44 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



[Aug. 



John Morgan, of Mill Creek, ^Utali.jwrites 

 July 11, 1873: 



We have had a bad spring in Utah, for bees. 

 Some have lost all, and are discouraged. The 

 honey season commenced here about two vreeks 

 ago. We will have to use the extractor to give 

 the queens more room to keep the colonies 

 populous. 



W. G. Smith, Columbia, Mo., writes July 

 20, 1873 : 



Bees done very well here up to about the 1st 

 of July, but not much since. I had eleven 

 colouies, seven in box-hives, which I transferred 

 and have increased to sixteen, and taken about 

 100 pounds of box-honey and 500 pounds of 

 extracted. My bees are all very strong, in fact 

 strong enough to divide and make two of each 

 one. 



B. A. Barbour, of Gordonsville, Virginia, 

 writes June 24, 1873: 



Our honey season is nearly a failure. Surely 

 we are being tried in a fiery furnace with our 

 pets. Winter's frost and summer's sun play 

 the same destructive part, but my motto is, 

 "Never say die!" The "good time" will 

 surely come again, and the more surely if we, 

 meanwhile, preserve a brave heart and a con- 

 stant spirit and fail not in our part. 



L. B. Aldrich, of Warsaw, Minn., writes July 

 17,1873: 



Bees are doing finely on basswood. I have 

 only one swarm from forty old stocks, having 

 tried to keep them back ; one-third of them 

 have two stories of Langstroth hives full of 

 honey, and are storing honey in a third. I am 

 slinging the honey, and in no case do I kill 

 sealed brood, and seldom disturb the larvae. We 

 raise queens, build new stocks and strengthen 

 old ones with brood that goes through the 

 slinger. 



William Stump, Pendleton, Ohio, writes July 

 SO, 1873: 



I have taken off most of the box-honey, and 

 this coming week shall divide up and make 

 new swarms. I have queens ready to give 

 them. My plan is to keep colonies strong until 

 after the surplus honey season is over and then 

 divide. The season with us has been good. 

 The ground is now white with clover, but there 

 is not much honey in it. Bee-keepers here, 

 who had slingers have taken out quantities of 

 honey. I prefer to have mine in box hives, 

 "which retail at forty cents joer pound. 



W. Perry, Sen., ofLynnville, Tenn., writes : 

 I am a new beginner in apiculture in the im- 

 proved hive. I commenced in the spring of 

 1872, with about thirty stocks in the old log 

 and box-hives ; transferred six of them to the 

 Langstroth hive, and put nineteen swarms in 

 Langstroth hives, and at the close of the 

 swarming season had forty-nine stocks, twenty- 

 five in the Langstroth and twenty-four in the 



old box or gum-hive, five of which died during 

 the winter. I now have eighty stocks in the 

 Langstroth and thirteen in the old box-hives. 

 They are all doing well in the Langstroth hive, 

 except two, that have not increased their stocks. 

 I fear they have what is called foul-brood. 



E. H. Miller, of Tonica, Illinois, writes July 

 7,1873: 



What few bees I have left appear to be doing 

 very well ; swarming and storing honey quite 

 liberal. I placed 134 stocks into winter quar- 

 ters one year ago last fall ; they wintered well, 

 but during March and April last eighty died 

 with dysentery; placed seventy -five into winter 

 quarters last fall, and commence this swarming 

 season with fourteen stocks all told. What are 

 we to do with this disease ? Is there no cure 

 or prevention ? If so, I would like to see it in 

 the Journal in time to benefit bee-keepers this 

 fall, so that, if possible, we may save such a 

 disastrous loss as we have experienced for the 

 past two winters. The loss in this section has 

 been over 90 per cent, for the last two years. 



A subscriber writes from Mitchellville, Tenn., 

 June, 1873: 



Bees are doing nothing this season in this 

 section of country. The loss was considerable 

 last winter, say half of all the stocks. Those 

 that survived the winter came out weak in the 

 spring. We had a cold and backward spring, 

 the frost killing all the fruit-blossoms. We 

 have had incessant rains for nearly two months. 

 It has been with difiiculty that bees could make 

 a living up to this time, and consequently they 

 have stored no surplus. Our section of country 

 is not so good as some others for natural bee- 

 pasture. Twenty-eight miles south from here 

 is a much better location, being south of the 

 range of mountains that divides the waters of 

 the Cumberland and Green rivers. It is several 

 degrees warmer, spring opens sooner, and there 

 is much better pasture. 



W. H. S. Grout, of Poland Centre, Chau- 

 tauqua county, N. Y., writes : 



I lost all my bees one year ago, with dysen- 

 tery (five in number.) I see a good many 

 writers are puzzled as to the cause of the disease 

 that raged so fearfully amongst bees last winter. 

 I am quite confident that honey-dew was the 

 causCj here. Some was gathered in June, but 

 larger quantities in September. I used the ex- 

 tractor to get my surplus, and when winter 

 came my bees had nothing but honey-dew to 

 winter on. I put forty-four in a cellar, where 

 I had wintered them successfully many times 

 before, and left seven on their stands, packed 

 all around with straw and chaff, but all died 

 alike. A neighbor, half a mile from me, win- 

 tered twenty swarms in bux-hives, on their 

 summer stands, with no protection, without 

 losing any. This I attribute to the fact of their 

 having plenty of good honey, the honey-dew 

 being used mostly in the fall. 



