216 



Mar, 14, 1907 



American Hee JomnAJj 



and the book '■ Forty Years Among the Bees " 

 is very full in this respect. 



3. In a cool cellar the worms will not 

 trouble them much till quite warm weather, 

 perhaps not till June. Theu if you can put 

 them in the care of the bees that will be best. 

 A story or two of combs may be placed under 

 any strong colony, and the bees being obliged 

 to pass through them in going in and out the 

 hive, will keep them clear of worms. Tou 

 may also destroy the worms by submitting 

 them to the fumes of sulphur or bisulphide of 

 carbon. If large worms are found in any of 

 the combs, squirt a little gasoline on them 

 out of an oil-can. 



jricnces 



Working on the Maples 



Bees are working on maple, and peach-trees 

 will be Id bloom in a week, or less time if the 

 weather continues as it is at present. 



R. E. Campbell. 



Springdale, Ark., March 4. 



The Honey-Flow is On 



Our white honey-flow from wahea is near at 

 hand— in fact, already on at some of my out- 

 apiaries. It promises to be good. The weather 

 is warm and dry. Grant Anderson. 



Sabinal, Tex., March 5. 



Expects Loss fFom Honey-Dew 



I fear that " The Hum of the Bees in the 

 Apple-Tree Bloom " will not be a very noisy 

 hum, on account of the honey-dew. There 

 was one of the best (or, should I say, worst?) 

 flows last summer I ever saw. My 75 colo- 

 nies stored about 84 of a ton, M being in the 

 brood-chambers and 500 pounds in the sec- 

 tions. This was of good body and fine flavor, 

 many preferring it to the best clover honey; 

 but, alas, for the bees 1 They can not subsist 

 on this sort of honey and stand the long win- 

 ter confinement in this cold north country, 

 where the mercury has dropped the present 

 winter to 54 degrees below zero. Bees are in 

 the cellars, of course, and have been for over 

 3 months, and will have to stay 6 weeks 

 longer, at least — those that live. I don't ex- 

 pect to take out over 15 percent in good con- 

 dition. O. B. Griffin. 



Aristook Co., Maine, March 2. 



"Wild" Honey— Hard Winter for 

 Bees 



I have read the letter by Harry Lathrop, 

 on page 105. I would call attention to what 

 seems to me a mistaken idea in regard to the 

 flavor of wild honey (so-called). If anyone 

 can tell where the difference in flavor comes 

 in, I should be pleased to have him do so. 

 Having kept bees over 50 years, and hunted 

 wild bees (so-called) nearly as long, I never 

 yet could detect any difference in the flavor 

 of honey from hive or tree; and why should 

 there be any* The bees in the tree that we 

 call " wild," perhaps went from our own api- 

 ary, and where can they gather any different 

 honey from those in our own hives? Are not 

 all the flowers visited by the bees from hive or 

 tree alike? Of course, honey from a tree is 

 not in as nice shape as what we get from sec- 

 tions, yet some of the white comb can not be 

 excelled by that in the hive, either in looks or 

 flavor. 



Our bees here in southern New Hampshire 

 are having a hard winter, and I fear will not 

 go through till spring in good condition, as 

 they have not had a cleansing flight since 

 some time in November. And their stores 

 were not the best, they having gathered quite 

 a lot of honey-dew, and my bees have not, on 



on average, wintered well on that kind of 

 sweet. (I will not call it honey.) Our bees 

 are always wintered on the summer stands, in 

 double hives, with a good packing over the 

 honey-board. Last winter every colony went 

 through the winter in flneshape, and up to the 

 present time (Feb. 9) all are alive, but I judge 

 are in bad shape, as they try to fly when it is 

 too cold for them to do so safely. One col- 

 ony, yesterday, with the thermometer at 25 de- 

 grees in the shade, and hives standing in the 

 sun, were flying, but, of course, many of 

 them never returned to the hive. A little 

 shade made by standing a board in front of 

 the hives soon quieted them. When it is 

 calm, and the sun shining brightly, and it is 

 42 to 44 degrees in the shade, bees will fly and 

 return to the hive all right. 

 New Ipswich, N. H. Geo. S. Wheeler. 



A Few Copreetions 



On page 137, where it says, " by the looks 

 of the queen's drones," I should have said 

 "workers." On page 13S it says, " in one 

 week all the bees were dead;" it should be 

 "queens," not "workers." The half-blood 

 queen's abdomen was filled with water. Those 

 2 queens I received late in the fall of 1905, so 

 they could not be tested as to their purity 

 until the spring of 1906. Subscriber. 



New York. 



Some of the Ups and Downs of a 

 Bee-Keeper 



The spring of 1885 a widow living here gave 

 me her apiary of 3 colonies of black bees in 

 box-hives, which I moved to my home about 

 the last week in March. Then I went to a 

 friend who kept bees in frame-bives and bor- 

 rowed a hive and a frame so I could make 

 some like them. Those hives were 14 inches 

 by 16 and 18 inches, outside measure, and 

 about 12 inches deep. The bees in the uew 

 hives stored very little honey, but would 

 swarm and swarm and swarm. The sections 

 were put on the frames crosswise, and the 

 open sides of the sections fenced in with thin 

 boards; the cover of the hive being made 

 deep enough to accommodate the sections. 



Twenty years ago either I or the bees, or 

 both of us, had an experience that has not 

 been repeated since. A swarm came out and 

 was hived in one of those 14xl8-inch hives. 

