Dec. 1', 1906 



1019 



American T*ee Journal 



aforesaid "feathery tips" of a hun- 

 dred-acre grove of sweet clover. The 

 thought is a feathery one, indeed, and 

 gives us a fanciful flight of bee-misin- 

 formation. 



Oh, Mrs. Wiggins, I did not think 

 that a former San Francisco girl, one 

 reared in the great land of milk and 

 honey, would make such a bee-bull as 

 you did in this one sentence. , Perhaps 

 you tried to write too meliifluously. 

 Try mixing a little honey with your 

 ink the next time you tackle things 

 bee-cultural. 



And, further in the same sentence, 

 you mention " banks of aromatic mint 

 and thyme." What a fine soothing 

 syrup the things mentioned in this one 

 sentence would have made for poor, 

 dear little "Patsy." I'm fainting. 

 Pass me the smelling salts, please. 

 Now, don't say I'm womanly, for I'm 

 tiul. 



Peppery Honey. 



Mustard honey may be good for a 

 backache, but I doubt if it will touch 

 the spot if it is secured via the nectar- 

 glands of flower and bee. Honey and 

 mustard mixed is pretty hot stuff, and 

 may be eaten with some degree of 

 safety in small quantities with sugar- 

 cured ham. In California large fields 

 of mustard are grown for the spice- 

 mills, and merry is the hum of the bee 

 on the golden heads of hloom. It is a 

 good early honey-plant, but the nectar 

 is not so peppery as one would imag- 

 ine, at least such is my experience. 

 The native mustard, and a species of 

 rape, are among the earliest flowers to 

 bloom in the Golden State — these are 

 out in December and January, and the 

 fields are just yellow with them in 

 February. 



Over-Shaded Bees. 



" Too much of a good thing " is bad 

 for man and beast, and insect, too. In 

 a hot climate, as is to be found in some 

 portions of California, it is advisable 

 to provide shade for the bees, that the 

 hot rays of the sun won't injure the 

 comb and bees within the hives, and 

 shade may be secured by other means, 

 such as sheds, hedges, fences, wide 

 hive-covers, or by placing the colonies 

 under the protecting branches of trees. 

 Recently I discovered a bad case of too 

 much shade of the latter sort. It was 

 at the University of California, in 

 Berkeley. At the end of Telegraph 

 Avenue — the main street connecting 

 the Varsity town with Oakland, 5 miles 

 distant — is a nice, romantic bridge 

 crossing Strawberry Creek, the south- 

 ern boundary of the college grounds ; 

 and just as one sets his foot on the 

 bridge, if he looks closely among the 

 trees to the left, or the Golden Gate 

 side, he will notice a small apiary down 

 on the ground beneath the trees and 

 close to the creek's edge, where the 

 hum of the bees play a low accompani- 

 ment to the murmur of the brook be- 

 low. But the shade of the oaks, bay- 

 trees, and black " pottishmiums " is 

 far too dense, so much so that the bees 

 find it hard to make their way to the 

 hives, and, verily, sometimes we have 

 to believe that the learned professor 

 does not know everything. Just let in 

 a little more sun, professor, to gladden 

 wGjap&r bees.. .How would vou like to 

 be kept in a cellar 



Conducted by Louis H. Scholl, New Braun6fels, Tex. 



'Don't Become Discouraged 



There is much good and truthful 

 advice in the following, clipped from 

 the Dallas News, that I give it here, 

 and for the reason many persons who 

 would otherwise suffer by disposing of 

 their bees only because a bad or an off 

 year kept them from giving paying re- 

 turns. Instead, it would pay to feed if 

 the bees need it, for we know of many 

 instances where only a few dollars' 

 worth of sugar made into syrup and 

 fed to keep the bees over, resulted in 

 large crops of hundreds of dollars the 

 next season. Just as Mr. Smith says, 

 it is an old saying with the Texans, 

 that " three bad years never follow in 

 succession :" 



It has been an unusually hard year on bees 

 almost throughout the State of Texas, and 

 many of the less enthusiastic bee-keepers 

 have given up the business in disgust, saying, 

 " There is no money in bees, and it doesn't 

 pay to fool with them." A good many are 

 offering to dispose of their bees and fixtures 

 at a sacrifice. This, my friend, is not good 

 business judgment. Stick to your bees, and 

 feed them if necessary this fall to carry them 

 through the winter. Remember, we seldom 

 ever have two short crops of anything in suc- 

 cession in this grand old State of Texas, and 

 the very next year is almost sure to be a boun- 

 tiful year for honey and bees. 



