April 18, 1907 



331 



American Hee Journa 



mendable, especially as they do not 

 cause the escape of heat from the hive, 

 since it is not necessary to open the 

 top in order to give the bees an addi- 

 tional supply. 



Of course, the best feeders are made 

 in narrow sections and very shallow, 

 so that the bees may not drown in the 

 feed. These feeders, as well as others 

 which will be mentioned farther on, 

 must be made so that they will not ab- 



ALEXANDER FEEDER. 



sorb or soak the food. They are com- 

 monly made of pine, which is coated 

 with paraffin. In some parts of Europe 

 propolis is gathered, melted and used 

 for this express purpose. A bee-keeper 

 who desires to make his own feeders, 

 and wishes to coat them with some 

 preparation, may be able to make them 

 honey-proof by using a preparation of 

 beeswax and tallow — about half and 

 half — which is poured in the feeder 

 while hot, and poured out again, leav- 

 ing a slight coat on the wood. 



Pure beeswax might be used, but 

 aside from the fact that pure beeswax is 

 more expensive, it is noticeable that it 

 does not soak into the pores of the wood 

 as readily as a preparation containing 

 tallow or even lard. This preparation, 

 melting at a lower temperature than 

 pure beeswax, is also less apt to crack 

 or peel off when the weather is cold. It 

 may be used for a number of require- 

 ments. Mixed with a small quantity 

 of wood ashes and rosin it will make a 

 liquid cement which is used to stop 

 large cracks in wood, whether feeders 

 or otherimplements ; even such things 

 as water-barrels that are damaged 

 may be made whole by using it. But 

 in any case, remember that the wood 

 must be dry before any such prepara- 

 tion is applied, for the least amount of 

 moisture would prevent the soaking of 

 the wax in the pores of the wood. 

 Water is used to prevent was from 

 sticking to objects that are dipped in 

 it while hot. 



You must also be careful to keep the 

 cake of tallow-wax thus prepared sep- 

 arate from your beeswax, for there 

 would be a row if you should happen 

 to send it by mistake to a comb foun- 

 dation manufacturer. We keep a small 

 iron kettle with some of this tallow- 

 wax already mixed in it all the time, 

 so that all we need to do is to warm it 

 up for use. When it is melting keep a 

 close eye on it, for it will run over and 

 give you trouble if allowed to get too 

 hot. 



But I notice that I have gotten clear 

 away from the description of bottom- 

 feeders. There is still another kind 

 which has been highly commended, 

 but of which I do not approve. It is 

 the entrance-feeder, made in the shape 

 either of a jar enclosed within a box — 

 the Boardman feeder — or of a trough, 

 opening into the entrance and closing 

 this entrance. The entrance-feeder is 



suitable only if used on a strong col- 

 ony, otherwise there is a great risk of 

 strange bees helping themselves to the 

 food, or, to say the least, of being at- 

 tracted there and induced to rob the 

 weak colony which it is intended to 

 help. The feeder, which is placed at 

 the rear of the bottom, has at least the 

 advantage over this, that the robber- 

 bee, if attracted by the smell, is in- 

 duced to hunt about the rear of the 

 hive, around the crevices near the 

 feeder, and can rarely go in at the en- 

 trance and cross the length of the bot- 

 tom-board without having to take up 

 the gauntlet with a number of the in- 

 habitants of the hive. 



Front feeding, therefore, unless car- 

 ried on with the greatest circumspec- 

 tion is not desirable. If the entrance 

 be closed with the feeder in position, 

 it is necessary to look after it and re- 

 lease the bees in warm weather before 

 they become worried. Yet, one small 

 advantage of the entrance-feeder which 

 has perhaps served to make it popular 

 with some apiarists, is that it is located 

 at the spot most often traveled over by 

 the active adult bees, and that it will 

 therefore not be so readily neglected 

 as a rear feeder. 



Hamilton, 111. 



Successful Wintering of Bees 



BY AHEN I,ATHAM 



It is possible that the sentence which 

 Mr. Byer, on page 227, quotes from my 

 writings may need no further defence, 

 inasmuch as Mr. Byer himself offers in 

 his last paragraph so strong a support 

 for the statement. I write now more 

 to impress upon the readers of the 

 American Bee Journal the truth of 

 what Mr. Byer has to say, and to urge 

 upon them the desirability of winter- 

 ing our bees as well as we should hope 

 to winter our cows and other domestic 

 stock. 



