690 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL.. 



with great interest. I have surprised 

 some apiarists by the temerity with 

 which I could, unprotected, even in 

 swarming-time, approach them without 

 receiving punishment ; the only time 

 they would sting being when squeezed 

 by accident, as by my shirt-collar against 

 my neck, and then their sting would feel 

 like the pricking from a cambric needle, 

 with no appreciable trouble following. 

 I have never experienced a particle of 

 irritation or swelling resulting from a 

 bee-sting. Whether the fact that I 

 speak to them in a quiet, caressing tone 

 enhances my immunity from their ven- 

 geance, I am uncertain, but I believe it 

 best to do so. 

 Sunnyside, Ills. 



Experiment in Ceiiar'Tf^interin;; 

 of Bees. 



Written for the American Bee Journal 

 BY W. J. CULLINAN. 



On Dec. 3, 1892, I placed 4 colonies 

 of bees in my cellar for an experiment. 

 They had been fed about 12 pounds of 

 sugar syrup each, which, together with 

 10 pounds of natural stores, gathered 

 from fall flowers, gave them about 22 

 pounds each, on Oct. 1st. 



The cellar was under my dwelling — 

 size, 18x40 feet — and I knew that if we 

 got much cold weather, the temperature 

 would reach the freezing point, or lower; 

 still I made no provisions for heating 

 artificially, as it was my intention to 

 demonstrate for myself the effect of a 

 low temperature upon the bees while in 

 the cellar. 



Well, we got the cold weather all 

 right, and lots of it, and the mercury in 

 the thermometer marked 28° above 

 zero, by the last of December, and re- 

 mained at about that point for two 

 weeks, then raised to about 32° for a 

 week or ten days, and then came a day 

 when it got up to 45° outside, and I set 

 them out for a flight, fully expecting to 

 find them victims to intestinal derange- 

 ment. To my surprise they showed no 

 diarrhetic symptoms whatever, and 

 seemed perfectly healthy. 



After returning them to the cellar 

 another cold wave struck us, and the 

 mercury promptly descended to about 

 the point reached before, and hovered 

 between that and the freezing point 

 until the last of February. About this 

 time water got into the cellar, which 

 loft it very damp, and altliough over a 

 month too early, I thought it best to set 

 them out for good. They had a flight 



the day they were taken out, showed no 

 signs of diarrhea, and a pint measure 

 would have held all the dead bees from 

 the 4 colonies. 



The next day after putting them out 

 the thermometer marked 8°, and a 

 friend who called said I would lose 

 them. But they seemed proof against 

 all kinds of treatment, for at this date 

 (April 3rd) they are in good condition, 

 except the loss of one queen. 



My cellar was reasonably dry up to 

 the time of taking the bees out. The 

 bees were in 8-frame Simplicity hives, 

 with flat sealed covers, and three inches 

 of sawdust over the same. The bottom- 

 boards were left on, and the entrances, 

 % inch by width of the hive, were left 

 wide open while in the cellar, but con- 

 tracted to about five inches when placed 

 upon the summer stands. 



Quincy, Ills. 



The Prophecy of the Honey- 

 Flow for Iowa in 1§92. 



Written for the Amerino.n Bee Journal 

 BY SAM WILSON. 



I have read Mr. Thomas Johnson's 

 article on page 533. Ho tries to prove 

 that my predictions resulted entirely 

 different to what I said they would. He 

 tries to prove that western Iowa had ah 

 extra good yield of honey — double the 

 amount of the eastern part. He first 

 reported that he had taken 40 pounds 

 of white clover honey per colony up to 

 July 18th, and that the bees were going 

 like rain to linden, but later he writes 

 that linden only produced honey for two 

 days ; that a hot wind from the south 

 dried it up, so from that the flow of 

 white honey stopped, and he had only 

 one or two days to get any more than 

 the 40 pounds per colony, so you can see 

 that was no good yield, and that was 

 two-thirds of his crop, that would make 

 50 or 60 pounds per colony. 



Mr. Frank Coverdale, of Welton, 

 Iowa, did that well, or better, when he 

 says his bees did not get to work more 

 than three days out of a week on ac- 

 count of wet weather, and I have letters 

 from bee-keepers that show that it did 

 rain as much or more than I said it did 

 all over the larger part of the middle 

 and eastern Iowa, and was fine weather 

 in the west, but now he tries to show 

 that the honey-flow was not as good in 

 Jaeksou county and southwest to Tipton, 

 wh(^ro I said it would be the best. He 

 says if his informer is correct, the flow 

 was not as good there as in the adjoin- 



