Aug. 9, 1906 



691 



American Itoe Journal 



S. What time in the fall 6hould I take off 

 supers? 



4. Will the bees be all right uncle/ an open 

 shed in the winter! Vekmost. 



Answers —1. Your manipulation was all 

 right unless it be the draining of about all 

 the workers from the mother colony. If you 

 drained too close, and especially if a cool 

 night followed, the brood might be chilled. 

 No need to pay any attention to the number 

 of bees in the old colony; leave them all, and 

 a week later move the old hive to a new 

 place; that will drain the colony of all the 

 field-bees, which will join the swarm. 



2. I don't know the size of your hive- 

 bodies. If they are 8-frame Langstroth, 

 which is perhaps the most common size, the 

 queen will not occupy the 24 frames, nor 

 anywhere near it, although she may have 

 more or less brood in all 3 stories. There i6 

 possibility, but not much probability, that the 

 colony will swarm. 



3. Don't wait till fall; take off each super 

 when it is filled and about all sealed, and as 

 soon as the harvest is over, take off every- 

 thing. If, for example, you have no harvest 

 after white clover, then as soon a6 white 

 clover ceases to yield, take off everything, 

 and that may be anywhere from the middle 

 of July till the first week in August. 



4. Yes, with packing around them. 



Heporfs and 

 experiences 



Honey Prospects Fairly Good 



The prospects are fairly good for honey this 

 season. White clover is plentiful. The rain 

 of July 14 and 10 gave it a new start, and the 

 bees are busy on it now. I also had some 

 honey from fruit-bloom, one colony storing 

 about 25 pounds of it, mostly from apple- 

 bloom. Jas. F. Ciui.er. 



Algoma, Wis., July 19. 



Bees Just Make a Living 



Last year my honey crop was about 3000 

 pounds, but so far this season I have taken 

 nothing. It is pretty dry here. Bees are 

 just about making a living, but no more. 



John W. Johnson. 



Canton, Mo., July 30. 



Rabbit-Foot Clover 



I send several plants which appear to me 

 to be a kind of clover. C. J. Thies. 



Pepin, Wis., July 20. 



[The specimen is indeed a clover, and is 

 commonly called "Rabbit-Foot" or stone 

 clover — TV use — and thrives well 

 in old fields and waste-places. — C. L. Wal- 

 ton.] 



Had a Fine Honey-Flow 



We have had a fine honey-flow here, the 

 only thing bothering us being windy weather 

 — something unusual here. It was a sight to 

 see the bees fly so near the ground when 

 working in the windy weather. 



1 have extracted 6400 pounds from")!) colo- 

 nies, and honey is still coming in. Surely 

 there were tons and tons of honey that went 

 to waste here. The white clover fields are 

 very white. 



A few of our best honey-plants arc fruit- 

 bloom, dandelion, willow, 2 or 3 kinds of 

 raspberries, white clover, alfalfa, buck-bush, 

 Bmartweed, and 2 other flowers that bloom in 

 August and September, of which I do not 

 know the names; and there are quite a few 

 mixed in with these that yield 6ome honey. 



The land is very rich here in Southwestern 



Iowa. I don't believe the plants can help 

 yield honey. The honey comes in when it is" 

 cold, and it comes in when it is hot; when it 

 is dry, and when it is wet. T. L. Shawler. 

 Mills Co , Iowa, July 15. 



-Smartweed 



Crop Barely One-Third- 

 Honey 



The honey crop here will be barely one- 

 third, on the average. Basswood bloomed 

 heavy, but absolutely no honey in the bloom. 

 We have had a prolonged drouth which is not 

 broken yet. 



I wish to correct Mr. Hasty on page 619. 

 Six years ago a dry summer was followed by 

 a wet fall, and heartsease, or smartweed, came 

 in everywhere. I got 1000 pounds of pure 

 heartsease honey. It was almost as white as 

 white clover, and fully as good, both in body 

 and flavor. Ikying Long. 



