1884 



GLEANIXG8 IN BEE CULTURE. 



]^EP0^Tg Digcea^^eijvie. 



THINK I may safely make my spring report 

 now. I went into winter quarters with 6 col- 

 onies of bees, 4 strong' and 3 weak. 1 have 6 colo- 

 nies now— 3 strong and 3 weak ones. One of my 

 weak ones I should certainly have lost had I not 

 chang-ed places with one of the strong ones, thereby 

 strengthening the weak ones. It has been a hard win- 

 ter for bees in this neighborhood. I will try to give you 

 something of an idea of the loss, so far as I know. 

 I will give you the losses as I have heard them, 

 though perhaps there has been some loss since I 

 have heard from the parties: 

 Mr. Sprinkle, of Denmark, 97 last tall, none now. 

 " " " •' a brother, 16 last fall, none now. 



" H. W. Cleveland, of Denmark, 36 " •' 20 now. 

 " Charles Lyon, of Sheffield, ."J last fall, none now. 



" O. n " 



" O. GillPtt " " 12 ' 



" L. D. Ormsby, " Pierpont, 80 last fall, 30 " 

 •' Thos. Young, " Kingsville,16 " " 30 " 

 " Lyman Luce, " " 6 " " 3 " 



" C. A. " " " 4 •■ "2 •• 



" A. Wllkerson, •' " i " "2 " 



" U. Bachelor, " " 2 " " none now. 



E. S. Snow, of Ashtabula, lost 20; I do not know 

 how many he had last fall; also Mr. Hai-t lost one; 

 Mr. Smith, of Monroe, 20; Mr. Shai-e, all but one. 

 I presume there are some others I have forgotten ; 

 but you can see by the above that it has been a bad 

 winter for bee-keepers In this section. 

 Kingsville, O., May 20, 1884. H. H. Pease. 



Friend P., it seems to me from the above 

 report that the mortality among bees seems 

 to cover certain localities. From 97 to 

 is certainly a fearful loss. Bees have win- 

 tered so well in Medina County the past 

 winter that almost everybody is 'wanting to 

 sell bees at this date. 



I have lost nearly all my bees by starvation. I 

 was spending the winter in Kansas City, and left 

 my bees alone all winter outdoors; and out of 60 

 swarms I found 6 alive on my return home, and a 

 yard full of emptj- bee-hives and comb, and yet I am 

 not discouraged, seeing dead bees by the bushel, and 

 no sale for them. So will you, for my benefit, tell me 

 how to build up again? What can I feed them so they 

 will breed fast and replenish? Last year I fed nearly 

 three sacks of granulated-sugar syrup to the 60 

 colonies— all lost. But, how to build is now my 

 question. Mrs. L. C. Donnelly. 



Valmont, Col., May 2, 1884. 



If you have fed all that granulated-sugar 

 syrup, my friend, you have learned the busi- 

 ness of building up almost as well as I could 

 tell it. I am astonished that your bees 

 should die after having been yirepared for 

 winter in that way. Mrs. AxtelTs lirst ex- 

 perience was ill feeding sugar syrup until ev- 

 erybody tlioiight slie Avas crazy on bees. She 

 wrote me to know my opinion" about it, and I 

 told her she was doing just right. And so 

 you let your bees starve, after feeding them all 

 that sugar V 



Luck ! luck ! bad luck ! I wrote to you some time 

 last fall, telling you I had only four colonies to feed 

 out of 150. Our apiary has been reduced to tJiree 

 since November. First, a man went along the pub- 

 lic road with a large drove of cattle. They broke 

 through the wire fence, and, knocking the hives 

 over, and the upper stories coming off, let in the 

 cold, and froze the bees, queen and all. Before the 



man could get the cattle out, a large part of them 

 were stung so badly about the head that they died. 

 The drover was stung so much he had to leave his 

 cattle to "hold their own." I lost 86 of my best col- 

 onies, and gained nothing from the owner of the 

 cattle. After uniting down to 58, a "cold snap" 

 came; and before it let up it had frozen 18. This 

 was done before New Year's. 



January brought a warm spell of 9 days, in which 

 the bees began to rear brood; and when it became 

 cold again it found them without stores, thus re- 

 ducing to 16 colonies, and those venj weak, 13 of 

 which have died from some unknown cause. I will 

 never spend $300 on bees again without better ex- 

 perience. I should like to know If bees dislike the 

 smell of pine lumber, as I can get it 75 cents cheaper 

 per hundred. I have lost so much that I will have 

 to keep on the cheap side for a while. It is true, you 

 would think I would have enough old hives to do 

 me for a while, but I was forced to sell them to pay 

 my lawyer. Confound the lawyers, any way! 



A. H. Peking. Ju. 



Clear Creek, Ind., April 12, 1884. 



Friend P., it seems tome your report is 

 not a very big one, to discourage the friends 

 from going into bee culture after all, for 

 most of us would expect you to have a good 

 fence and keep the c:ittle out. Your con- 

 cluding remark seems to reflect rather more 

 on the law business than on bee-keeping. 

 Suppose you substitute "careless people" 

 in place of lawyers in that wind-up of yours ; 

 that is, if you will excuse the liberty I take. 

 — I never heard that bees disliked the smell 

 of pine lumber, but we generally think it the 

 best lumber that can be got. 



IS HONEY FROM HEART'S - EASE UNFIT FOR WIN- 

 TERING? 



I find, in reading Gleanings and other journals, 

 that "bees are doing well," "bees booming," and but 

 very few discouraging reports, while I am making 

 bee-keeping a failure this spring; and I ask myself 

 the question, "Why is it?" There are several theo- 

 ries that come up; it maybe this, that, or the other; 

 but it is a genuine spring dwindle. I should like to 

 have it solved, to avoid a repetition In the future. 

 Some one in the A. B. J. states that heart's-ease 

 honey is unfit to winter on; if that Is a fact, it will 

 give some clew to the ti'ouble, as the great part of 

 their stores was from that weed. 



MoLLiE O. Large. 



Millersville, Christian Co., 111., May 16, 1884. 



I do not believe that it is the heart's-ease 

 honey, my friend ; but perhaps others can 

 tell us more about it. 



I will send you a few lines for Blasted Hopes: I 

 commenced the season of 1883 with one stand of hy- 

 brids; increased to 3 by natural swarming, but did 

 not get one pound of honey. They would stand out- 

 side of the hive on their heads, and buzz all day, or 

 all summer. Abouf January 10 one stand died; the 

 other two are in good condition now, and gathering 

 honey and pollen. Wm. O. Mewly. 



Raymore, Mo., April 2, 1884. 



A liROTHEK IN TROUBLE. 



Please tell my bee-keeping friends through 

 Gleanings, that warm weather has come again, 

 the flowers are in bloom, the birds sing merrily, and 

 this time their songs fail to cheer me, for I am oh 



