Scpleiiiljcr, 1UU7. 



American Hee Journal 



will conic out all riglu, is only fooling 

 himself; and the sooiier he realizes it to 

 be a fact, the better for all concerned. 

 So, don't try anything of the kind, but 

 look close to all the minor parts; and 

 when yon have united them into one fine 

 method for practice you will be well 

 rewarded for your study and perse- 

 verance. 



Don't spend any time in worrying over 

 the frequency of poor seasons, but 

 spend your time in preparing your bees 

 to make the most they can of any kind 

 of season that comes, then you will 

 be almost surprised to see how few poor 

 seasons there are. We have not had a 

 really poor season in 25 years, while 

 some of my neighbors complain of a 

 poor season nearly every summer. 



Sixonu-Hanu Honey-Pack aces. 



1 almost beg of you not to buy sec- 

 ond-hand packages to ship extracted 

 honey in. I don't know when I ever 

 read better advice than Mr. Muth gave 

 us a short time ago on this subject. 

 Don't use those poor packages. If you 

 do, you not only bear dowrb the market 

 price of honey, but you indirectly raise 

 the freight-rate. 



Don't bother with starters of comb 

 foundation in your breeding or extract- 

 ing fraines; but _put in full sheets of 

 foundation and prevent your bees from 

 building that worst nuisance of the 

 apiary — namely, drone-comb. The man 

 with a few colonies may have time to 

 fuss with starters; but if you have many 

 hives to care for, the sooner you cut 

 out this starter business, and the shift- 

 ing around the apiary of brood, the bet- 

 ter it will be for your net income. The 

 earlier in the spring you can have every 

 hive in your apiary, and every comb 

 in those hives filled with worker-brood, 

 then keep them so to the end of the 

 season, the less reason you will have to 

 worry about poor honey seasons and 

 over-stocking. We have never had a 

 strong colony of bees backed up with a 

 hive full of worker-brood fail to give 

 us a good surplus. 



Preparing for Winticr. 



Don't neglect to prepare your bees 

 early in the season for winter. This 

 part of the business should here at the 

 North be all finished before September 

 10. To a certain extent we are pre- 

 paring our bees all summer for the 

 next season ; then when the final finish 

 comes, the last of .\ugust, we have but 

 little to do, and I am sure that they 

 will winter with less loss if they have a 

 chance to quiet down and are undis- 

 turbed during the fall months. 



Don't try to winter weak colonies. 

 If you are anxious to save all you can, 

 then feed them syrup made from granu- 

 lated sugar as soon as the harvest com- 

 mences to close, so as to keep them 

 breeding until they are strong in bees. 

 If you attend to them in this way they 

 will often be your best colonies in the 

 spring; but if you can not do this you 

 had better unite two or more together 

 in the fall ; for a weak colony in the 

 fall is usually a dead one in the spring. 



Don't try to winter a queen the third 

 winter. I am sure it doesn't pay. She 

 is almost sure to die. either in the 

 winter or early spring; and if she lives 



she is so slow to start brood in the 

 spring that you will have a weak col- 

 ony until midsummer; and it will re- 

 quire more valuable time to build it up 

 than three queens would cost. 



IJon't fail to keep your bees as warm 

 and comfortable as is possible during 

 the first four or five weeks after taking 

 them from their winter quarters. We 

 contract the entrances of all colonies 

 to J-g by 1 or 2 inches. In doing so 

 it prevents robbing to quite an extent, 

 and helps them to enlarge their brood- 

 nest, which is very important at this 

 season of the year. We also try to re- 

 tain all the heat we can at the top of 

 the hive. We put a piece of canvas first 

 over the top of the frames, then a board 

 under cover, cleated so as to form two 

 dead-air spaces; then our outside tele- 

 scope top, which is kept well painted 

 so as to prevent any rain from entering 

 the hive. You may think this is taking 

 more pains than is necessary. We think 

 it has much to do toward helping the 

 bees to give us a nice surplus during 

 the summer. 



Don't put \our bees into winter quar- 

 ters that will subject them to unnatural 

 conditions. If you do you will lose 

 many colonies, both during the winter 

 and spring. It is almost impossible to 

 save a colony that has been poorly win- 

 tered. We may talk and write of the 

 thousand and one different things con- 

 nected with successful bee-keeping; but 

 wdien they are all summed up the whole 

 combined is not of as much importance 

 as perfect wintering. We could make 

 more money the following season from 

 strong colonies when taken from their 

 winter quarters if they were in nail-kegs 

 than could be made from little, weak, 

 sickly colonies in the best hive that was 

 ever constructed. 



