134 SOUTHEJ^N BEE CULTURE 



plants, cotton, which brings them to the great goldenrod and wild asters from 

 which we almost always secure a heavy crop about the first of November 

 which always granulates in a few days or weeks after extracting. My honey 

 now in fruit-jars looks almost like snow, and it takes a very strong spoon to 

 get it out ; but if one prefers it in the syrup state it can readily be heated to- 

 near the boiling-point, which renders it back to the syrup state, and, when 

 heated to very near the boiling-point (do not boil it), it rarely granulates 

 again. 



WINTERING. 



This is not a serious problem with us by any means compared with what 

 Northern bee-keepers have to do, as the bees hardly ever fail to go into 

 winter quarters with plenty of wild-aster honey in the brood-chamber ta 

 carry them through winter. In my experience of some fifteen years of bee- 

 keeping I have never had to feed for winter except the nuclei. We have 

 these in good snug single-wali hives with a water-proof cover. We leave 

 them on their summer stands — no chaff packing nor other protection; close 

 the entrance to J4 by 3 or 4 inches, and there you are till spring opens ; then 

 throw the entrance wide open; put on your super and you are ready for 

 the spring flow. It seems to me that, with everything so favorable, we 

 might make bee-keeping even more profitable than we do. 



Well did the poet write : 



Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, 

 And waste its sweetness on the desert air. 



For, go where we may, we can not but see the great lack of bees to 

 gather the sweetness that goes to waste on the desert air. If people only 

 knew the great value of honey as a food for men, and would only learn 

 how easily the little pets can be handled and managed, we should see hon- 

 dreds of bee-hives when we now see hardly any at all. 



Some of the bee-keepers in this part of the State are Mr. Philip Mar- 

 kert, near Augusta, Ga., across the river, who has, perhaps, something like 

 one hundred colonies in modern hives, run, I think, for comb honey. 



Mr. Pierce Mather, near Kirksey, Greenwood Co., who has some twenty 

 colonies in Dovetail hives run for comb honey. 



Mr. F. L. Timmerman, who has just begun modern bee-keeping in 

 D'anzenbaker hives. 



Mr. W. A. Cheatham, at Troy, S. C, has about a dozen hives for comb 

 honey. 



As for myself, I have some 80 colonies in ten-frame dovetail hives, run 

 almost exclusively for extracted honey. S. Chatham. 



BEE-KEEPING IN SOUTH CAROLINA. 



Catawba, S. C 

 The first recollection I have about bees is when I was five or six years 

 old, in 1865 or 1866. Father had three or four old box hives in the back yard. 



