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AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



bees both for comb and extracted honey, 

 and know how to sell our product, I will 

 next tell you a little about the honey 

 resources, etc. 



Growing of Horse-Mint. 



Mrs. Atchley, will you please tell me 

 in the American Bee Journal, whether 

 horse-mint comes from the seed in the 

 fall or spring ? J. A. Marsh. 



Seay, Oklahoma. 



1 



Friend Marsh, horse-mint usnally 

 comes up in the fall, and winters over 

 like wheat; but it sometimes comes in 

 the spring when there is insufficient 

 rainfall in autumn to bring it up, but to 

 be of much value for honey it must come 

 up in the fall and winter over. If we 

 have plenty of rain during winter, we 

 expect a good yield from it, as it takes 

 but little rain in the spring to make all 

 vegetation thrive after we have had an 

 abundance of rain during winter. We 

 have now had plenty of rain, and horse- 

 mint Is growing finely, as it came up 

 early last fall, and we now look for it to 

 yield abundantly. J. A. 



Preparing for the Honey Season. 



• The season of the year when the hum 

 of the busy bee, and the opening of the 

 flowers, giving labor to both the bee and 

 its keeper, will soon be here. The in- 

 tervening months between fall and 

 spring, while Nature has on her winter 

 garments, and our pets are quietly rest- 

 ing, perhaps dreaming of the good times 

 we hope for, we should make prepara- 

 tions for the demands we may expect 

 another season. 



Not only should our hives, frames, 

 crates, etc., be in readiness, but we 

 ought to lay our plans — plans whereby 

 we may secure, house, and market our 

 crop of honey to the best advantage. To 

 do this, we should enlighten ourselves in 

 every way possible, as to the best man- 

 ner of manipulating our bees to accom- 

 plish the best results. We should be 

 thoroughly conversant with at least one 

 of the best text-books on bee-culture, 

 faiailiarize ourselves with one or more 

 of the leading bee-periodicals in which 

 is found the best thoughts of our most 

 successful bee-keepers ; also, when pos- 

 sible, attend some of the numerous bee- 

 keepers' conventions held in nearly 

 every State in our land. 



If by negligence or otherwise you have 



not your hives and fixtures in readiness, 

 neglect them no longer, with swarming, 

 caging queens, clipping cells, extracting 

 honey, renewing sections, or any of the 

 general work to be found in a live api- 

 ary, we have no time, in our rush, to 

 make or prepare anything we probably 

 need that very minute. It is, therefore, 

 positively necessary to have everything 

 we shall need in the apiary, made up and 

 stored convenient for use the very 

 moment we may need it. The success- 

 ful bee-keeper is the man who uses the 

 winter months in making the necessary 

 preparation for the coming season. 

 Lavaca, Ark. W. H. Laws. 



Curing Bee-Paralysis. 



Mrs. Atchley, will you kindly tell us 

 in the American Bee Journal, how to 

 cure bee-paralysis ? T. S. Ford. 



Columbia, Miss. 



Friend Ford, I do not know of a sure 

 remedy. I have tried salt, and remov- 

 ing the queens, but all to no particular 

 benefit. The most effectual remedy that 

 I have tried was to put the whole colony 

 out on new combs, or comb foundation, 

 and give them sugar syrup or new 

 honey, and in almost every case I have 

 cured them. 



It seems that so long as they occupy 

 the same old combs and hive, they keep 

 dwindling. I do not mean by this that 

 I think there is any contagion about it, 

 but under the laws of common rules and 

 common-sense, we may expect the col- 

 ony to be infected until it has a chance 

 to do a general house-cleaning, or after 

 settled warm weather and new honey 

 comes in they usually get well, and so 

 we may hasten to help them by giving 

 them new, clean quarters at once. This 

 I " caught onto " by swarms issuing 

 from hives that were slightly affected 

 with the disease, and when the swarm 

 with the old queen was hived in a clean 

 hive, the disease soon disappeared, while 

 the parent colony kept on dying, even 

 after the brood from the young queen 

 had brought on bees to occupy the hive. 

 So I concluded that to remove the queen 

 was no remedy. I would like to hear 

 from others on this subject. J. A. 



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