THE BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW 



and furnishes a seed-bed for the wander- 

 ing seed. It grows most profusely among 

 the stumps, and burned forest districts of 

 Wisconsin, Northern Michigan, and Can- 

 ada. 



Two or three years ago, in the month 

 of June, while on my way to visit my 

 father and brother in an adjoining county 

 (Tuscola) I noticed a few stalks of what I 

 took to be this plant growing by the 

 roadside. I had never seen any of it be- 

 fore, but had read descriptions of it. In 

 August my brother wrote me that the 

 highways and byways, hedges and 

 swamps, old clearings and "slashings" 

 were fairly purple with the bloom of the 

 willow herb, and the hives were filling 

 up with honey to beat all. I packed up 

 my camera and took another trip express- 

 ly to get a characteristic view of this 

 plant on its native heath. The result is 

 the frontispiece for this month, which 

 shows the willow herb right in its glory. 

 The splashes of white are seed-pods that 

 have burst and are scattering their con- 

 tents to the four winds. 



As a rule, willow herb yields honey 

 every year. In my knowledge of the mat- 

 ter it has failed once in a dozen years. 

 For two years in succession our Michigan 

 bee-keepers have met at Mt. Pleasant, 

 which is the region of country where the 

 willow herb flourishes at its best; and it 

 really makes us outsiders feel just a bit 

 envious to hear those folks talk about 

 their loo and 125 pounds of surplus, per 

 colony, each year. There are thousands 

 and thousands and thousands of acres of 

 this plant in Northern Michigan that 

 actually waste their sweetness on the 

 desert air. If I were going into the busi- 

 ness of honey production as a specialty, 

 I should go to Northern Michigan where 

 I could have the benefit of wild raspberries, 

 clover, basswood and willow herb. There 

 are locations in that part of the State that 

 are veritable bee-keepers' paradises; and 

 they can be found l)y patient search. 



FuNT, Mich. June 28, 1898. 



HOW TO PREVENT SWARMING; 



And at the Same Time get the largest Yield 

 of Honey. 



J. E. CRAXK. 



WTUhh, now! 

 ^A That head- 

 g> W ing looks like a 



« a— -^.A good one. The 



only difficult)', 

 so far as I am 

 concerned, is 

 that I do not 

 know just how 

 to do it; i. e. with 

 avery colony. To 

 be sure, I can re- 

 move the queen from every colony that I 

 find preparing to swarm, remove queen 

 cells, etc., to the end, but I may not in 

 this way get the largest yield of honey; 

 besides, how about such colonies as 

 swarm without so much as an egg in a 

 queen cell, and evidently without think- 

 ing about it more than fifteen minutes. 

 Again, we may shake a colony from its 

 combs and give it an empty hive; but 

 this does not always work as I have had 

 them swarm under exactly these condi- 

 tions; besides, our vision of finished sur- 

 plus grows less very rapidly with this 

 treatment. Another way is to produce 

 a non-swarming strain, or breed, that we 

 can depend upon, that will keep right on 

 storing honey to the close of the season 

 without a thought of swarming; but, as 

 it might take from fifty to one hundred 

 years, or perhaps much longer, to pro- 

 duce such such a breed, it does not 

 seem altogether practical; especially to 

 us whose locks are turning grey. But 

 this does not prevent us from doing 

 what we can to develop such a strain of 

 bees. If but partially developed, it 

 would help in a degree. That some 

 method is necessary is evident from the 

 short time in which bees can gather sur- 

 plus honey. In this section of country 