So let us not become discouraged at our 

 short crop of honey and dispose of our little 

 faithful pets and workers at a sacrifice. I be- 

 lieve it was Josh Billings who said in giving 

 good advice to his son, Remember the pos 

 tage stamp, my son, and stick to one thing 

 until you get there. Many of us have only 

 very light honey crops this year, but the 

 quality is good, and it is no trouble to find a 

 ready market for it. So perhaps the poor sea- 

 son for bees will have a tendency to weed out 

 the poorer grade of bee6 as well as the bappy- 

 go-as-you-please kind of bee-keepers that give 

 their bees little or no attention, and may 

 prove a blessing in disguise after all. It will 

 give us a chance to select our best colonies to 

 breed from, and this is very important with 

 bees the same as with poultry or any other 

 domestic stock. 



Bees are unlike our other stock. We breed 

 bees only for one purpose, or at least we 

 should breed them for only one purpose, that 

 of gathering honey. So in selecting our 

 breeding stock we should select those that 

 come up with the heaviest and fullest supers 

 of honey. No difference what kind of bees 

 we have, if we will continue to breed from the 

 best and follow this up year after year, we 

 will surely make a big improvement over our 

 present stock and ways of breeding. 



Don't misunderstand me now as trying to 

 teach you that there is no difference in the 

 different races of bees, for that is not what I 

 am trying to teach you, for I know there is as 

 much difference in pure Italian bee6 and our 

 little native or black bees, when it comes to 

 gathering honey, as there is in any of our fine 

 stock of horses, cattle and hogs over the com- 

 mon scrubs of long ago. What I was trying 



to teach you is this: If you will not stock 

 your bee-yards with tine bees, then improve 

 the bees you have, as suggested above, for the 

 best is none too good for us who believe in 

 improved stock. L. B. Smith. 



Rescue, Tex. 



Is Bee-Keeping- Moving Toward 

 the South? 



At this time of the year there are 

 usually many inquiries from bee-keep- 

 ers in different sections, who are con- 

 templating changing locations, and 

 many of these inquiries come from the 

 North. Surely, bee-keeping is moving 

 toward the South. 



There are some seekers who move 

 into a new section, and, not knowing 

 anything about the honey-flora, will 

 locate where there are but few honey- 

 plants, and even if there is abundance, 

 it may yield inferior honey. The ques- 

 tion is, How should bee-keepers locate ? 

 By correspondence with some reliable 

 bee-keeper already located in the de- 

 sired section. But the inquiry is often 

 returned with the statement, "If you 

 are doing anything, you would better 

 stay where you are." In some in- 

 stances there may have been some 

 good reasons for a reply like this, but 

 there have been too many such replies 

 for the good of our industry in some 

 sections here in the South. There are 

 many good, honest bee-keepers who 

 have sufficiently tried their locations, 

 and they would not justify the spread- 

 ing of the business to the extent of a 

 livelihood. We are glad of the possi- 

 bilities of our industry, and those who 

 desire to pursue it can find locations 

 which will warrant a living, if intelli- 

 gently pursued. 



Inquiries from bee-keepers desiring 

 locations in the Southeast, for the last 

 two seasons, have been many. The 

 possibilities of bee-keeping in the 

 Southwest have been better known to 

 the beekeeping world in the last few 

 years than in the Southeast. There- 

 fore the bee-keepers have located there 

 mostly, and made it a great bee and 

 honey country. But what of us ? We 

 have been prospecting from place to 

 place and waiting for the great pine 

 forests to be lumbered and our section 

 made better for the bee-industry. This 

 has been done, and it has begun to 

 boom, and the prospects are all that 

 could be expected. 



Now about locations. The idea seems 

 to prevail to locate along large streams 

 or in or near a very dense swamp of 

 miles square. It is a fact that our best 

 honey-plant is found on high land or 



