April 10, 1902 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



229 



bloom oil tlio succeeding plant, but siiflicloiit to inako line for- 

 age for my licea. It blossomed luxuriantly after that. In 

 November it was line. 



Mr. Italdrldge — In Mississippi I have seen as lii;rli as 75 

 acres on one farm where they Krew It for a hay crop. They 

 out it before it blossomed, when it was about three feet \)iith. 

 Thoy thi'ii (leiiend upon its coming up to produce seed, and 

 secure all tliat firows. from 2t)0 to uOU bushels of seed, and 

 from the second crop they f;et their honey. 



Dr. Miller — I would liUe to answer Mr. Dadant as to the 

 character of the long but coarse stems. I liad a good deal cut 

 after it was in blossom, and, as he supposes, there are, of 

 course, stems that ari' worthless, but, after all, there will be 

 euouiih to maUe it tolerably valualile as a hay cro]) ; but It 

 will bo very much mori' valuable as a hay crop if it is cut be- 

 fore it blossoms at all ; and thcui the loss is nothing, biscause 

 it will blossom so much later, and then it is eaten, and if I 

 would have my way about it — and there is a good deal grcjw- 

 ing along the roads where I live — I would have the road com- 

 missioners cut it off close down before it first comes into blos- 

 som. It would be worth more to me than if they let it all 

 grow. 



Mr. Sylvester — That's the experience we have. They cut 

 It down all through the season, and the result is blossoming 

 later ; it comes on after the others stop. 



Mr. Childs — We have the same experience in our town. 

 The citizens got up in arms about the sweet clover. It grew so 

 high they couldn't get through the street. Father said he 

 wished they would cut down more as it helped his honey crop 

 nicely. I believe it would be a good thing if they would 

 agitate that and have it cut down early in the spring. 



Dr. Miller — In that same connection comes something tliat 

 I don't know perhaps is so generally known. Two places 

 within two or three miles where cattle are upon it upon the 

 road almost constantly, and it is eaten down throughout the 

 whole season, I don't think it grows in any case more than six 

 inches high, and there is really a carpet of white that is beauti- 

 ful on the side of the road, and in any village or town it would 

 be an ornament instead of a detriment or disagreeable. If cut 

 early enough in the season, and constantly cut, one pasture 

 done in that way will be a thing of beauty instead of being 

 something distasteful. 



Mr. Hogge — I observed in watching where the cattle ran 

 on it and ate it down in June, when it began to blossom in May 

 and June it is higher on the sides where cattle are not tie!, 

 and no great amount of cattle kept it eaten down, and it 

 blossomed constantly until frost. But I notice another thing, 

 that while some say cattle won't eat it, there is good grass 

 growing around there (I was interested in the yellow clover 

 and was watching the process) — they seem to leave the grass 

 and eat the clover, but it didn't stop the blooming. As Dr. 

 Miller remarked, they kept it close down but it constantly 

 bloomed. When the yellow clover that had not been eaten at 

 all in the month of June closed its blossoming, the seed would 

 mature and the stalk die ; but that eaten by the cattle was 

 brought into such a condition that it constantly shot out lower 

 limbs and kept blooming until frost. 



Mr. Green — Referring to the question of having it cut by 

 the city officials — they sometimes will be a little slow. The 

 ward superintendent of my ward was ; he cut it down about 

 September 20, and there wasn't another blossom. 



Mr. Fairbank — My experience with sweet clover in Iowa 



— and sweet clover is our principal flow — the sweet clover as a 

 forage plant, take it when the white clover and fall flow help 

 the bees out — that in the roadsides we have no trouble 

 about cattle and sheep keeping it down in the pasture, but 

 where they can't get at it it grows very rank. A good many 

 of the road-bosses are prejudiced against it. Where it is kept 

 down, and eaten down, it blossoms till the frost kills it. 



(Concluded next weeli.) 



Why Not Help a Little— both your neighbor bee-keep- 

 ers and the old American Bee Journal — by sending to us the 

 names and addresses of such as you may know do not now 

 get this journal? We will be glad to send them sample 

 copies, so that they may become acquainted with the paper, 

 and subscribe for it, thus putting themselves in the line of 

 success with bees. Perhaps you can get them to subscribe, 

 send in their dollars, and secure for your trouble some of 

 the premiums we are constantly offering as rewards for 



such effort. 



