THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



153 



Friend Palmer, you can't prove anything! 

 Mr. H. has made (9) in one season (1873) 

 $800.00 from 16 colonies of bees, or $50.00 

 per colony, by his own report, and still 

 complains that bee culture will not pay. 



One more word. Mr. H. says that ex- 

 tracted honey is inferior to cane syrup. 

 We don't know how his honey is, but we 

 emphatically affirm that we have never 

 seen pure extracted honey that we did not 

 prefer to any syrup, and we know that 

 99-100 of our readers will agree with us 

 in this. We say that granulated honey is 

 the only extracted honey which is mer- 

 chantable wherever buyers are acquainted 

 with honey. 



We say that honey does not need to be 

 all capped over to be extracted. We usu- 

 ally take it when about one-half capped 

 over and we never had honey to turn sour, 

 although we have now on hand about fifty 

 lbs. from 1873, which we kept for an ex- 

 periment, and that honey is as good as 

 ever. Of course it is granulated. 



Mr. Heddon has answered our argu- 

 ments on the usefulness of the extractor, 

 and on the saving for the bees whenever 

 it is used, only by telling us that he did 

 not say that thin watery stores were the 

 cause of the mortality of bees in 1869. 

 True, he only said that he could see no 

 other cause but that. In this he is some- 

 what of our opinion. That may not have 

 been the only cause, but it was one of the 

 main causes. 



Be it understood that we entertain no 

 hard feeling against Mr. H., but that we 

 only wish to prove that extracted honey 

 pays, and sells when pure and granulated, 

 and that bee-culture does pay, while Mr. 

 H. tries to prove the negative on these 

 questions. C. P. Dadant. 



For the American Bee Journal. 

 Wintering and Springing. 



Those of us who winter our bees on 

 their summer stands, find the chief diffi- 

 culty with which we have to contend is to 

 winter over a sufficient number of bees in 

 each stock, so that they may be strong 

 enough to successfully contend with our 

 damp spring. 



The main point, we conceive, is not 

 whether we can save each colony, so that 

 we are not reduced in the number of 

 stocks we had in the previous season, but 

 that each individual stand shall be healthy 

 and populous that it may be able early to 

 take advantage of pasturage fitted for their 

 use ; who that has had any experience in 

 the matter, does not know the vexation 

 and labor connected with bringing up a 

 weak colony in the spring or summer, to a 

 proper condition to carry it through the 

 following winter ? 



Now that we have succeeded for many 



(9) Gleanings, Vol., II., p. 46. 



winters past to our full satisfaction in 

 wintering our bees, it may be proper here 

 to give a brief description of the plan 

 adopted. For some ten years we have 

 practiced upon the principle of upward 

 ventilation, (in every instance we have 

 failed where w'e discarded this principle); 

 our chief object has been after the removal 

 of the honey boards (we use the Langstroth 

 hive) to ascertain what was the proper 

 material to place over top of the frames; 

 after testing various substances, such as 

 leaves, bran, corn cobs, cut straw, etc., 

 (w'e never tried straw mats) we have finally 

 adopted the following system : We first 

 remove two combs from each hive; we 

 then cut winter passages in every comb 

 which is not already cut, then take a 

 woolen quilt, blanket, or similar covering, 

 and place over top and down the sides of 

 the combs ; on top of this we place a frame 

 four inches deep, upon which is tacked a 

 woolen cloth, making a chaff-box which 

 we fill with wheat chaff, and place this box 

 directly on top of the quilt, then pack 

 sides (of double hives) and cap with wheat 

 chaff, and the hive is ready for the winter. 

 I forgot to state that I open and close the 

 entrance blocks as the weather may 

 change from cold to warm and vice versa. 

 I prefer wheat chaff to anything I have 

 ever used unless it may be a number of 

 plies of coarse paper; the wheat chaff is 

 also better than oats or other chaffs which 

 lie too close and retain too much moisture, 

 which should pass off, and therefore keep 

 the bees both warm and dry. 



The more serious matter of springing, 

 remains yet to be looked after (and in our 

 location, 42 ^ , is after all the great ob- 

 stacle to successful bee-keeping.) Last 

 fall was no exception to many previous 

 ones, in the fact that we had several stocks 

 which proved obstinate and refused to 

 breed late in the season ; it made no dif- 

 ference how lavishly we fed them, either 

 on honey, sugar syrup, or candy, we 

 could not induce breeding, a result which 

 we labored industriously to promote, as 

 we are of those who believe that in order 

 to successful out-door wintering, we must 

 have young bees. And then again, we com- 

 mitted the too common error among 

 apiarists, that in order to keep our full 

 complement of stocks through the winter, 

 we kept some that were too scarce of bees 

 to keep a proper degree of warmth in the 

 hive; and another error, we were very 

 anxious to save two valuable queens, 

 which we saw no other way of doing. We 

 think the lesson served us dearly for we 

 lost both. As is always the case, we can 

 now see the remedy after it is too late to 

 meet it. Where there are a number of 

 stocks in the apiary we will always find 

 some that have more brood and bees than 

 we care to put up in a single stock for the 

 winter. Now, how easy it would have 

 been to have exchanged combs of brood 



