, 

 I wish to say that the letters of Messrs. West, 

 Lowe, and S. Bevan Fox, confirming my state- 

 ment as to the ferocity of the Egyptian bee, ap- 

 peared in " The Journal of Horticulture" immedi- 

 ately after the conclusion of the series of arti- 

 cles from my pen, which were copied by you. 



" When writing to the Rev. Mr. De Romes- 

 tin, at Baden Baden, I told him that I found 

 the Egyptian bees 'the most ferocious little 

 "wretches it is possible to imagine.' His reply 

 ■was that they ' bear everywhere the character 

 which you give them ;' and a correspondent at 

 Capetown, Africa, assures me that it is there 

 quite as ferocious as I found it in England." 



Wc have no personal experience of the tem- 

 per of these bees ; but it seems doctors will dif- 

 fer in opinion even on so fine a point as the 

 sting of a bee. In a letter from an American 

 friend, speaking of the ill success of some of his 

 importations of Egyptians, he says : — 



"One stock remains, with the original queen. 

 I have good reason from the uniformity of her 

 progeny, queen and "worker, to believe her 

 pure. I do not find them as vindictive as they 

 have been described by Mr. Woodbury." 



We hope he may be successful in -wintering 

 them, and that the question may be satisfactor- 

 ily settled next summer. 



A correspondent desires to know, through 

 the Journal, whether Sorghum or Imphee is 

 good for bees. Can any of our readers give 

 him the desired information ? 



[For the American Bee Journal ] 



Scarcity of Honey, and a Queer Queen. 



Mr. Editor : — I have thirty stocks of bees, 

 ■which lack nearly the whole of having stores 

 for winter. Would you feed sugar, (no honey 

 to be had here), and if so, the best quality, or 

 the cheaper ? If I feed the best it will cost me 

 about one hundred dollars to put them in con- 

 dition ; or would you let them " slide out " and 

 take stock in tanning ? For myself I would 

 prefer not to take stock iu that trade. I do not 

 doubt it will pay some ; but I hope it not quite 

 so sure as you recommend. With your consent, 

 I will continue the bee-kecpiug business to the 

 best of my ability. 



This has been with me the poorest season I 

 ever knew of, or heard of, for bees. Hives that 

 contained from twenty to fifty pounds of honey 

 last spring when set out, do not now contain so 

 many ounces. And why is it ? I am asked 



nearly every day, why it is that bees have 

 made no honey this season. Why, my neighbor 

 says my bees are going back on me ; they have 

 not done a thing this season. I tell him there 

 was no honey to gather, and that is reason 

 enough for not doing anything. But, says he, 

 there was as much white clover, basswood, 

 buckwheat, &c, this year as last, and my bees 

 never did better than then; why is it they do not 

 prosper this season ? Just exactly the question 

 I would like to ask the man that knows why. 

 This season has neither been dry nor wet, but 

 to all appearances (except the result) a good 

 healthy one for bees. As this is something over 

 which we have no control, perhaps we should 

 not trouble ourselves about it ; nevertheless, I 

 am anxious to know what the matter is. 



I have raised any amount of Italian bees this 

 season, but as my stocks were not in condition 

 to multiply and divide, but in a good subtract- 

 ing condition, I amused myself by destroying 

 my hybrid queens, and introducing others of 

 the same stripe ; for if there is anything I find 

 difficult about the business, it is getting a queen 

 mated to suit me. I have had queens make two 

 successful trips each, to meet the drones, and 

 they failed to suit me. I had a queen from Mr. 

 Langstroth last season, which I should judge 

 had made half a dozen such excursions, as she 

 produced pure marked workers during the bal- 

 ance of last season ; this spring, well-marked 

 hybrids; during the summer, all black bees; 

 and now she is the mother of well-marked Ital- 

 ians again. I know her to be the same individ- 

 ual, by a clipped wing. How do the doctors 

 explain such conduct, unless it is that she met 

 two drones ? 



I had a queen this summer make two excur- 

 sions. She was absent eleven minutes ; return- 

 ed and remained about five minutes, when she 

 came out of the hive, left again, and was absent 

 thirty-one minutes. She returned with unmis- 

 takable evidence of having met a drone on each 

 occasion. 



E. II. Miller. 

 Tonica, Ills., Oct. 9, 1868. 



5£3PByall means feed your bees, to keep them 

 from " sliding out." The hundred dollars so 

 spent will be a better investment than if put in 

 hides. It is bee-keeping and not tanning that 

 we recommend, as a reperusal of our remarks 

 will show. German apiarians tell us they 

 never have more than one very poor honey 

 year in fifteen, and as the past season appears 

 to have been an unpropitious one, in Europe as 

 well as in this country, we have probably seen 

 the worst of the matter for a pretty long cycle. 

 Therefore keep up your spirits, and keep your 

 bees alive. Would you advise a grazier to let 

 his oxen starve the coming winter, because pas- 

 turage during the past summer was short, and 

 they did not grow fat on it? It is true he might 

 thereupon go into the tanning business with 

 their skins as so much "stock in trade" to begin 

 with; but you could do nothiDg with yonr 

 "out-slided" colonies, unless perchance stran- 

 gury should become epidemic throughout the 

 land, and the doctors, following the prescription 