'*-•-*• 



The Premiums offered this week are well worth working 

 for. Look at them. 



Contributed Articles. | 



Reading Bee-Keepers' Text-Books and Papers. 



BV C. I'. DADANT. 



I HAVE always been a poor hand at paying compliments 

 to any one, but I must compliment the Editor on his ad- 

 vice to beginners on page H.I, where he recommends get- 

 ting a text-book and let the beepaper go— if the reader can- 

 not afford both. This unsellish advice is certainly sound. 

 Too many people go into a business without learning how to 

 manage it. and thereby make a failure. A Chicago party 

 some two years ago bought a large farm in our vicinity and 

 settled upon it, with the intention, as he said to me, to " play 

 at farming " a while. This playing has proven an expen- 

 sive venture. Two bad seasons in succession, joined to ab- 

 solute lack of knowledge of the management of a large 

 farm, have so thoroughly disgusted him with the "play " 

 that he is seeking a purchaser at a much less price than the 

 original cost, and will probably have to make a sacrifice. 



It would be about the same with a man who would start 

 in bee-culture without some knowledge of the habits of the 

 bee. He must know how to distinguish workers from the 

 queens and from the drones, how to rear queens, how to as- 

 certain ho\y much feed the colony must have to winter or to 

 reach the crop if winter is over. If feeding is necessary, he 

 must know how to do it properly, how to prevent robbing, 

 and stop it if it begins. He must be informed that the ap- 

 pearance of the first blossoms is not indicative of a constant 

 supply of honey for his bees. 



In this connection, I will cite the instance of a man who 

 had purchased half a dozen colonies of bees in spring, and 

 had brought them home during fruit-bloom. He had seen 

 our success with bees and had concluded that all he had to 

 do was to buy a few " for a start," and that they would go 

 on increasing without his having to attend to them, in any 

 other way than taking away their surplus honey. Asa mat- 

 ter of course he expected to ask us for a little advice once in 

 a while. 



He brought his bees home, as I said, while the apple- 

 trees were in bloom, and came to me to tell me how strong 

 the colonies were, and wanted to know whether he would 

 not best put on the supers. I went over to his yard and we 

 examined the colonies together. The weather was rainy and 

 rather chilly, and they were getting nothing out of the 

 fruit-bloom, and were rather short of stores. So I told him 

 that he would best keep the supers off for a while yet. as the 

 bees would probably need feeding before clover bloomed. 

 This thoroughly disgusted him with my advice. "What I 

 Feed them when there are blossoms all around ? " It prob- 

 ably looked very suspicious to him, for he asked no more 

 questions and did not feed, the result being that he lost a 

 portion of them and the remainder reached the clover crop 

 in poor condition. But there is no end of things needed to 

 be known, in bee-culture, that cannot be learned unless it be 

 through a protracted experience, or through a book. 



But the book is not alone needed ; and here. Mr. Editor, 

 I think you might have said something a little more pointed, 

 as to the necessity and usefulness of a good bee-paper. The 

 text-books give the digested knowledge acquired by the 

 leading bee-keepers and scientists of the world ; they give 

 it in a form that is at once exhaustive and elementary, be- 

 cause thev not only explain details, but give reasons for all 

 advice. But a text-book cannot follow progress, except 

 through repeated revisions, and these revisions are only 

 made from time to time, while the weekly or monthly publi- 

 cation keeps us posted on the present improvements. These 

 improvements are of all kinds, both in the domain of scien- 

 tific discoveries and mechanical appliances. Without the 

 magazine, that reports these improvements, we are bound 

 to get belated in the race for progress, and it is not only 

 local improvement that we want but a general information 

 of what is going on the world over. Those who do not read 

 find themselves distanced within a few years. 



I never was so much struck with the idea of steady prog- 

 ress as when Father Langstroth visited us after having 

 retired from the bee-business for some 15 years. It seemed 

 to me as if we had been following his teachings almost to 

 the letter, and that we could hardly show him anything in 

 the bee-line that he had not already seen ; yet, after witness- 