It so happens that all farmers do not 

 winter their cows without loss. There 

 are SI ill some who house their animals 

 poorly, either with too slight a protec- 

 tion or else with too little ventilation 

 and cleanliness, and on top of such 

 treatment economize (?) by feeding 

 them upon meadow-hay and water. 

 That such men bury two or three 

 scrawny beasts the next spring is no 

 surprise to their thriftier neighbors. 



Suppose, for instance, that a farmer 

 persisted in keeping every animal that 

 came his way, whether healthy or 

 weak, young or old. Suppose he did 

 not practise what most do, namely, to 

 get rid of undesirable stock, make into 

 beef those that are not strong, or else, 

 if conscientious, sell them to those 

 who will turn them into beef. If we 

 suppose these things then we know 

 that it would be inevitable that every 

 winter would see a loss of from 10 to 

 25 percent of all such domestic animals. 

 The fact is that domestic animals are 

 wintered successfully only because 

 most of us strive to keep our stock uni- 

 formly vigorous. But such is not the 

 case with our bees, for, unless I am 

 much mistaken, the majority of bee- 

 keepers think more of the number of 

 colonies they possess rather than of 

 the quality. It is not, therefore. 



strange that their spring count falls so 

 much below their fall count? 



Leaving out the first year of my bee- 

 keeping, a year in which winter cost 

 me 100 percent of my bees, as my only 

 solitary colony was lost, I think that I 

 can say that my spring count has not 

 averaged more than 5 percent less than 

 my fall count. Of this falling off, 

 moreover, almost none should be laid 

 to winter directly, as much of it came 

 about from loss of queens. In fact, I 

 can remember only one colony the loss 

 of which should be laid wholly to win- 

 ter, and I allow that one only because 

 I never could find any other cause for 

 the loss. 



One winter I lost more than 60 per- 

 cent of my apiary, and might lay the 

 loss to winter ; but it so happened that 

 the fall before the hives were very 

 light in stores, and I followed some 

 directions about feeding by laying a 

 cake of candy above the frames. Such 

 a sight as there was the following 

 spring, I never wish to see the like 

 again ! These cakes of candy were 

 made of honey and syrup and were not 

 grained. Never feed with cakes of 

 candy over the Jrantes unless those cakes 

 are fine grained like the inside o/ a 

 chocolate cream. Never put honey in 

 with the sugar of which these cakes 

 are to be made, for the honey will pre- 

 vent the graining. Cook the syrup to 

 a temperature of about 233 Fahr., and 

 set aside where it will cool. When 

 nearly cool, stir it slowly till it grains. 

 Just before it gets too stiff turn it into 

 dishes to harden. A temperature of 

 over 233 will make the cakes too hard, 

 while under 231 the cakes will be rather 

 soft. The cakes which I made in that 

 disastrous winter ran down over the 

 combs and daubed the poor bees, re- 

 sulting in the stickiest, daubiest mess 

 that ever I saw. 



So with all the colonies which I ever 

 lost in winter, I find that in every case 

 (save one) I did something wrong. By 

 correcting these errors I now no longer 

 have any fears of winter, as far as my 

 bees are concerned. That one excep- 

 tion was a colony which was abun- 

 dantly strong in fall and had lots of 

 honey. In the spring the bees were 

 dead with honey not an inch away. 

 The hive was rather moist, but aside 

 from that I could find nothing wrong. 

 Twenty-nine other colonies in the yard 

 wintered all right. 



The past winter here was rather 

 severe, called very severe by old na- 

 tives. I am inclined to think that my 

 bees would have come through in poor 

 condition had it not been for a flight- 

 day in early January. I count my bees 

 safe if January furnishes a flight, and 

 I can remember but one January dur- 

 ing the last 23 years which has not 

 furnished a flight for the bees. The 

 winter of 1903-4 furnished no flight 

 from the middle of November till late 

 in March. There was, according to re- 

 ports, a loss of 75 percent of bees in 

 the New England States. I lost 2 col- 

 onies out of 38, and each of these died 

 from an entirely different cause, the 

 entrance of one getting accidentally 

 hopelessly closed, the other starving 

 by a peculiar mischance. That winter 

 the bees had good stores. This past 

 winter the bees had miserable stores, 

 having failed of filling up with the 



