Sept. 6, 1906 



769 



Bees Have Done Well 



My bee6 have done very well this season. 

 They have 3 or 4 hive bodies stacked on, and 

 they are all full of hoDey. I have had no 

 time to attend to my bees properly, and so 

 have taken no honey off yet. 



L. C. Medkiff. 



Oceanville, N. J., Aug. 23. 



Swarming in August and Later 



I am now having prime swarms every day. 

 As my bees rarely omit the afterswarms when 

 they " prime " once, andas it is the 14th now, 

 I seem to be booked for worry and watching 

 clear through August, if not into September. 



Toledo, Ohio, Aug. 14. E. E. Hasty. 



Poor Honey Crop 



The honey crop is poor. I got good results 

 early from locust and white clover, but after 

 June 20 the Bowers yielded no nectar, on ac- 

 count of change in atmosphere. This same 

 thing occurred last year, just 5 days later. 



Green Mount. Md., July 31. H. H. Flick. 



Worst Honey Failure 



I have 10 colonies of bees, and have not had 

 a swarm this season. I have not seen a live 

 drone in my yard this year. It has been the 

 worst honey-failure I ever saw. There are 

 lots of bees in this locality, but I have not 

 heard of a pound of surplus honey being 

 taken yet. E. S. Cambt. 



Eureka, III., Aug. 25. 



American Ttee Journal j 



with the bees in many locations when the 

 brood got chilled ; and others may have been 

 drowned by the exceedingly heavy rains. 



Now as regards /toney-dew. I have made 

 the identical observations as described by Mr. 

 Dadant, yet not being a professor of ento- 

 mology, I did not feel as if I should come out 

 with my observations; but now that Mr. 

 Dadant has been first to report about it, I 

 will tell what I have repeatedly seen here. 



There are some 30 or 40 big oak-trees iwe 

 call them "live oaks" here) near my apiary 

 and house. Many a cold morning, even be- 

 fore the sun appeared, I have been surprised 

 to see the bees working on the leaves and 

 small acorns; also drops of this dew I have 

 noticed plentifully on the ground, herbs and 

 dry leaves lying on the ground, and seeing 

 that my dogs carefully kept awiy from these 

 3 or 4 trees, presumably fearing the bees, my 

 attention was drawn to this dew, and I have 

 repeatedly tasted it. finding the taste exactly 

 such as described by Mr. Dadant. I even had 

 in mind to send a few samples, but gave it 

 up. as the long distance from here to the 

 East did not warrant it. And, further, I have 

 been unable to find a single aphid or any 

 leaf or acorn that had a " dewdrop " on it, 

 and even now I can not see any aphides on 

 these trees The bees have worked on these 

 oak-trees from early in the morning uutil late 

 at night, i e., on such days when the sun did 

 not break through the fog or clouds (and, 

 unfortunately, there were many such days). 



I even go no far (perhaps I am mistaken) as 

 to lay a peculiarly harsh taste, which I noticed 

 in some of my honey sections, to the pre- 

 dominant quantity of this honey-dew or 

 " miellee." This harshness is very much like 

 that of pepper-tree honey. 



Even yesterday (July 11) I again found this 

 honey dew, although the drops were much 

 smaller in size, and not so plentiful as during 

 April and May. Dr Pbil. Max Boelte. 



Valley Center, Calif., July 12. 



What Determines the Sex of a 

 Queen's Eggs? 



Whether a drone hatches from an egg which 

 has been fertilised, as was suggested on page 

 T19, [ do not know. However, there are some 

 things that are rather apparent. When a 

 queen thrusts her body into a worker-ci-11 it 

 tits her snug enough to bring it in a position 

 so that the egg receives a certain fertilizing 

 fluid which makes it hatch a queen or worker. 

 While a drone-cell, being larger, allows of a 

 more free course or passage of the egg, it does 

 not receive the certain treatment which the 

 other egg does, and hence hatches a drone. It 

 is possible to find out a great many things 

 about oees yet. Sepal. 



Honey-Dew from the Oak-Trees 



The letter from Mr. C. P. Dadant, on page 

 553, concerning '• Honey-Dew Without Aphi- 

 des," eiiCourages me to send the following 

 communication. Only after having seen that 

 a gentleman of such high standing in bee- 

 culture as Mr Dadant wrote the referred to 

 communication, I feel encouraged to give for 

 publication what follows: 



As already said in my report about our croD 

 prospee s here in Southern California (page 

 563), we have had most extraordinary weather 

 from Jan 1 till even now. For 12 years I 

 have kept a daily weather record, aud by 

 comparing dates I have become convinced 

 that Bueh peculiar weather conditions have 

 not as yet existed in the 12 years referred to. 

 The weather was unusually cloudy and cold 

 all through April and May. I was much sur- 

 prised to find that the insect world this year 

 was exceedingly poorly represented, there 

 being hardly any ants, wasps, spiders, bugs or 

 beetles worth speaking of, when, in other 

 years, and especially in 1905, they were so 

 abundant. 1 incline much to the opinion 

 that all suffered in the same or a similar way 

 from the cold during the nights, as it was 



Bees Did Very Well 



Bees in this part of the country have done 

 very well this year. My home apiary has 

 stored from 1 to 5 supers of comb honey, 

 mostly from red clover. I have 2 out-apiaries, 

 and they didn't do very well. 



