I>EVOTEr> TO I3EE.«?5 A^VO IIOTS^EY, A:vr> H03IIiJ TIVTKRESTW. 



Tol. IX. 



JANUARY 1, 1881. 



No. 1. 



A. I. ROOT, 



Publisher and Froprietor, \ 



1 

 medlna, O. J 



Published Monthly. f f EKMS: $1.00 Per Annumc in 



•^ Advance; 2 Copies /or $l.t)U; A 



'for $2.75; 5 for S4.00; lO or 



"i more. 75ecach. Single ]S'nmher,V)c. 



Established in 1873. td^'S.'"''"^' '''"'""' '""'^ "' 



NOTES fro:ti the banner apiary. 



No. 14. 



f:?5 PROFIT, PER COLONY, ANP HOW IT WAS DONE. 



M S the figures that I gave one year ago, repre- 

 Jf^^_ senting the profits of my apiary, were not 

 shrunk by the cold weather, I will venture 

 once more to send in my report without waiting un- 

 til next June. 



You will see from the above heading that my prof- 

 its this season have reached a good round figure; 

 but perhaps you would be more interested n learn- 

 ing how such results were obtained. 



I commenced the season with 15 colonies. The 

 warm weather came earlier than usual; I began 

 starting queen-cells the fore part of May; in the 

 middle of the month I commenced forming nuclei, 

 while the first of June found me shipping queens, 

 with 25 good, strong, three-frame nviclei started. 

 There is no use trying to rear queens either late or 

 early in the season, unless your nuclei are liept 

 strong. I will say, right here, that there was almost 

 a steady yield of honey from early in the spring un- 

 til the frosts came, although there was no great 

 yield at any one time. By July 1st, my 25 nuclei had 

 increased to 50, and by July loth I had formed 30 

 more; as this number enabled me to keep up with 

 orders, I did not start any more. I have once or 

 twice before given my method of queen-rearing, and 

 I will not repeat it here; but I would like to say just 

 a word or two in regard to the importance of always 

 having nuclei furnished with vmsealed brood, and of 

 always having on hand a good supply of queen-cells. 

 I know it is quite a "chore" to go around every 

 three or four days and see that every nuclei is fur- 

 nished with brood; but it is just such little "chores" 

 as this that help to bring in $25 profit, per colony. I 

 did this work so thoroughly that not one fertile 

 worker put in an appearance. Whenever there was 

 a scarcity of orders, and I had a lot of laying queens 

 on hand, it used to be one of my " besetting sins " to 

 neglect starting queen-cells; but this state of affairs 

 never failed to be followed by a "rush" of orders 

 that would take every laying queen from the j-ard, 

 leave me with no cells to put in their places, and 

 teach me the folly of such neglect. During the past 

 season I kept such a large stock of cells constantly 

 on hand that I frequently had to kill young queens 

 when they hatched, there being no place to put them. 



I do so dislike to kill a queen, that these newly 

 hatched queens were frequently introduced to nu- 

 clei at the same time that the laying queens were re- 

 moved ; perhaps three-fourths of these queens would 

 be accepted, and the time thus gained more than 

 counterbalanced the queen lost. 



My increase was only four colonies; my surplus 

 honey was 40 lbs. to the swarm, and the number of 

 queens sold, per colony, was 25. 



I have kept bees four years, and the average profit, 

 per colony, has been §18.82.« Friend Doolittle, what 

 has been your averaie profit, per colony, since you 

 first engaged in bee culture? 



W. Z. Hutchinson. 



Rogersville, Genesee Co., Mich. 



CALIFORNIA LETTER. 



WE have had a 3-lnch rain, and bees are in fine 

 condition. We are still eating grapes from 

 " -^ the vines in our apiary. Over 400 white 

 hives, six feet apart, in hexagonal shape, on clean, 

 light-colored ground, when the glare of the sun is 

 on them, 1 am inclined to think is rather hard on the 

 eyes, especially when one has to look through 

 glasses and a bee-hat ; but the grapevines, when in 

 leaf, relieve the dilliculti' somewhat. It is true, 

 they take up some room, and are sometimes in the 

 way; but we rather like this obtrusiveness, just as 

 we do with wife and children; we rather like to have 

 them rub against us, even if we do have to shove 

 them to one side rather rudely for business consid- 

 erations. 



BEES AND GRAPES. 



I hear considerable said of late about the injury of 

 grapes and other fruit by bees. The yellow jackets, 

 or yellow hornets, are exceedingly numerous here 

 this season, making the trouble by bees very consid- 

 erable, especially where the sweet varieties of 

 grapes are being dried into raisins. They take them 

 almost wholesale where they can get at them. In 

 Los Angeles county, where grapes are raised in 

 great abundance, there will be a special effort to 

 have a State law passed to prevent bees being kept 

 in the vicinity of vineyards. But I suppose the gen- 

 eral law of the State is at present sufficient to pro- 

 tect their property. However, your late statement 

 of one being liable to a penalty for killing another 

 man's bees the same as any other kind of stock, I 



