158 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOUENAL. 



[Jan., 



[For the Ameiican Bee Journal.] 



A Season in New Jersey. No. 1. 



Mk. Editor : — I propose to p:ive yon an ac- 

 count of my operations in this place during tlie 

 past year, though it is mainly only a scries of 

 mishaps, misfortunes, or mismanagement, as 

 you may choose to call it. 



I feel that I have learned some valuable les- 

 sons in this dear school of experience, and there- 

 fore will try and share my information with 

 your numerous readei's. 



I left iSTew Hampshire the last week in Decem- 

 ber, 18G9, with sixteen medium and good swarms 

 of bees and about ten small ones, arriving here 

 with the bees in good shape in two days. For- 

 tunately the weather at that time was mild ; but 

 by keeping the l)ees in such a tumult, of course 

 many were destroyed. Here let me say that 

 I took them by Express, and went with them, 

 thus getting better treatment for them than they 

 otherwise would have had. These Express com- 

 panies sometimes handle things very roughly, 

 and don't always stop to notice whether a box 

 contains live bees, rattlesnakes, or some other 

 harmless rarity ; and when you get a swarm 

 aboard, it onay be right side u]), or it may not 

 be. 



The two days after arriving were fine warm 

 days, giving the bees an excellent opportunity 

 to air themselves. Although I left the ground 

 in New Hampshire covered with quite a body of 

 snow and ice, I here found nothing of the kind, 

 and began to congratulate myself on my escape 

 from a long and tedious winter. "Well, just then 

 my troubles commenced. I knew pietty well, or 

 thought I did, how to care for bees in New 

 Hampshire ; but New Jersey is a different place, 

 and I soon found a treatment necessary, differ- 

 ing from that v/hich I had marked out. 



In a few days the clouds came up, the winds 

 blew, and tlie rains came ; and if you know 

 what that is in Jersey, near the coast, (we are 

 eleven miles from the coast) you know what I 

 did not know before. Nearly every rain storm 

 is accompanied by a vast amount of wind, bring- 

 ing the rain in nearly horizontal direction, driv- 

 ing it into every crevice i^os.^ible, and into some 

 where it seemed impossible. I supposed my 

 hives were waterproof, but they were — some of 

 them — incapable of withstanding a Jersey flood. 

 This, then, we will call lesson No. 1, that a hive 

 not perfectly water-tight, should be securelj'' 

 covered. I should have said that none of mine 

 were so wet as to be materially injured. 



I had no beelionse, having thought that in 

 New Hampshire they were better olf without, 

 than with such a contrivance, and as New Jer- 

 sey was so much milder, of course no house could 

 be necessary here. Mistaken again ! After the 

 rain bad cleared away, a piercing west wind be- 

 gan to blow, and having experienced so much 

 from tlicm, I have now learned to have a whole- 

 some fear of them. 



It .seems quite likely that a long continued 

 piercing wind, which will chill a man wor.se 

 than a right cold but calm day, will also chill a 

 swarm of bees in the same way. So I carried 



the hives into a cellar, and built a light fence to 

 ward off the west wind, and in two or three 

 weeks carried them out again. In fact it was 

 troublesome keeping them in the cellar, as it 

 would get too warm when the thermometer rose, 

 as it did outside, to GO degrees or more, and this 

 in January. Some of the small swarms began to 

 breed in the cellar ; and large ones also, I pre- 

 sume, though I did not examine them, as they 

 seemed to be doing finely. But these small 

 swaims, besides being small, had but little feed, 

 and with the frequent disturbances of feeding, 

 warm weather, and some exposure, they soon 

 began to fail in numbers, and some of them 

 died. 



I did not have everything as convenient as 

 desired, and conld not have it, so I did the best 

 I could under the circumstances. In the latter 

 part of January, I carried out most of the larger 

 colonies, and prepared the remainder for an ab- 

 sence of a month. During February I was 

 away, and on my return found most of the 

 small swarms dead, and also some of the large 

 ones. The sun would shine out warm, though a 

 cool breeze might be blowing ; the bees came 

 out and many became chilled before they could 

 return. 



This is the third reason why bees should have 

 a house here, especially in winter. 



The.se winds decimated my stocks during the 

 spring months to such an extent as to utterly 

 luin some, and so weakened the remainder that 

 they did not become strong in numbers until 

 the best part of the spring harvest was over. 

 They would go out to work, and many were un- 

 able to return. It does not take a very powerful 

 wind to blow as fast as a bee can fly, and it re- 

 quires no great calculation to show that against 

 such a wind it would require all the bee's exer- 

 tions to battle, to say nothing about progress. 



From the causes enumerated my bees became 

 reduced by the first of May to six colonies, and 

 those not very strong. These were at that time 

 reinforced with three more swarms from New 

 Hampshire. 



I had expected that the winds would trouble 

 them only a short time in the spring, but they 

 continvied to be a drawback on them until 

 June. 



This article is already long enough, so I will 

 defer writing more until another time. 



J. L. Hubbard. 



Brichshurg, N. J. 



[Fur the American Bee Journal.] 



Queens Eaised from a Young Mother. 



The past season I raised only two queens, ar- 

 tificially, from young mothers. One of the mo- 

 thers was about tlu'ce weeks old, the otiier about 

 six weeks. Neither of these young queens be- 

 came fertile. One of them had three brilliant 

 and well-defined bands, with the dark lines in- 

 tervening, like a pure worker. She was large 

 and handsome. Among my other queens, raised 

 artificially, and introduced into strong stocks of 

 black bees, four led off swarms. Two of these 



