( i L E A N T N G S IN BE 



O TT L T U R K 



OCTDUKU, li)l 



HEADS OF GRAIN mill fJj)iFFERENT FIELDS 



out fighting. It will not be necessary to 

 use all the peppermint water to unite two 

 swarms, but use from l^ to Mi pint according 

 to the strength of the colonies. This method 

 should work well when packages of bees 

 from the South are to be united with colo- 

 nies which have come out weak in the spring. 

 Last year I used it with success in uniting 

 new swarms of black bees, brought in from 

 the surrounding country, with the bees in 

 my yard. Carl C. Johnson. 



Pomfret, Vt. 



Gf= 



ao^Cif: 



A Wrench for I am sending you here- 



Tight Screw Caps, with a drawing of a 

 wrench I made for the 

 caps of 5-gallon honey cans. It works so 

 well that I think perliaps others will want 

 to make one also. The illustration is self- 

 explanatory, only I might add that the 

 leather strap should be looped so it just slips 



Homemade "vvrench to loosen screw caps. 



easiljr over the cap; also, should the leather 

 get worn smooth so that it does not grip 

 satisfactorily, rub it with a litle rosin or 

 sandpaper it a little. J. H. Peterson. 



Brigham City, Utah. 



Feeding Cold It is funny how we work 

 Syrup. along different lines without 



knowing there is anything 

 out of the ordinary in our methods. It never 

 occurred to me there was anj^thing unusual 

 in feeding cold syrup with perforated pails. 

 Of course, it is one of the great advantages 

 of the pails. 



Our crates of six ten-pound pails of feed 

 are standard equipment with us just as 

 queen-excluders or supers of combs. In the 

 fall last year we fed over 12,000 pounds of 

 sugar to 597 colonies. Our modus operandi 

 is to put escapes on a yard, and go next 

 day with a truekload of feed. One man 

 trucks home the supers, while the rest of 

 us pack the colonies and put on the feed. 

 Thus tlie truck takes a load each way, bring- 

 ing packing material if necessary on the 

 second trip, and we get suj^ers off and cases 

 and feed on the yard all in one day. The 

 feed has been mixed up on some previous 

 day when there was a man to spare for the 

 job — and a job wanted for the man. If we 

 had to get the feed to the bees at the psy- 

 chological moment when it is warm, T 

 don't know what we would do. It would 

 certainly complicate matters greatly. Of 



course, we pack the pails. The shavings are 

 poured over them, and when they are to 

 come off these shavings do for side packing. 

 I cannot see how this could be injurious to 

 the bees. On the contrary, cold syrup ex- 

 cites them much less than warm. 



Georgetown, Out. Morley Pettit. 



Outdoor Wintering During the past six 

 in Northern Ontario, years I have wintered 

 both in the cellar and 

 outdoors. For the past two winters the 

 losses have been nil. Twenty Buckeye hives 

 are wintered in sets of two to four under 

 rough collapsible sheds. The hives are set 

 three or four inches apart, with leaves be- 

 tween and behind. The others are packed 

 two in a case, with 10 inches of chaff over 

 the top. I have seen bees wintered in the 

 latter way in northern Ontario, some dis- 

 tance north of the Cobalts in a latitude 

 where 45° below is quite common. They 

 were snowed in and therefore had excellent 

 windbreaks. There is never any lack of 

 snow up there. This was in 1918 and 1919, 

 when we had but little snow here. Our bee- 

 yard is on a sidehill facing southeast, having 

 a board fence to the rear, a row of poultry 

 houses to the right and left and a temporary 

 windbreak on the south. Calm always pre- 

 A'ails within this enclosure. 



Waterloo, Ont. L. J. Hedderick. 



zffl ^C«: 



Another Big Report My losses Avere rather 

 from South Dakota. Iieavy last winter for 

 some reason — perhaps 

 the cold weather, as the bees had lots of 

 winter stores. So I bought a few packages 

 of J. J. Scott of Louisiana, two-pound 

 packages with queens, costing me $4.00. 

 From one of those packages I have taken off 

 200 pounds of comb honey, as nice as you 

 ever saw, and I can take off another 40 

 pounds any day I wish to put an escape 

 under the super. At this late hour, 11:30 

 p. m., as I stood at the door a few moments 

 ago the bees, four or five rods distant, were 

 roaring like a distant train. In fact, nearly 

 every day lately they are flying in the aft- 

 ernoon as strong as in July. Another col- 

 ony, my nineteenth, has produced 400 pounds 

 of comb hone3^ Tliis is one I wintered over. 



I liad 40 colonies in the spring, including 

 what I shipped, and on these I have put 199 

 supers, each to contain 40 pounds, all of 

 which, except perhaps 10, are full, and these 

 10 are nearly full. 



I liave taken off 97 supers, and am taking 

 them off at the rate of 11 a day. If it were 

 not for the fact that it is September in- 

 stead of August, 1 should liave put on at 

 least 40 empty supers. 



1 shoulfl ha\'e done much better if it 