Marceline, Mo., July 21. 



Almost No Surplus Honey 



The surplus honey crop will be almost 

 nothing in this section of the country this 

 season. Weak colonies will probably require 

 feeding. W. H. Pkiestman. 



Pontiac, 111., July 23. 



Honey Crop Good Some Places 



The honey crop has been short all over the 

 greater part of this State, but in my bee- 

 range it was good in June. I have taken 

 almost 4 supers of cumb honey from each of 

 several colonies, and 25 full Hoffman frames 

 of extracted honey from one colony of Ital- 

 ians, up to date. The Italians had to make 

 their combs from full sheets of foundation, 

 too, for I had no ready-built combs. 



I think we will have a good crop of honey 

 from fall blossoms. 



May the American Bee Journal ever pros- 

 per, as it has done, is my wish. 



E. G. GUTHREY. 



Malta Bend, Mo., July 23. 



Taking a Swarm from a Tree 



I have made a device for taking bees out of 

 a tree. It is simple and easily made. It is 

 made like this : 



~w 



Mortise a hole in a pole for a hook made 

 of sheet-iron one-eighth or 3-16 inch thick. 

 Then make a hole in the other end; put 

 in a No. 6 or No. S wire about 2 feet shorter 

 than the pole ; have an eye in the end of the 

 wire to tie a piece of line. (The pole can be 

 used for a Manum swarm-catcher without 



taking the other off.) When a swarm gets in 

 a tree where you can't use the Manum, put 

 the end of the pole over the limb until the 

 hook catches it; pull on the wire, and grip 

 the limb and make the line fast; put staples 

 in the pole to stiffen the wire. To open, 

 shove up the wire. 



I have had bees only 2 year6, and don't 

 know much about them. I had 4 colonies 

 this spring, and have caught 2 swarms. I 

 have one colouy that is wicked. They are a 

 yellow, fuzzy bee. with orange-colored bands. 

 The moment the cover is raised they are at 

 you. Smoke does no good. They will right 

 me, fight the smoker, and everything on the 

 place. We have to keep the house shut for '■', 

 or 4 days whenever anything is done with 

 them. They were bought for Italians, but I 

 think they are Cyprians. They have not 

 swarmed since I have had them. They are 

 good workers. I had them in a 2-story 8- 

 frame hive. G. McC. Wilkinson. 



Corpus Christi, Tex. 



Bees Not Doing Well 



I have been in the bee-busine6s 40 years, 

 and have 127 colonies. They are not doing 

 very well. I don't expect over 2000 pounds 

 of honey this season. John Holler. 



Richmond, Wis., July 27. 



Expects Good White Clover Crop 



Bees are doing well. I will commence to 

 extract to-morrow, and expect a good crop of 

 honey from white clover. 



E. H. Hanselman. 



Eau Claire Co., Wis., July 23. 



Not Half a Crop-Swarming 



There is less than half a honey crop here 

 this season. The first extracting is very dark 

 honey, mostly from the oak-trees. There is a 

 little white clover, but hardly any basswood, 

 as the basswood blossoms are destroyed by 

 an insect which is enlosed in a foamy slime. 

 They destroy the blossoms which dry up and 

 fall. 



There is not much swarming here, but to 

 prevent it altogether we must first find out C. 

 Davenport's secret. I see on page 602 he 

 criticises what Mr. Philbrook says on page 

 3S3. I used that same plan of putting the 

 queen below on frames with full sheets of 

 foundation and the brood on top with a 

 queen - excluder between. This stopped 

 swarming almost entirely, but it is not in- 

 fallible. 



Now, Mr. Davenport says, on page 603, that 

 by his plan of treatment for prevention of 

 swarming there is no cutting of cells, search- 

 ing of queens or jumping of hives around, 

 and the frames are not removed; and on 

 page 186 he says the time required for an 

 operation is from 3 to 4 minutes to a colony ; 



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