 Before the first swarm was in the hive another 

 swarm came out and went with the first, and 

 then another, and still another. There were 

 4 swarms in and on that hive; the hive was 

 completely covered with bees, so it was left 

 where the first swarm was hived all night. 

 The next morning I was out early to see what 

 arrangements they had uiade, and found them 

 in the same shape as they were the night be- 

 fore. About 9 o'clock a swarm peeled off and 

 went to the woods; in less than 20 minutes 

 another came off and went in an opposite 

 direction; a few minutes later the third 

 swarm left and went south, leaving a nice 

 swarm in the hive. 



I got a catalog from a bee-supply factory in 

 Wisconsin, and ordered the Improved Sim- 

 plicity 10-frame hives. The supers were ar- 

 ranged so that the section slats would rest on 

 the sections in the super below. No matter 

 how many supers were on the hive, there was 

 only one bee-space, and that was between the 

 first super and the top-bars of the brood- 

 frames. The bees would glue the supers tight 

 together, so if the top super were removed 

 the sections in the super next below would all 

 follow. If the inventor had lived in this cor- 

 ner of the bee-pasture, and put his hive into 

 practical use, he would never have made the 

 second hive. Some of those hives are in use 

 yet, but they have been remodeled so that 

 there is a bee-space between each super. The 

 next hive was the " Wisconsin," which is all 

 right except the Hoffman self-spacing frames, 

 which are a nuisance in thislocality, and they 

 are not spaced far enough apart. Next the 

 " St. Joe " hive with metal spacers top and 

 bottom. In my judgment the " St. Joe" hive 

 is the best hive of the three. 



The honey season of 1906 was excellent in 

 this locality. The bees have the range of the 



Illinois River bottoms, where wild cucumbers, 

 wild asters, and Spanish-needles were abun- 

 dant, and some buck-brush. I had 22 colo- 

 nies last spring to start with, and increased 

 to 32. The forepart of the season but little 

 surplus was stored — just enough to keep 

 breeding going on nicely. The hives were 

 running over with bees. On Aug. 9 a marked 

 improvement in bee-circles was noted some- 

 what out of the usual order, as my bees had 

 always taken a vacation in August, but this 

 year business was the order of the day. My 

 22 colonies, spring count, filled 2500 sections — 

 an average of over 113 per colony. One col- 

 ony on 10 frames, in what is known as the 

 "Shirck " hive, filled 1684i4x4}4Xl% sections 

 full from top to bottom without separators. 

 One other colony in an 8-frame Langstroth 

 hive filled 165 plain and bee-way sections, and 

 5 colonies in 10-frame Langstroth hives filled 

 140 plain and bee-way sections each. I have 

 kept bees over 20 years, but never till last 

 year did a colony in an 8-frame hive fill mora 

 than 72 sections. Geo. B. Slack. 



Peoria Co., 111., Feb. 26. 



Late Report— Tall Bee-Men, Ete. 



It is rather late to make a report for 1906. 

 Perhaps one reason for my tardiness is because 

 I had nothing to boast of in the way of 

 a honey-yield, the season here being a rather 

 poor one. Forty pounds of salable section 

 honey to the colony, spring count, is about 

 the size of the crop, and an increase from 3b 

 to 55 colonies, which seem to be wintering 

 well in the cellar. 



The Editor, on page 66, seems a little in- 

 clined to boast of the stature of Mr. Louis H. 

 Scholl. I have a neighbor bee-keeper, Isaac 

 Wayne, who goes him 2 better, as he is 6 feet 

 and 4 inches in his stockings. When it comes 

 to reaching up a tree for a swarm of bees, he 

 gets above me by nearly a (Foote) foot. 



Last fall, when taking off the last of my 

 supers after the honey-flow had ceased, I 

 made a little discovery of the " cuteness " of 

 the bees that was new to me, but maybe not 

 to the experts. Three years ago I made a 

 cone about 9 inches long out of wire-screen, 

 and attached it to a bee-escape board so that 

 bees inside could get out, while those outside 

 could not get in. My practise was to place a 

 regular bee-escape on an empty hive, on top 

 of that place 4 or 5 supers, and on top of 

 these put the board with the cone. It was a 

 real pleasure to see the bees chase each other 

 out, one at a time, and it would be only 2 or 3 

 hours before the supers would be clear of 

 bees. But one fine day last fall I noticed 

 quite a collection of bees on the outside of 

 the cone near the top, so I thought best to 

 look into the matter and find out, if possible, 

 what they were up to. And this is what I 

 saw: 



A bee on the inside would come to the top. 

 and to all appearances deliver her load of 

 honey to an outsider between the wires, when 

 the latter would fiy away to the hive and the 

 former would back down into the supers 

 after another load of honey. 



Another thing I saw : When 2 bees, one 

 inside and one outside meet, that didn't be- 

 long to the same colony, they would imme- 

 diately back away and hunt for their mates. 



Of course, I can not say posilioehj that the 

 above conclusions are correct, but appear- 

 ances go strangely to prove that they are. 

 While the honey carried out of the supers in 

 this manner was probably inconsiderable, it, 

 proved to me that while "man proposed '' the 

 bees were cute enough to plan ways and 

 means to " dispose." A. F. Foote. 



Mitchell Co., Iowa. 



Bees and Grapes, Ete. 



My 33 colonies so far are in fine condition. 

 We have had a very mild winter here. It was 

 so warm and sunshiny last week that the bees 

 finished one sack of flour as artificial pollen. 

 I mix 3^,1 bran to keep the flour loose so that 

 the bees can work it better. My bees are in 

 Heddon and Langstroth hives. 



For beginners with bees, I would say to go 