I will close by saying, before I run ofT 

 on the subject of wintering, that close 

 attention to all things connected with 

 your bees is the magic word that un- 

 locks the door to success in bee-keep- 

 ing. — Gleanings in Bee-Culture. 



Feeding Bees Diluted Honey 



and Sugar Syrup for 



Winter Stores 



TRANSLATHl' liV J. C. BAUMGAERTNER. 



Coming across an article on some very 

 interesting experiments along the lines 

 of winter feeding with diluted honey 

 and sugar syrup, by ]\Ir. J. H. Clasen, 

 of Wisconsin, in the .'\cker und Garten- 

 bau Zeitung, I think it worth while to 

 translate it for the benefit of the read- 

 ers of the American Bee Journal. Mr. 

 Clasen says : 



"In writing this I am well aware of 

 the opposition I shall arouse, for most 

 apiarists consider this method of feed- 

 ing bees as objectionable, and detrimen- 

 tal to the health of the bees. Yes, even 

 more. Until recent years I have myself 

 held the erroneous idea that such feed- 

 ing was an impossibility, until I have 

 been convinced by repeated tests, that 

 this way of feeding is entirely harmless, 

 and under certain circumstances even 

 recomniendable. 



"In order to place my experiments and 

 their results or failures plainly before 

 my readers, 1 am obliged to reach back. 



"About /O years ago an old apiarist 

 told me tliat in his home in Bohemia, 

 many bee-keepers feed their light colo- 

 nies in mid-winter by filling a wine-bot- 

 tle witli dilu'id honey, tying a coarse 

 cloth over the mouth of the bottle, and 

 inserting this buttle, mouth downward, 

 into a hole in the top of the hive where 

 the bees had access to it. 



"This matter seemed worth a trial, 

 and having 2 colonies in the apiary in a 

 condition that made their ability to pull 

 through doubtful, I soon proceeded to 

 try on them this method of feeding. 

 They both stood on the south side in 

 an open house-apiary. I wrapped the 

 bottles in cloth to protect them against 

 freezing. The bees really took a part 

 of the food, but as, in spite of the wrap- 

 ping, it cooled off too rapidly, they could 

 not take it all. Both colonies aied the 

 following spring from dysentery. 



"A few years later I conducted an- 

 other experiment. This time I made 

 preparations for it in the fall, by cut- 

 ting a hole about 3 inches in diameter 

 in the honey-boards on the hives in- 

 tended for the experiment. The circu- 

 lar blocks cut out of these boards I 

 nailed on a sxj-inch piece of board each, 

 and replaced them in the opening. The 

 bees soon closed the saw-kerf with pro- 

 polis, leaving the honey-boards prac- 

 tically sound. The hives were now placed 

 in protecting-cases, with chatt-packing. 

 and a super put on the hive when the 

 hood of the protecting-case was put on. 



"That winter I used l-quart Mason 

 fruit-jars for feeding. I filled the jars 

 with two parts of extracted honey and 

 one part of warm water, tied a piece of 

 coarse linen over the opening, inverted 

 the jars, and set them in the holes in 

 the honey-boards. I re-heated the food 

 by wrapping a few hot bricks and plac- 

 ing them in the super around the jars. 

 As near as I could judge, the bees were 

 near starvation when the food was giv- 

 en, and they took it all dowm in 24 

 hours. But also the results of this ex- 

 periment were no success, for in a few 

 days the hive-entrance was almost 

 clogged with dead bees. They were fed 

 three times during the winter, and af- 

 ter every feed I found a number of 

 sticky, dead bees on the bottom-board. 

 The surviving bees in these colonies ( I 

 had fed several) came through the win- 

 ter in a very weakened conditon. and. 

 in spring, showed signs of dysentery. 



"Discouraged by the non-success of 

 this experiment — from which I had an- 

 ticipated good results with a high de- 

 gree of certainty — I ceased all further 

 experiments with liquefied food in out- 

 side-wintered colonies. And I believe, 

 even now', that this method of feeding 

 outside-wintered colonies is ill-applied. 



"Still, I have reaped some benefits 

 from these tests, for my attention has 

 thereby been called to the convenient 

 way of feeding bees by means of a jar. 

 and I have since fed all my colonies 

 with the above-mentioned hole cut in 

 the honey-board. In performing the af- 

 ter imperative spring feeding, I simply 

 set a jar of warm food (closed as 

 above) inverted into the hole in the 



