1894. 



THE . I M HI! IVAN BEE- KEEPER. 



119 



have arrived in good condition and 

 are the best that I have ever had. I 

 put up 1,000 sections and did not 

 break but one. I have taken off some 

 honey ; about 180 lbs. I have 2-1 

 hives. The bees are doing nicely. 

 Wishing you good success, I remain, 

 Yours truly, 

 John E. Haight. 

 Clyde, N. Y., July 6, 1894. 



Editor American Bee-Keeper, 

 Dear Sir : — I am glad to notice that 

 you exposed in the July number a 

 couple of queen frauds. We have 

 had a little unpleasantness ourselves 

 with those two parties and can fully 

 corroborate your statements. Would 

 it not be a good rule not to allow any 

 person unknown to you to have space 

 in your journal without satisfactory 

 references ? Of all things I hate it is 

 to be gulled by such frauds, and then 

 the disappointment and inconvenience 

 it puts one to is worse than the loss in 

 cash. 



Our surplus season of clover and 

 basswood, although we have had but 

 little of the latter, closed about the 

 15th of July. My bees have not 

 gathered half as much as they did 

 last season, and as it came in slowly it 

 is not nearly as nice and white, nor 

 the sections so chock full. We have 

 now removed the sections from the 

 hive and are sorting them, and some 

 of the dark colored, uneven combs, or 

 combs with bee bread in them we are 

 feeding back to the weaker colonies, 

 and the way we do it is to place from 

 two to four of the combs in a wide 

 frame and hang them in the hive out- 

 side of the division board. This keeps 

 them breeding and building up if you 

 add an empty comb to the brood nest 



from time to time, and these colonies 

 which are weak now will be full of bees 

 by the time the fall How cuines on, and 

 we find they make the very best ones 

 for wintering and profit next year. 



We now think we made a big mis- 

 take last fall. (It was our first and 

 probably will not be our last) and we 

 judge we have suffered from it this 

 season some, therefore we propose to 

 steer clearer this season. What was 

 it? I think I hear the reader say. 

 We extracted our brood nest pretty 

 closely about this time and then came 

 on a hot dry time from the middle of 

 July to the first of September, and 

 consequently no honey was gathered 

 and scarcely any brood reared, and 

 we had to scrape together all our 

 available surplus and provide winter 

 rations for our bees, and even then 

 some of them did not pull through 

 while others that did survive did so 

 at the expense of brood rearing. Then 

 came on three weeks of cold rainy 

 weather in May when we had to feed 

 so that our surplus boom struck us 

 with no honey in our hives, and the 

 previous shortage had retarded brood 

 rearing so that our stocks had not as 

 many bees as they should have had or 

 w r ould have had had they hail plenty 

 of honey on hand during the spring. 

 Now this may be all theory with us, 

 but we now propose to wait until the 

 latter part of August or first of Sep- 

 tember before we do auy extracting 

 from our brood combs in the main 

 body of the hive, and then we propose 

 to leave plenty of honey in the hive 

 this fall so as not to have any scarcity 

 at any time during the spring. 



We notice that some are troubled 

 with bees over swarming. Now for 



