7-i 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



[Oct., 



which are allowed to blossom, do indeed likewise 

 produce honey dew ; but I have never seen it on 

 trees that bloomed protusely, and as I live in the 

 midst of lindens, I have tlie best opportunities 

 for observation." 



Next, my own respected teacher. Dr. Lucas, 

 of Keutlingen, remarks, in a note on the fore- 

 goins; passage — 



"This observation of our esteemed friend 

 Jaaer certainly deserves attention. Whether he 

 is entirely right or not, is to me not altogether 

 clear. I have seen honey dew indiscriminately 

 on young trees and on old of various kinds ; but 

 always only after we 1 ad several successive hot 

 and dry days, followed by dcwless nights. It is 

 very probable that then the juices of plants 

 l)ecome more concentrated, and thus more highly 

 charged with saccharine, in so much that drops 

 of liquid sweet may exude through the pores of 

 the leaves, and that then the aphides will quickly 

 resort to ihe tables thus ready decked for them, 

 and multiply with almost incredible rapidity, is 

 a natural phenomenon observable in the case of 

 other insects also. But that the aphides are the 

 originators of the honey dew, as many foresters 

 and others maintain, can certaiidy not be accepted 

 as correct and true." 



Allow me, in conclusion, to request bee-keep- 

 ers and pomologists to watch for the appearance 

 of honey dew on the occurrence of such weather 

 and temperature as above indicated, and to com- 

 municate the result of their observations. 

 A. Aknold, 

 Travelling Lecturer of the Agricultural Union, 

 Province of ihe Rhine. 



Lohndorf, June 22, 1870. 



[For the American Bee Journal.] 



Profitable Bee-keeping.— Letter from England. 



The following account shows the very great 

 advantage in keeping bees on the humane and 

 improved system, over the old and barbar- 

 ous practice of the brimstone match, so clearly, 

 that I send it for your readers to go and do like- 

 wise. 



In the autumn of 1865, I was at the seaside on 

 the Lancashire coast, and found bees kept in that 

 neighborhood in the most primitive and bad way 

 I ever met with in any country. It was the sys- 

 tem there to put the swarm in a large brown 

 wicker basket, and at night to plaster a thin coat- 

 ing of cowdung over the outside, and leave it in 

 this way all summer. I have frequently seen the 

 bees coming out of holes all over the hive, from 

 top to bottom, not being able to till up all the 

 nicks with propolis, and giving it up as a bad 

 job; and if it was not a good district for honey, 

 they would give up the ghost altogether. 



When the bees give over working, the owner 

 plasters the hive with mortar, for the winter. 

 The entrance is made three or four inches high 

 from the cold slate or flag on which they phice 

 the basket. When they take the honey, they 

 suffocate the bees with brimstone. Wasps often 

 destroy the stock. 



In my perambulations I called upon a person 

 who had kept bees for a number of years in the 

 old way ; but they had all died olf except one 



stock. After talking with him for some time ou 

 the humane and profitable management of his 

 bees, and showing him tiie great loss that he sus- 

 tained by murdering his poor bees, to say nothing 

 of the ingratitude or sin in killing liicm after they 

 had been laboring for him early and late all the 

 summer, and proved to him the very great ad- 

 vantage the modern l)ar-frame (thanks to the Rev. 

 L. L. Langstroth, the inventor) from which the 

 honey could be taken without killing a bee, and 

 swarms made or prevented, as Ave liked. I showed 

 him that in fact, with these hives, he had the full 

 control over his bees, and could make them do 

 almost anything he liked. 



He asked me to get the man that makes my 

 improved bar-frame liives, to send him some ; 

 and I aftei wards sent him information lie wrote 

 for in several letters. 



When I called on him last October, I found 

 twenty stocks of bees in his garden, all very 

 strong-, with plenty of honey to last liiem over 

 the winter; and he had sold nL-dv]y three hun- 

 dred weight of honey, all of which he had taken 

 that year, icilhont killing a bee. He has now got 

 his stock up to the number he intends to keep, so 

 this 3'ear he will work for honey ; and if it is a * 

 favorable season, his bees will collect for him an 

 immense store and make him a nice addition to 

 his income. 



The same year that I called upon him, I called 

 upon his neighbor, a person much better otf than 

 the other, and he then had three stocks of bees. 

 I advised him to adopt the more profitable and 

 humane system of management ; but he did not ; 

 and when I called on liim again last October, 1 

 found three weak stocks of bees in his garden, 

 and he said he had taken no honey that year and 

 got very little the year before. 1 turned his hives 

 over and found an accumulation of wet filth and 

 dirt, nearly an inch thick on the slate floors on 

 which his hives were placed, and the bottoms of 

 the combs all mouldy. 



I told him if he had done as well as his neigh- 

 bor, he should now have sixty stocks of bees in 

 his garden and have taken more than a thousand 

 weight of honey that year. He is now, with 

 others in that district going to adopt the humane 

 system of management, and I hope bet-murder 

 has forever disappeared in that locality, as I 

 always find, when they see the loss to their own 

 pockets, it is the most convincing argument that 

 can be used. 



William Caru. 

 Newton Ueath, near Manchester, England. 



Bees sometimes abandon their liives very 

 early in the spring or late in the summer or fall. 

 They exhibit all the appearance of natural 

 swarming ; but they leave not because the popu- 

 lation is crowded, but because it is either so 

 small, or the hive so destitute of supplies that 

 they are discouraged or driven to desperation. 

 I once knew a colony to leave a hive under such 

 circumstances, on a spring-like day in December ! 

 They seem to have a presentiment that they 

 must perish if they stay, and instead of awaiting 

 the sure approach of famine, they sally out to 

 see if sometliiiig cannot be done to better their 

 condition. — Langstroth. 



