70 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



queen, which is not the case with comb 

 containing honey. It requires time for 

 the bees to remove honey from the comb ; 

 time to insert the comb, and is an inter- 

 ruption to the operations of the queen. 

 No one favored wholesale feeding, and 

 few favored feeding at all for the purpose 

 of stimulating brood raising. 



Mr. Elwood would not feed liquid 

 sweets to induce breeding, when the bees 

 have sufficient stores in the hive. 



If bees are short of honey in the spring, 

 Mr. Doolittle would advise feeding the 

 honey all at once, instead of a little 

 daily. 



Capt. Hetherington would feed rye meal 

 in the spring, before pollen appears, for 

 the purpose of inducing breeding. Use 

 rye meal mixed with saw-dust to prevent 

 their smothering in it. Such feed should 

 not be placed far away, as it is desirable 

 to keep the bees near the hive until all 

 fear of cold weather is passed. 



Mr. Betsinger thought that to feed any- 

 thing before the 1st to 10th of May is a 

 disadvantage, as it induces bees to stray 

 away and perish. He is never troubled 

 for want of pollen. He would like to ex- 

 change it for empty comb. In some lo- 

 calities pollen does not seem to be so 

 plenty. Mr. Betsinger would give $10.00 

 for some plan to successfully extract pol- 

 len. He loses wax in getting rid of it. 



Mr. Doolittle found that the excess of 

 pollen comes from hard maple and wild 

 grape blossoms. As white clover is not 

 plenty in his locality, the bees get honey 

 very slowly from it, so that they strain 

 the comb by running over it. Where 

 clover is plenty, no such trouble is expe- 

 rienced. He considers the bass-wood the 

 great honey producer. It remains in 

 blossom from three to twenty-one days. 

 It is the honey tree — a cluster of blossoms 

 sometimes contains one or two drops ot 

 visible honey. 



Capt. Hetherington and Mr. Scofield 

 expressed the opinion that cool nights 

 are unfavorable for the development of 

 honey in blossoms. Hence last season 

 was a bad one. They notice that they 

 get a good yield of clover honey ■vyhen 

 the clover seeds well, and of buckwheat 

 honey when farmers have a good crop. 



Mr. Betsinger wanted to know how far 

 bees will go to gather honey. It is proved 

 positively that they go two miles. In 

 case of scarcity, Capt. Hetherington said 

 they miiiht go farther. He counts on 

 their working over an area of a mile and 

 a half radius, and locates his apiaries ac- 

 cordingly. Mr. Doolittle is sure they go 

 of choice four or Ave miles, and gave 

 facts that seemed to sustain the idea. Mr. 

 Scofield was of opinion that his bees 

 travel much farther west than in any other 

 direction — probably because they catch 

 the odors from that direction best. 



Mr. Betsinger has noticed the field of 

 operations of his bees, and is satisfied 

 that they go at least seven miles away 

 from home, and travel as fast as a mile 

 in two minutes. Mr. Doolittle confirmed 

 this statement. His Italian bees have 

 been seen and lined from three miles 

 beyond Skaneateles lake, which is two 

 miles wide, and two miles southwest of 

 his residence, a distance of seven miles. 



Mr. Doolittle and Mr. Betsinger allow 

 the bees to raise all the brood they can, 

 claiming that while the hive is filled with 

 brood, the bees will fill the boxes, and the 

 more brood hatches, the more workers 

 there are, and the more boxes will be 

 filled. As fall approaches, brood de- 

 creases, and the comb is filled with honey 

 for the winter use of the bees. 



Thus these gentlemen get all the early 

 and best honey in their boxes, and the 

 bees feed on the last made and dark 

 honey. By this practice, these api- 

 culturists have been eminently successful. 

 They use small frames. See the table. 



Mr. Doolittle thought that more bees 

 perish from going out in the spring and 

 gorging themselves with cold water, thus 

 chilling themselves, than from any sudden 

 falling-off of the temperature of the at- 

 mosphere. They require water for the 

 purpose of brood rearing; and it should 

 be supplied to them, with the chill off, 

 near the hive. 



Capt. Hetherington was of the opinion 

 that the appliances and improved system 

 of management now in practice among 

 advanced apiarists, secure three times as 

 large a yield of honey as could be ob- 

 tained six years ago, by the system then 

 in general operation. He thought that 

 from a judicious system of non-swarming, 

 the best results are obtained, as the whole 

 force of the colony is then engaged in the 

 production of surplus honej^. But in case 

 the swarming fever gets possession of a 

 stock, it must be broken up at once. This 

 is best done by humoring them. In 

 general management, to allow a moderate 

 increase is much better than to undertake 

 to suppress the swarming fever altogether. 



At request of members of the meeting, 

 Mr. C. K. Isham, of Peoria, N. Y., exhib- 

 ited his new glass honey box, which was 

 well received by the most experienced, 

 and universally admired. It is thought 

 this box will revolutionize the style of 

 surplus honey packages. 



SECOND DAY. 



The very large attendance, and keen 

 interest manifested, was evidence of the 

 progressive tendency of the promoters 

 of this growing industry. Since the or- 

 ganization of tlie several associations, ex- 

 periment and discovery have increased 

 the productive power nearly one-half. 

 There yet remain many questions to an- 

 swer, however; regarding some radical 



