198 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



[March, 



went to the woods, staid seven hours and re- 

 turned to the parent hive. 



Paper by Mr. Gallup. 



Mr. E. GaUup, of Iowa, read a paper entitled 

 " Successful bee keeping in a nut shell : " 



" The great secret in successful bee keping 

 consists in knowing how to keep all stocks strong, 

 or having them strong with brood in all stages, 

 nursing bees and oatsido laborers at the com- 

 mencement of the honey harvest. To illustrate 

 this : A and B both have the same resources in 

 their resi>ective localities, or we will say that both 

 reside in the same locality, and their honej^ har- 

 vest commences on the first of .Jiuie, and the last 

 half of .July and first half of August there is no 

 forage for bees. .Tune and the first half of July 

 is good, and the last half of August, and the 

 month of September is good. 



A commences in spring to stimulate, equalize, 

 i&c, and replaces all old queens or queens that 

 do not come up to the standard of fertility with 

 young prolific queens, allows but little increase 

 (that is, providing surplus honey is the object). 

 Here I will remark that with young prolific 

 queens and abundance of room there is but very 

 little danger of increase, and on the first day of 

 June when the harvest commences he has every 

 stock completely filled with comb brood in all 

 stages, nursing bees in abundance, less than six- 

 teen days old, honey gatherers over sixteen 

 days old, and they are in the very best possible 

 condition to commence storing surplus honey 

 immediately. Then during the scarce time, in 

 the last of July and first of August, stimulates 

 and keeps up the fertility of the queens vmtil the 

 harvest again commences in the middle of xVugust. 

 His bees are then ready to commence storing 

 surplus again as soon as the harvest commences. 

 The consequence will be that A receives a profit 

 in surplus honey, and pronounces the season a 

 good one. In fact, meets every one with a smil- 

 ing countenance, and is well satisfied that bee 

 keeping pays, &c. On tlie other hand, B com- 

 mences with the same number of stocks, in the 

 spring, lets them manage themselves, and on the 

 first day of June tliey are not in condition to 

 store surplus, or at least but very few of them, 

 and those few lie allows to swarm themselves to 

 death, or which amounts to about the same thing, 

 when the honey harvest commences his stocks 

 commence breeding very rapidly, and by the 

 time his stocks get in condition to store honey 

 the harvest is done, or nearly so, lor it takes 

 twenty-one days to hatch out a worker, and six 

 teen days more, or thereabout, liefore they com- 

 mence laboring outside, &c. Now the scarce 

 time comes on again, and B has got no surplus 

 honey, but perliaps has a number of extra 

 swarms. The queens stop breeding entirely, or 

 nearly so, especially so if the forage is entirely 

 dried up or cut off. Now, wlien the honey har- 

 vest commences, in the middle of August, his 

 stocks, instead of being in condition to commence 

 storing, have to go to raising brood again to re- 

 plenish their stocks of workers, for recollect that 

 the brood hatched in June and July is very soon 

 used up with old age, for the lifetime of a work- 

 ing bee is only from six to eight weeks during the 



working season. Now, you can readily see that 

 B's stocks are expending all their force and 

 energy to replenish their numbers again, and by 

 the time they are ready to commence storing the 

 harvest is past, and B hasany quantity of stocks 

 that he has to feed in order to carry them through 

 the winter, or he has to double up stock. &c., 

 and when he comes to sum up the season's opera- 

 tions he has received no surplus honey, and his 

 surplus stocks, or a large proportion of them, 

 have eitlier to be fed or doubled up, in order to 

 winter them, and the consequence is, his face 

 is somewhat elongated, and his conclusion is 

 that the season has been a poor one for bees. 

 He has certainly had bad luck, and he is ready 

 to attribute his luck, as he calls it, to anything 

 but liis own neglect or carelessness For example, 

 the season has been a poor one for bees, or his 

 climate is not adapted to bee keeping, &c., A, 

 with his management, in the same locality, mind 

 you, has had good luck, as it is called. His 

 stocks are all in excellent condition for winter- 

 ing, no doubling up or feeding in winter, &c., 

 for he has fed at the proper season to feed, for I 

 hold it to be a fixed fact that the summer and 

 sjiring is the proper time to feed. Keep your 

 bees in tlie right condition to stoi-e lioney, and 

 when the harvest comes they will store it. There 

 may be seasons and localities where bees have 

 to be fed in winter ; but I have never seen such 

 when they were properly taken care of in the 

 summer. The whole seci'et of successful bee 

 keeping is contained in the above nut shell. 



"The very first knowledge sought by the new 

 beginner in bee keeping should be tlie above. 



"Orchard, Iowa. Elisha Gallup." 



Mr. Gallup's paper was well received. 



Mr. King stated that in New York mel-ex- 

 tracted honey did not sell well. The fact that 

 dealers in the article in New York reported no 

 sale last fall had suggested the advisability of 

 forming a honey company or association. The 

 object of such a company was to secure an 

 equality of the supply and prices in all the cities 

 in the Union. He had thought of having mel- 

 extracted honey made into a substitute for rock 

 candy. 



He said that a great honey merchant in New 

 York said that if some way was not devised to 

 make a market for extracted honey there would 

 soon be no market for it. He did not think here 

 was the i)laee and now the time to organize a 

 company, seeing that the two national associa- ' 

 tions would meet in Cleveland in December next. 



Mr. Moon was called to the chair and Mr. Van 

 Slyke spoke of the chemical nature of honey, 

 and its capacity for being manufactured into 

 candy. It was not of the cane sugar class. 

 Honey was grape sugar, with a small propor- 

 tion of cane sugar. Its composition was six 

 atoms of carbon, twelve of hydrogen, and six of 

 oxygen. 



It was made susceptible of crystallization by 

 ti-eating it in tlie candied state to two and a Iialf 

 parts of alcohol to one of honey, subjected to pres- 

 sure, then treated to one-tenth part of alcohol, 

 warm. Then it would form semi-circular candy 

 crystals. Another method was to put candied 

 honey on bricks, allow the bricks to absorb the 



