THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



15 



Commeuce in the spring with as many 

 combs as the bees can cover, when honey 

 unci pollen is not to be gathered, stimulate 

 by feeding rye-flour and sweetened water; 

 insert between each two combs of brood 

 an empty comb; in this you will need to 

 be guided by the prolitienessof the queen, 

 amount of bees and the weather, using a 

 division-board, until you have filled the 

 liive with 13 frames of brood. Have the 

 hives made with a front or entrance at 

 both ends; these you will regulate, keep- 

 ing them more or less open according to 

 weatlier and strength of colony. If you 

 use the Langstroth blocks that have slots, 

 put the slotted side up, as thej' liarbor 

 worms. 



Be careful not to put any drone comb in 

 tlie hive, for they will raise a lot of useless 

 consumers and incite them to swarm. 

 Did you ever know a Jiive to sicarvi tluit had 

 no drone-comh? 'Have, all worker-comh full 

 of brood, and the hive crowded with bees, 

 and they will only leave your sweetened 

 water for honey abroad. Put on 12 61b. 

 boxes, or better, use a section-box of frames 

 similar to the one used by Clark and 

 Harbison, of California. I make them as 

 follows: Upright side pieces-, \% inches 

 long, \% inches wide, and % inch thick; 

 top piece, 614^x1^^x3-10; this i)iece is 

 nailed on top of side pieces; bottom piece 

 is 3^ inch square and 5)^ inches long; 

 this is nailed between the side pieces, with 

 one corner downward; for nailing use 

 lath nails. Tliese frames are held to- 

 gether by a thin strip of wood laid in a 3^- 

 inch mortice in the center of the outsides 

 of side pieces, and tacked with cigar tacks 

 in the end sections. A 13franie Lang- 

 stroth hive will hold four of these section 

 boxes, of 11 frames each, with a storage 

 capacitj' of 112 lbs, instead of 72 tbs, in 

 boxes. We put 6x7 glass on each end of 

 the section box with glue, these frames 

 will hold about 2% l£s, and may be re- 

 tailed separatel3^ These frames give us 

 the advantage of large boxes (bees will 

 store more in a large box than in small 

 ones), more surplus room, and when par- 

 tially filled they may be emptied with the 

 slinger and the honey sold, instead of lay- 

 ing by from 1 to 4tt)Sper box till next 

 season. The frames will need a thin strip 

 of comb as a guide, which may be fas- 

 tened to tlie top piece with glue or bees- 

 wax and resin, of equal parts. 



About once a mouth it is well to open 

 hives that are run for box honey, and 

 empty any combs that are filled and re- 

 turn, putting them in the center and those 

 filled with brood to the outside. 



The season of 1875 has been very cool 

 with us, as will be seen by the following 

 notes kept : Mar. 30, fahrenlieit, 80 ° ; April 

 16 and 17,20- ; remaining cool till May 

 7, 84*^ ; then about ten days warm, then 

 cool till June 20, then cool nights, being 

 about 55 ° in morning, and up to 80 "^ at 



noon. Aug. 22, 5 A. M., 43 = : Aug. 23, 5 

 A. M., 40 o ; at 1 P. M. of same day, 76 => . 

 Aug. 25, 5 A. M., 70 c ; IP. M., 90 = ; Con- 

 tinuing warm till Sept. 10, 5 A. M., 55° ; 

 then rained every day till Sept. 18, when 

 we had a light frost. 



I set out, March 27, 54 hives out of 100 

 put in cellar. April 6th, gathered pollen; 

 May 7, first drone seen ; bass-wood, ai)ple, 

 wild and tame cherry, plumb; white 

 clover, failed to produce any honey; rasp- 

 berries, mustard, producedsome. July 8, 

 bees commenced and gathered consider- 

 able from ebow brush ; then, Aug. 10, they 

 commenced on buckwheat, of which we 

 had 25 acres within 13^2 'i^iles; they left 

 buckwheat, which yielded well, for the 

 Mississippi bottom fall flowers, gathering 

 considerable till frost, when a heavy rain 

 cut the flow of honey short. 



On account of cold weather, bees worked 

 but little in boxes, storing it below, crowd- 

 ing the brood to a small space. Ten hives 

 which I run for slung honey kept crowded 

 with bees and brood, and did not swarm, 

 but those storing in boxes had the swarm- 

 ing mania. From Aug. 25 till Sept 10, I 

 increased to 108 hives, but 3 being queen- 

 less I united them with others, leaving 105 

 to try the winter with. 



We took 1,000 lbs box honey and 2,000 

 lbs slung honey. D. D. Palmer. 



Eliza, Mercer Co., 111., Oct. 2, 1875. 



For the American Bee Journal. 

 What They Did, and How They Did It. 



Dear Journal : —The summer is ended, 

 the lioney harvest is past for the year 1875, 

 and it is now the duty of the bee-keeper to 

 repay the little busy bees for their last 

 treason's work, b}' preparing them care- 

 fully to exist during the long and cold 

 winter that we are destined to have in 

 tliis latitude. Ii is also the farther duty 

 of every bee-keeper to carefully look over 

 his last season's work and see what he 

 has accomplished — comparing his losses 

 with his sucoess, also carefully- reading 

 the American Bee Journal and then 

 trying to make next season more of a suc- 

 cess than the last. That, I consider the 

 way to make bee-keeping a success. I 

 commenced last spring with 18 stocks, 3 

 of which were queenless; the spring was 

 unfavorable, but I brought them all 

 through ; owing to storms I got only 

 about 100 lbs of linden honej^; we have 

 no white clover here, from the middle to 

 the last of July. My queens seemed de- 

 termined to lay in the upper stories; 

 about the middle of August thej' com- 

 menced to store honej^ and also to swarm ; 

 although I extracted once a week, still 

 they would swarm. 



I piled up some of my Quinby hives to 

 three stories ; it gave me a good chance to 

 experiment with hiving swarms back into 

 the parent stock, hiving swarms with 