Thomas Pouppirt. 



Ba6ehor, Kans., Aug. 9 



Poor Country for Bees 



Honey is coming in very slowly here in 

 Virginia. 1 have 1 colony, however, that has 

 gathered 45 pounds of comb honey. I have 8 

 colooies at present. Virginia is a very poor 

 country for hees or money. Henry Stark. 



Jefferson, Va.. July 28. 



Bees Did Well 



Bees have done well in this locality. Some 

 of my colonies have filled 4 supers. They 

 have worked continually from fruit-bloom 

 until July 20. Buckwheat and sweet clover 

 are about done blooming. I look for a good 

 honey-How the last of this month and Septem- 

 ber, as we have the yellow blossoms, and 

 late buckwheat and heartsease. 



Geo. E. Moran. 



Earlton, Kans., Aug. 6. 



Some Honey and Prospects Good 



I took out of the cellar 30 colonies of bees 

 on AprM 7, 1906, and lost 7 afterwa ds. I 

 have 45 colonies now, and also a lot of good 

 honey. The prospects are good at present. 

 John Coates. 



Dunn Co., Wis., Aug. 3. 



Heavy Extracting Combs of Honey 



In taking off extracting stories this morn- 

 ing, I noticed some very heavy — in fact, so 

 heavy they called for the wheelbarrow. I 

 placed one on the scales to see about what it 

 contained, and it tipped the scales at 116 



pounds. This was a single story with 11 

 combs in it. The empty combs weighed 23 

 pounds, leaving 93 pounds of honey— all 

 snow-white. 



If there is any other bee-keeper who can 

 show a greater weight of honey in 11 combs, 

 I would like to hear from him. 



Jackson county has a fair crop of honey. 



Jackson, Mich., Aug. 3. W. D. Soper. 



Abundance of Clover 



There are very few bee-keepers in this, 

 locality, although we have an abundance of 

 clover— red, white and alsike. I have taken 

 off 72 pounds of honey so far, and expect to 

 get about 4 or 5 more supers fall from old 

 colonies, but will not get any from this 

 year's swarms. 



I read the American Bee Journal with 

 great interest, and could not keep bees with- 

 out it. 



I winter my bees on the summer stands. I 

 just put a little tarred paper around them to- 

 keep the rain off, of which we have plenty in 

 the winter here in Oregon. 



O. J. Peterson. 



Astoria, Oreg., Aug. 3. 



60 Tons in 1905— This Year Only 6 



Our honey season is over. Last year we 

 had CO tons of honey, and only 6 tons this 

 year; and have 1000 colonies in 3 apiaries. 

 J. F. McInttrb. 



Ventura Co., Calif., Aug. 2. 



Bees Doing Fairly Well 



My bees are doing fairly well. I had 11 

 colonies, spring count, and hived 3 swarms 

 for myself and sold 2 to a friend. That is all 

 the swarming I have had so far. I have taken 

 150 pounds of comb honey already, 44 pounds 

 from 1 colony in a double chaff-hive, and the 

 supers are about all full at present. I sell all 

 my honey at home at 20 cents a pound, and 

 have no trouble to dispose of it. 



I can not be without the American Bee 

 Journal, for there is where I get most of my 

 information. 



We have a very wet spell at present, and 

 expect a good fall honey-flow. 



Geo M. Seifert. 



South Bethlehem, Pa., Aug. 4. 



A Guess at Non-Swarming Secret 



I would like to make a guess at that new 

 kink of Davenport's, for curing the swarming 

 fever. My guess is that he requeens t he col- 

 ony with a virgin, the particular modus oper- 

 andi likely being about as follows: 



Fir6t visit, removes the old queen and 

 places a caged virgin in the hive; and second 

 visit, releases the virgin. 



I note he says there is no searching for 

 queens nor removing frames, yet it is evident 

 he gets her from what he says in answer to 

 Mr Philbrook. page 603. 



If it is desired to let the colony requeen it- 

 self instead of the caged virgin, a queen-ex- 

 cluding honey-board may be slipped in under 

 the hive on the bottom-board and allowed to 

 remain until a virgin hatches and settles the 

 difficulties. 



Of course, I am only guessing, but I 

 thought I would give the fraternity an idea 

 to work on. I have noticed that this kind of 

 requeening works like a charm for me when 

 successful, but I am not expert enough to get 

 there in proper shape every time. 



It seems that at this particular time (swarm- 

 ing-time) the bees have very erratic notions 

 about their queens— in fact, a desire on the 

 part of some of the bees to supersede the 

 queen seems to be a large factor, if not the 

 principal incentive to create the swarming 

 impul-e. and they are after young, vigorous 

 blood— •• A virgin, if you please. We are 

 tired of the old mother." 



Davenport says, " No searching for cells. " 

 Of course, a buxom young virgin will attend 

 to that better than any man, provided she is 



