1884 



GLeANIKGS IK BEE CULTURE. 



69^ 



WHAT IS THE MATTER "WITH THE 

 BEES AND QUEENS? 



MORTALITY DURING WARM WEATHER. 



S BOTHER ROOT:— As I have never made any 

 report of my bee business I thoug-ht T would 

 report, and you can put me in Blasted Hopes 

 If you think best. Last year I bought and 

 traded for 9 colonies and nucleus, mostly in 

 box hives. 1 transferred them into L. frames and 

 chaff hives of your pattern, and fed them 200 lbs. 

 honey for winter stores. They stood the winter 

 very well; however, 3 hives dwindled out in April, 

 which left me 6—4 in good condition and 2 weak. I 

 have taken only about 100 lbs. honey. The honey 

 season was very poor in this part of the country, 

 but my bees increased from 6 to 16, and I traded old 

 hives for 4, which makes me 30, which were doing- 

 very well in the way of building' up, and most of 

 them had stores enough for winter, when, about the 

 26th of August, they commenced dying at a fearful 

 rate, which they continued to do until the first of 

 September when they ceased to die, and seemed to 

 be all right again, and were working nicely, and I 

 was feeding the weak ones to get them built up for 

 wintering, when I heard some old bee-keepers com- 

 plaining of their bees and queens dying, and on ex- 

 amination of 18 hives at home I find 10 queenless. 

 Some had no brood nor eggs; some had some hatch- 

 ing brood; 3 had queen-cells; one had some drones; 

 but the drones which had not been previously killed 

 by the bees mostly died when the bees wei-e dying. 

 One queen has hatched since I went through them, 

 but she died. The cells in one hive have been torn 

 down, but I can find no queen. I find a few eggs, 

 two in a cell, which I suppose is done by a fertile 

 worker. I think if I can get queens this week, I 

 can build them up so they will winter, if winter 

 doesn't come too soon, and the new queens don't die. 

 I am not alone in the loss of bees and queens. 

 Some have lost all their bees; some have lost more 

 than half of their queens; a great many have their 

 bees in gums, or box hives, so thej' can not examine 

 •them; but I think two months will tell the story for 

 a great many of them. 



The mortality was not confined to any special 

 condition of the bees ; some of my strongest died 

 the worst, while others, about equal, suffered but 

 little, while some of the strongest hives that lost 

 but few bees lost their queens. Two colonies that 

 were rather weak fared rather the best— neither 

 queens nor bees dying, except a few bees. 



The trouble is not confined to this neighborhood. 

 I hear of it ten miles north, and as far south, and 

 no one seems to know what is the cause. One bee. 

 keeper whom I talked with thought it was ironweed. 

 Now, it any ABC scholar or teacher can give us 

 any information in regard to the trouble with our 

 bees and queens, it will be thankfully received. 

 Cloverdale, Ind., Oct. 7, 1884. T. Brown. 



Such cases are not very common, trieiul B., 

 although we occafiionally tind something 

 simihir. I can give no reason for it, unless 

 they obtained stores from sometliing poison- 

 ous. Whenever I tind my bees dying in that 

 way, I should feed heavily with sugar syr- 

 up, so as to induce them to stay at home, 

 and also to so dilute the poisonous food as to 

 render it harmless. If that should stop it, 

 we should then be pretty safe in concluding 

 it was poisonous stores from some source or 

 other. 



^EP0^3FP Dl?C0n^^6IN6. 



WILL give you a bit of report of the honey sea- 

 son in Maine. In all parts of the State I have 

 heard from, there has been but very little hon- 

 ey gathered since the first of iuij, consequent- 

 ly feeding is the programme of the day, and I 

 fear some will let their bees starve through neglect. 

 I must say, with hundreds of others, that I never 

 saw so poor a season in my life for honey; but it 

 takes more than one poor honey season to kill a 

 Maine bee-keepei-. Wintering is our worst feature, 

 but we are overcoming that by the use of the L. 

 frame and the Root chaff hive, of which enough in its 

 praise can not be said. I believe all of those queens, 

 some 20 in all, that I had of you, are purely mated 

 except one, and her bees are black as your boot on 

 Sunday morning. 



P. S.— I have a little girl S'^ years of age, and she 

 is much interested in Huber. She has teased me 

 until I have promised to write and ask Mr. Root 

 why he doesn't put Ruber's picture in the paper. 

 When I receive a journal I always have to hunt it 

 over and see what it says about little Huber. I pro- 

 pose myself that you give us a cut of him. She 

 says, f urthermoi-e, that she will write Huber a letter 

 when she is old enough. Her name is Grace. 

 Dexter, Penobscot Co., Me. A. R. Bodge. 



Bees have not done very well this year with us. 

 The best any of them will do will not be 60 lbs., and 

 some have not enough to winter on. In 1882 we had 

 12; they increased to 36 in 1883; last spring only 21^ 

 and now 14; only 3 swarms this year; 15 swarms 

 were in box hives, and we had 11 of them transfer- 

 red into Langstroth hives. The honey season is 

 about over here, and there is not a crate of honey 

 all capped over on any of the hives that have been 

 on ever since they filled the lower stoi-y. The sea- 

 son started out" right brisk," and the apples bloom- 

 ed the fullest I ever saw; but the nights have been 

 so cool that I guess there was not very much honey 

 to get. J. E. Stickle. 



Macomb, III., Sept. 28, 1884. 



Yes, friend Root, we are all in the same boat with 

 G. M. Doolittle. On the shores of Lake Ontario we 

 are tossed about in tempestuous storms, but our 

 craft is well built, and we will stand the storm, if 

 we have only half a crop of honey. First frost, Oct. 

 9, 1884. B. LosEE. 



Coburg, Canada. 



A GRAPEVINE APIARY ON A NEW 

 PLAN. 



grapes and honey and domestic enjoyment. 



HENEVER we get a photograph em- 

 bodying some new feature, or giving 

 a glimpse of something that will be 

 helpful to our readers, and some- 

 thing they have not already seen be- 

 fore in our pictures, we are glad to have the 

 view engraved. Friend Leyvraz, of Francis, 

 Fla., gives us quite a refreshing glimpse of 

 what may be done in the way of making 

 home pleasant, and combining bees and 

 grapes. Especially are such arrangements 

 desirable for oui- more southern climes. 

 There are our old friends, the Simplicity 

 hives, as natural as life. The boy in tlie 

 foreground is probably wearied by the ardu^ 



