1871.] 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



183 



to be ventilated to suit the strength of the stock ; 

 and the Italians require more upward ventilation 

 then the black bees, or require to be kept in a 

 cooler place. I find them easily disturbed, and 

 they generally have rpore dead bees in the hive in 

 the spring. I have had two stocks ventilated 

 alike, and standing alongside of one another. 

 In the spring, one would be perfectly drv, have 

 no mould, nor scarcely any dead bees ; while the 

 other would be damp and mouldy, and have a 

 great number of dead bees. 



Mr. T. Smith, of Pelee Island, Ontario, seems 

 to have been quite disappoined with the results 

 of his experiments in wintering bees in the 

 Thomas and the Langstroth hives. I have seen 

 results quite as different, with a neighbor of mine, 

 when he wintered eight colonies in the Thomas 

 hive, and lost six in the Langstroth hive, only 

 wintering one in a two-story Langstroth observ- 

 ing hive. In this case I believe the cause of the 

 bees dying in the Langstroth hive was, that their 

 stores got frozen, the temperature not being so 

 high in the shallow hive as in the tall one. Per- 

 haps Mr. Smith's stock, that wintered so well 

 in the Thomas hive, had an old queen. If so, I 

 would prefer a hive with two quarts of dead bees 

 in the spring, pi-ovided it contained a young 

 queen, and that the stocks were equal in 

 strength in the fall. 



Will any of the readers of the Journal state 

 what kind of jar or bottle is best for putting up 

 machine honey for market, and where they can 

 be got ? I think it would be better to put it up 

 in glass, so that the color of honey may be seen. 

 John McLatchie. 



New Edinburgh, Ontario, Nov. 24, 1870. 



[For the American Bee Journal.] 



No Bees in Colorado. 



Mr. Editor : — A correspondent of the Journal 

 inquires about the adaptation of Colorado for 

 "bees and bee culture." We would give our 

 opinion from several years' residence in that ter- 

 ritory. We do not remember seeing a single bee 

 there of any kind ; in fact, we believe insects are 

 rather scarce there, with the exception of grass- 

 hoppers and greybacks. 



The honey bee, we believe, has never been 

 found, in a wild state, west of the Plains, which 

 used to be called the Great American Desert ; 

 but since Horace Greeley passed over it, and 

 commenced his essays on farming, grass has 

 grown to a considerable extent. It is hard to 

 say whether it was the philosopher or the essays 

 that produced the change. Some advocate the 

 theory that the smoke of the steam engines and 

 the railroad conducting electricity along the 

 track have been the cause of producing frequent 

 showers, and changed the great arid desert into 

 a pastoral region. One thing is certain, the Great 

 American Desert is now being written out of ex- 

 istence. 



But as to bees, we do not believe they have yet 

 been tried in California ; at least we are not aware 

 of the fact, if they have. We do not believe, 

 however, that bees would begin to live there 



unless they could be learnt to chew gum. We 

 do not remember having seen a single melliferous 

 jilant there that bees frequent in this section of 

 the country — nobasswood, no sumac, no nothing, 

 except cactus, sage, and the different species of 

 pine, which is the only tree that prevails to any 

 extent in that territory. There is one thiii'j^ that 

 bees could be well sujjplicd with there : that is 

 propolis. They ould pitcli their hives with it 

 within and without. 



In Kansas our main dependence for honey is, 

 first, fruit blossoms, including apple, peach, crab- 

 apple, plum, rasjibenies, blackberrie.«. straw- 

 berries, etc. ; then basswood. sumac, buckwheat, 

 and heartsease. Without the basswood and su- 

 mac bee-keeping would ben soiry business here. 

 Of the latter there are two kinds here : the one 

 blossoming about tlie middle of June, and the 

 other the latter part of July. The basswood 

 comes in between, and the three make a rich 

 supply of honey for nearly forty days — each kind 

 of sumac being nearly equally as rich as the 

 basswood. Now, bees would not begin to live 

 here without the.se plants, and none of them 

 abound in Colorado to any considerable extent. 

 I have been informed bj' a person who tried bee- 

 keeping three or four miles from the timber in 

 Kansas that he failed entirely, the bees starving 

 to death in summer. 



As to the climate of Colorado our friend must 

 have been slightly misinformed. We wintered 

 on the Arkansas River, at the foot of the moun- 

 tains, in about as favorable a location as could 

 be found, being protected on the west and the 

 north by high ranges of mountains. We had no 

 thermometer ; but we know that it froze ice to 

 the thickness of five or six inches, which, of 

 course, would indicate a temperature consider- 

 ably below 30°. But, as to summer, you can 

 easily find a place where you will not sufter with 

 the heat. We spent part of July and August at 

 a place in the mountains, west of the South Park, 

 where it would freeze ice about a fourth of an 

 inch thick every night, and large snow banks 

 were only a few rods distant during the whole 

 time. 



We tlyink that bees would not do well so high 

 up as that, the air being so light that when the 

 bee would get his load of gum, he would inevita- 

 bly fall to the ground. Finally, we give it as our 

 opinion that Colorado will never be a good coun- 

 try for the honey-bee on account of the aridity 

 of the climate. Although some honey-producing 

 plants might be grown there, we think they 

 would fail to produce the desired sweetness for 

 the reason above mentioned. 



N. Cameron. 



Lawrence, Kansas, Jan., 1871. 



No study like natural history, pursued in an 

 humble and docile spirit, so harmoniously elicits 

 the religion of the soul, or so fitly prepares it to 

 enter, by the pathway of the works of God, the 

 august temple of His revealed Word. — Shuck- 



ARD. 



Bees extract sweets from the most poisonous 

 plants. 



