1881 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



481 



that they were never much of a success 

 practically. I know there are wild raspber- 

 ries in Michigan that hear crops in the fall, 

 for I have seen them ; but I do not feel so 

 sure the same plants would b^ar two crops 

 further south. IIow is it, >e small-fruit 

 men V 1 should think your price Avas cer- 

 tainly low enough, friend ^V. 



grape; sugar for avinter food. 



FRIEKD M'^COnD'S EXPERIENCE. 



f PROMISED last fall to ffive you the result iu the 

 spring of my experimonts la feediDg grape and 

 — ' eane sugar mixed, for winter. I intended to 

 report in the spring, but perhaps it is better that I 

 have delayed it until now, as it has allowed me time 

 to cool down a little. Now is the time to think 

 about feeding for winter, and finding the losses so 

 so heavy everywhere and under almost all circvim- 

 stances, I scarcely knew what to say, but I suppose 

 nearly all bee-keepers, like myself, except beginners, 

 have their own way in all their manipulations, and 

 think it the best. I have my own way, which ap- 

 pears to suit my limited ideas; my own kinds of 

 feeders for fall and spring, which I prefer to any 

 others, and they cost me nothing. My own queen- 

 shipping cages, which I am content to use exclus- 

 ively; my own method of hiving without cutting 

 limbs off, and my own wnj- of wintering, with the 

 very best results. I use none but the L. hive, Root 

 chaff hive, and the Langstroth and McCord Twin 

 chaff hive, and standard size L. frames, and never 

 lost a colony until last winter, and then I lost 35, out 

 of t)0, and it was the first time I everfedgrnpe sugar 

 in the fall. I fed the following mixture to every 

 hive I lost, except two, and one of them, the strong- 

 est colony I had, starved, and the other one I at- 

 tempted to winter with the second story on; but 

 after consuming all in it they starved and froze in 

 attempting to reach the stores below, which were 

 abundant; but the weather being extremely cold, 

 and so much space upward, the heat rose to the top 

 as fast as generated, and they all died, clustered to- 

 gether almost within reach of plenty. 



But, to the feed: I took 4 lbs. white coffee sugar 

 and 1 quart water, 4 lbs. of grape sugar, and one 

 pint water, mixed and heated both separatelj', to a 

 syrup, then mixed in the proportion of two quarts 

 grape to one quart cane syrup, and fed in my pans 

 as usual. 1 believe it would do very well, if the bees 

 could fly every week or two at furthest; but such 

 winters wo do not often have, and therefore I am 

 satisfied that any mixture containing grape sugar 

 in anj' proportion is very unsafe for winter feeding. 

 There is so much starch body in the grape sugar 

 that must be discharged often as fcX?ces, while a 

 much larger proportion of cane sugar will evapo- 

 rate through the body of the bee, as insensible per- 

 spiration, which enables the bee to retain its fn?ces 

 through a long hard winter, without having what 

 some call dysentery. Last winter put grape sugar 

 to a very severe test; it hardened in the cells, and I 

 lost every colony that I fed it to, and most of them 

 left their hives and combs in a fearfully filthy con- 

 dition; but by scraping and washing, I restored 

 them to a pretty good condition. I believe, had I 

 not feed any grape sugar, some of the weakest col- 

 onies would have gone under (but not so many), for 

 some were mt strong enough in the fall to survive 



such a winter as lust. 1 saved one queen and small 

 remnant of her colony, that were literally plastered 

 and daubed all over and stuck fast, by dumping 

 or scraping them into a pan of warm water, and 

 stirring them with a stick until washed clean, then 

 drying them on a board by the stove, and returning 

 them to a warm clean hive and fresh clean combs. 

 Oxford, O. Sept , 1881. D. A. McCORD. 



^ » ^ 



CAPABILrriES OF BEES. 



ip[gSsEFORE entering upon this subject, I wish to 

 f^4j ^^y t^^*- what a colony of bees are capable of 

 doing under favorable conditions is no cri- 

 terion of what we may expect many colonies to av- 

 erage. It is not a large yield of surplus honey from 

 one or two or three colonies that constitutes a sea- 

 son's success, but a good arcrafjc yield from the 

 whole apiary. From 1871 to 1875 inclusive, we had 

 good seasons for surplus-honey gathering. Bass- 

 wood yielded bountifully evcrji (/ear, and while our 

 average yield was large, I will detail a few excep- 

 tional cases, exemplifying the wonderful "capabili- 

 ties of bees " under conditions, all of which we hard- 

 ly understand. 



During the basswood flow in July, 1873, 1 hived an 

 ordinary prime swarm on to 10 Langstroth combs. 

 Five or six days after being hived, I extracted the 

 l)rood-chamber clean, and took out about .50 lbs. of 

 honey. At precisely the same time the next day, I 

 emptied it clean again and got 30 lbs. of a fair quali- 

 ty of unripe honey. 



When Mr. Hosmer, of Minnesota, reported 53 lbs. 

 in one day, I had reason to believe it; but when one 

 of our gushing bee-keepers came right out after- 

 ward with 60 lbs., I th ought it looked slightly "fishy." 



I have extracted 13 lbs. per day fiom buckwheat 

 alone. I had one colony of black bees in 1873 that 

 gave me 410 lbs. surplus honey, 48 of which was 

 comb, all the rest extracted, of good quality. Dur- 

 ing 1871 I had one colony of bees give me 100 lbs. of 

 surphH comb, and come outside and build comb 

 and fill it with honey under the bottom-board,wblch 

 stood high from the ground. 



In the spring of 1873 or '74 I bought 3 colonies of a 

 neighbor, in 9-frame L. hives, for $30.00, and I sold 

 the surplus that they gathered within a space of two 

 weeks (during basswood bloom) for $130.(0. It Is 

 just to say that the honey was all extracted, and bot- 

 tled and sold at fancy prices -some of it averaging 

 as high as 33c per lb. All the colonies referred to 

 were black, and none were aided by others. 



But, a few big hills don't make a world, nor do 

 these unaccountable yields of a few exceptional 

 colonies make a fortune for their owner. They 

 make food for thought and study. Other stocks, 

 standing by their side, gave little or no surplus. 

 Still others, full of bees, and in every way equal to 

 the first-named, as far as the master could deter- 

 mine, gave only one-fourth or one-half the surplus. 

 Those differences, during the same flow, can be ac- 

 counted for only by constitutional differences in the 

 make-up of the individuals of the colony. Whether 

 we can see these differences or not, we can plainly see 

 and realize the results; and all we have to do is to en- 

 courage it, by breeding from those stocks that pos- 

 sess it. I may say that I hnow that such a course 

 proves satisfactory. Remember, these results were 

 all given us by a raceof bees entirely neglected by the 

 hand of science. That the black bee possesses many 

 valuable points of superiority over any other race, 



