S()2 



GLEA^l^'GS IN KEE CULTURE. 



Nov. 1. 



storing in sections quantities of honey which 

 they gathered from milkweed. I subsequently 

 heard that their crop was a good one. Now. in 

 a straight line their location was only some fif- 

 teen mill s from mine, and in that vicinity was 

 plenty of unoccupied territory. Had there been 

 a wagon-road to their locality, instead of mere- 

 ly a very lough mountain trail, I could have 

 moved a couple of hundred of ray best stocks 

 over there and made a big protit by so doing. 

 Even this season, which has been so genei'ally 

 bad for the foot-hill bee-keepers, has. I under- 

 stand, been a good one for the apiarists located 

 in theTehatchipi Mountains, a district in which 

 there is plenty of snow during the winter time. 



Bees are now working on goldenrod — that is, 

 where they can tind any to work on, for it is a 

 very scarce plant with us. I am unable to as- 

 certain why it is so scarce. I tind it in small 

 patches at both high and low altitudes, on clay 

 and on sandy soil, seeming to prosper every- 

 where. It is nowhere plentiful. The alder- 

 trees along the creeks have furnished a gener- 

 ous supply of honey-dew. It will come in very 

 handy foi' those apiarists whose bees have'not 

 gathenni enough honey the past season for their 

 own sulisistencf. 



Th' me^quite. which Arizona apiarists praise 

 so hislily as a honey-plant, is very abundant 

 near Needles, along the Colorado River. There 

 are no bees in that vicinity, and it is doubtful 

 whether they could exist there, as the country 

 on each side of the river is a desert, and, with 

 the exception of cotton wood -trees along the riv- 

 er, there is nothing growing which would fur- 

 nish honey except the mesquite. It would be a 

 hard matter, too, to keep the combs from melt- 

 ing down, as the mercui'y sometimes registers 

 there 128° Fahr. in the shade, and 11.5° at mid- 

 night is not unusual. The boundless desert by 

 which the place is surrounded is, no doubt, re- 

 sponsible for such extreme heat — a desert in 

 size as large as New Jei-sey: and, unless there 

 are minerals on it, the whole of it not worth a 

 bunch of wooden toothpicks. It is probably 

 here that most of those queens die which arrive 

 from the east. 



In a section like this, where new comers are 

 constantly engaging in the bee-business, and 

 old hands starting out-apiaries, the matter as 

 to the rights of prior locators on a range as- 

 sumes importance. Some of the bee-men hold 

 that he who first gets possession of a range has 

 rights which others should respect. Some lo- 

 cate wherever they think it will be profitable 

 for them, and it is on that matter of protit that 

 the whole question hinges. "Self-preservation 

 is the first law of natui'e ; " therefore if a man 

 tinds that he can make a greater profit by en- 

 tering into competition on a good bee-rang(> 

 than by going to some poor ibut unoccupied 

 range, it is his duty to himself and family to do 

 so. I can not see why a bee-keeper should be 

 more exempt from competition than a mer- 

 chant. A store-keeper who, because of prior 

 location in a village, should protest against an- 

 other's starting there would be laughed at. The 

 bee-keeper who desires to possess in entirety a 

 range can best do so by so stocking it with bees 

 that any experienced person can see that it is 

 unwise (that is, unprofitable) to locate there. 

 An inexperienced person generally manages so 

 badly that what little honey he gets makes no 

 difference in the other's crop; and when locat- 

 ed near an expert they are generally crowded 

 out after a year oi- two. 



If I wished to start another apiary I would 

 get an unoccupied range if I could; biit, failing 

 in that, I would locate near the most ignorant 

 and indolent bee-keeper I could find — some fel- 

 low who, occupying a range capable of giving 

 fifteen or twenty tons in a good season, nevei' 



gets more than from two to four tons. The suc- 

 cessful apiarist had better make up his mind at 

 once to be 'crowded, as the unsuccessful ones 

 will never attribute his big crops to superior 

 brains, but to a superior range, and will move 

 their bees in to share with him. 



Wii,i.iAM G. Hewes. 

 Newhall. Cal.. Oct. .5, 1892., 



[You have presented to us another view; and 

 while a store-keeper has no reasonable right to 

 object to another coming and setting up in the 

 same line of business, it is possible that also a 

 />ee-/ft'f/K'r first in the field has no right to ob- 

 ject to another locating an apiary on the same 

 territory. But are the two cases altogether 

 parallel? Somehow, if we had gone into a lo- 

 cality, and had demonsti'ated that it vas a 

 grand location for bees, and with that field had 

 secured large crops of honey, we think we should 

 be somewhat mad if some other chap should 

 come and locate with, say. a hundred colonies 

 within half a mile of us and cut down our 

 yields by one-half. The other fellow would, in 

 all probaoility. not have located there in the 

 first place had he not seen we were making 

 money. Some moral right is due bee-man No. 

 ] for discovering for himself a good field. 



This is a hard question to settle, and. in all 

 probability, you will hear from Dr. Miller on 

 the other side. Of course, there is no Idw 

 whereby the bee-keeper first in the field could 

 secure the privilege of that field all to himself. 

 The only thing he could do (and that is out of 

 the question) would be to buy up. say, five 

 thousand acres and allow no other bee-keeper 

 to occupy that land. He then has a proprieta- 

 ry right to the whole field. Five thousand 

 acres would give a bee-flight of about a mile 

 and a half. Unless the bee-keeper has un- 

 bounded faith in his locality he can not afford 

 to pay even nO cents an acre. The matter as at 

 present adjusted is a case of the survival of the 

 fittest, as you intimate. The one who is the 

 best bee-keeper will crowd the hardest, and at 

 last crowd the other man out entirely. Perhaps 

 this is right.] 



THE RIGHT KIND OF ABSORBENTS. 



(.UorXI) COKNf OHS. 



Much has been said pro and con about ab- 

 sorbents versus oilcloth for winter covering for 

 bees. With many, absorbents and upward 

 ventilation seem to be syiionymous terms, and 

 that, if oilcloth be not used, upward ventilation 

 is the result. This is a mistake. With chaff 

 cushions, I will admit, you have more upward 

 escape of air than is good: the chaff is too light, 

 too cellular, and not porous enough. You want 

 a heavy, denser substance than chaff — one with 

 more cdpillnry force that will transmit the 

 largest amount of moisture with a minimum 

 amount of heat. Air is the vehicle that carries 

 both moisture and heat, and the medium which 

 will transmit the largest amount of the former 

 and the least amount of the latter is the best. 



.\fter experimenting with variou- substances 

 the well-known absorbent power of corncobs 

 induced me to try them, using them whole and 

 filling the interstices with dry fine sawdust, 

 whicli answei'ed very well. Afterward I had 

 them ground at a feed-mill, and filled the boxes 

 three inches with this meal, and I want noth- 

 ing else. Cobs chopped and mixed with dry 

 sawdust do well. This is practically a non- 

 conductor of heat, and it is dense and porous, 

 and lias the capillary force — like blotting-paper 

 — to carry moistui'e to the outer atmosphere. 

 To illusti'ate this capillary force, suppose we 



