438 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



pleasure, and I hope the compensation will 

 follow and be realized to some degree this 

 year. 



Last year I bought, and had made. 40 

 dovetailed hives, and from 28 colonies, 

 spring count, I iilled all the hives, and still 

 have about one dozen colonies in bos-hives, 

 now disgracing my apiary, all of which I 

 will transfer to imjjroved hives with mov- 

 able frames. ° 



I bought queens and Italianized success- 

 fully y colonies out of 10. I also have one 

 Punic queen successfully introduced. My 

 bees are in fine condition for winter time. 

 They gave me plenty of surplus honey for a 

 large family, and some to give to my 

 friends. I expect big things from my apiary 

 this year, when the sourwood blooms. 



Mount Airy, Va. G. A. Creasy. 



Very Severe Winter for Bees. 



We have had a very severe winter, and 

 lots of bees have died. It is still cold, this 

 morning the thermometer being down to 

 12 degrees of zero. Lowry Johnson. 



Masontown. Pa., March 6, 1893. 



Fine Prospects for a Good Crop. 



I have 66 colonies now. We have liad an 

 abundance of rain, and the prospects for a 

 fine honey crop are certainly good. My 

 bees did not do much last year — about an 

 average yield of 17 pounds of comb honey 

 per colony. They are situated in the moun- 

 tains at Acton. Calif., where the bee-forage 

 is principally white sage and buckwheat. 



John Hauser. 



Acton, Calif., March 9, 1893. 



Bees Appear in Good Condition. 



I had 27 colonies of bees, spring count, 

 and put 49 colonies into winter quarters, 

 packed in chaft' three hives deep, under a 

 shed 4 feet wide and 4 feet high. Four col- 

 onies are dead. Bees had the first good 

 flight on March 9th, that they have had 

 since Dec. 1st. They appear to be in good 

 condition. I had about 1,500 pounds of sur- 

 plus comb honey last season. I like the 

 Bee Journal. C. L. Nelson. 



Odebolt, Iowa, March 11, 1893. 



Encouraging Prospects in California. 



From the way things appear at this 

 writing, I should not wonder if we had a 

 fine crop of honey this year. Everything 

 points that way. Of course the way the 

 weather acts later on in the southern part 

 of the State will have much to do with the 

 size of the crop. Up here, everything is 

 insured for a very fine crop. We have had 

 sufficient rains already, and we are sure of 

 more at the right time. I was in to see a 

 firm in San Francisco that is handling bee- 

 supplies, and they tell me they are having 

 more calls than they anticipated so early in 

 the season. This is encouraging. 



Our Legislature has been too much taken 

 up with investigations and Bills that were 



introduced early in the session, to find time 

 to do anything for our bee-keepers. I am 

 sorry that they did not start to ask for an 

 appropriation early in the session, for I am 

 quite sure that they could have obtained 

 it. At any rate, they will know what to do 

 two years from now, when the next Legis- 

 lature meets. 



Though I have been elected by our State 

 Bee-Keepers' Association, to represent it in 

 the next National convention at Chicago, I 

 am afraid that I will not find it convenient 

 to be there. Still, time will tell. 



Wm. a. Pryal. 



N. Temescal, Calif., March 6. 1893. 



Record of a Colony on Scales. 



The following is my scale hive record for 

 the season of 1892: 



The last of May the poplar bloomed; 

 about June 10th the clover came on ; and 

 about July 4th basswood bloomed full, but 

 owing to a cold east wind I lost about half 

 of it. The colony swarmed, and thus cur- 

 tailed my record. I labored under some 

 disadvantages, you will see. 



G. W. McGuire. 



Dark Ridge, N. C. Feb. 20, 1893. 



Transferring with Crooked Combs. 



On page 332, Mr. Gardiner asks how to 

 transfer bees from colonies having crooked 

 combs, and suggests placing the new hive 

 above the old one and waiting until the 

 queen takes possession of the new hive. 



It is much better to put the new hive be- 

 low the old one, as bees have a tendency to 

 establish the brood-nest close to the en- 

 trance, and store their honey above. But 

 even then, the process is rather slow. On 

 the other hand, cutting and straightening 



