1J2 



TIIE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



[Dec, 



siderable brood in January last winter. As this 

 matter of brood lias been often mentioned as an 

 objection, we think perhaps ours may have been 

 stimulated by leaving;- the door open a few 

 ni.f!,-hts, which we mentioned we did on account 

 of being obliged to use saw-dust that was quite 

 dami). 



As to feeding rye-meal, &c., in February, this 

 is easily and often done, by removing the stock 

 from the house at that time ; but our objection 

 to so doing is, that the result would be too much 

 brood, long before it is needed. 



Mrs. Tupper some time ago gave the result of 

 her experience, that brood had better not be en- 

 couraged too much, before about the first of 

 April, and our experiments corroborate it. It is 

 true, we can stimulate bees to raise brood, so as 

 to have them fill the hive and possibly swarm as 

 early as the middle of April, but the danger of 

 mischief from a sudden cold snap, and having a 

 large number of bees before they can be of any 

 use, makes us think it cannot be good policy. 

 Kot but that we would have all stocks strong in 

 April ; but then there is also an extreme in 

 having too much brood early in the season. 



Auy one may easily try the experiment for 

 himself. We presume ditiereut localities would 

 give somewhat different results. 



A correspondent of the Journal mentions a 

 difficulty in laying a frame of broken comb down 

 flat, in the upper part of the hive, for the bees to 

 mend. The caps on the hives we used for that 

 purjiose, were made to accommodate boxes, and 

 are large enough to cover the honey board and 

 all, and the honey board is an inch longer than 

 the top bars of the frames. We think it would 

 pay to have a cap made on purpose, to cover a 

 frame when laid flat on a bfiard. 



lu consequence of the dry weather this fall, 

 we have been obliged to give back some of the 

 honey taken away — about as much as we took of 

 the gathering from the autumn wild flowers ; so 

 that the surplus honey given us by our forty-six 

 stocks, (made by artificial swarming entirely, 

 the year before from eleven) stands at six thou- 

 sand one hundred and sixty-two (6,162) pounds, 

 besides eighteen new swarms. The sixty-four 

 stocks we now hive, are all in good trim, and 

 will bo ready for work in 1871, all of them, we 

 trust — unless we are yet too much of a kovice. 



[For the Americau Bee Journal.] 



Bees in Kansas. 



!Mr. Editor : — We have caught a great deal of 

 enthusiasm in reading the two uumbers we have 

 received of the Bee .Journal. All we are sori-y 

 about is that we did not subscribe sooner. Put 

 us down for life, as a subscriber, or at least as 

 long as we keep bees. 



But we are not able to crow about the amount 

 of honey we have slung out this season. We 

 wish we could join the enthusiastic chap of 

 Washington Harbor ; but the hurrah comes out 

 of the other corner of the mouth, or "over the 

 left." 



Bees have done very poorly here this season ; 



worse than for many years previous. There is 

 no doubt that many bees will jjerish here the 

 coming winter, on account of the scarcity of 

 stores. Intelligent bee-keepers will, of course, 

 endeavor to carry their bees throiigh by feeding. 



In the spring of 1869 we had three hives of 

 bees, and we sold 3.^0 lbs. of surplus honey, be- 

 sides wiiat we used in the family, and increased 

 our stock to fourteen. Every one of these went 

 into winter quarters with more than fifty pounds 

 of honey, and every one came out in the sjiring 

 all right. 



Some persons seem to be astonished at the re- 

 sult of Novice's honey harvest this year. But 

 if we had last year restricted our number to the 

 same rate of increase as Novice did his, we might 

 have netted at least 250 lbs. of honey to each 

 original hive we had in the spriuir ; which would 

 have beat Novice all hollow. But, as to this 

 year, we have nothing to say. We did sell 20 lbs. 

 of surplus honey, and increased our stock from 

 thirteen to thirty ; but at least half of them will 

 have to be fed or they will starve before spring. 

 This season the linden trees failed to blossom, 

 and though the late sumac, buckwheat, and 

 other fall flowers blossomed as usual, but the 

 honey was not in them. If it had been, I know 

 the bees would have got it. AVhy the flowers 

 failed to yield honey is a mystery to me. 



We have the usual enemies to bees here as 

 elsewhere, in the shape of birds and moths. But 

 the worst enemy of all that has a])peared, is a 

 large animal or biped. He has infested this com- 

 munity for nearly a year ; and has been seen to 

 put bees in his mouth by handfuls. But it is 

 not the bees that he puts in his mouth that do 

 the damage, but the lies that come out. This bi- 

 ped calls himself the "bee-man,'' or L. Twining, 

 "Patent Bee Hive Vendor," and seller of six 

 secrets for handling and managing bees. For ten 

 dollars he will tell you what the six secrets are, 

 and give you a piece of paper that says you have 

 a right to use a certain im])rovement on bee hives 

 patented by E. F. Chevalier. The hive that he 

 exhibits as his patent is a box-hive, made about 

 two inches wider at the top one way, with the 

 Langstroth frames ; and for every right he sells 

 he could be prosecuted by the owner of the 

 Langstroth patent. This box sits on what he 

 calls a "bee protectoi'," a miller trap and feed 

 trough — two capital i^laces to breed moths. If 

 I'ightly named it would be called bee-Mller. 



But with his system you can make from six- 

 teen to sixty-four swarms from one, in a single 

 season — that is, if his own word was good for 

 anything. Though he generally requires a 

 pledge of honor that the secrets shall never be 

 revealed, he neglected to require that from sev- 

 eral, and the secrets are out. I w^as going to say 

 that I would put them down here for the benefit 

 of the readers of the Journal ; but it will be no 

 benefit to the reader unless a hearty laugh would 

 do him some good. We here quote from the bee- 

 killer's circular, that you may form some idea of 

 the great value of the secrets before we tell you 

 what they are. 



"Our secrets are: 1st. Taming bees, hoicever 

 cross, so that they can be handled as readily and 

 safely as flies, by any one. 



