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 •AHD HOME, 



-Poblishedby-THEA 1^0 oY CO. 



PERYtAR '\® "Medina- Ohio- 



Vol. XXXIIL 



AUGUST J 5. J 905. 



No. J 6 



Eight feet 2^ inches high. That's how 

 high a stalk of sweet clover has grown just 

 north of the house. 



C. E. Woodward is less worried, if pos- 

 sible, than I am, as to the disappearance of 

 basswood lumber. He says in Review: ' ' I 

 have never yet seen a one-piece section that 

 I considered worth putting the foundation 

 into. The four-piece section, made from 

 white poplar, is the only first- class section 

 on the market. ' ' Thanks, Bro. Woodward. 



A SWARM issued from No. 18. I said, 

 "That's strange; the queen is caged in No. 

 18; are they swarming with the queen in the 

 cage? " But I found a clipped queen on the 

 ground in front of the hive. Then I said, 

 "How could that queen get out of the 

 cage?" Looking in the hive I found the 

 cage all right and the queen still in it. A 

 queen from some other colony had evidently 

 entered, and agreed to elope with the colony. 

 Precisely the same thing occurred at No. 60, 

 and on the same day. Bees are queer. 

 [This only emphasizes what I have said else- 

 where, that queens sometimes make mis- 

 takes by going into the wrong hive.— Ed.] 



C. H. DiBBERN thinks from my Straw, p. 

 755, that I think his trap a failure. That's 

 where you're out, friend Dibbern. The 

 work of the trap was to catch that queen, 

 and it caught her. The regular thing would 

 have been to hive the swarm, and the trap 

 had the queen caught all right for that. 

 But I didn't want to hive the swarm. All I 

 wanted of the trap was to tell me the colony 

 had swarmed. It did that, saving me the 

 trouble of looking for queen-cells every ten 

 days up to the time the colony swarmed. I 

 left the colony till it was convenient for me 

 to have a controversy with it about the mat- 



ter of swarming; and I suppose in most 

 cases the queen would have remained in the 

 trap. 



For once I wish I hadn't put on so many 

 supers. It will be all right if clover takes 

 a fresh spurt, but otherwise there will be an 

 undesirable number of unfinished sections. 

 Yet the promise was so great, and the cut- 

 off so sudden, that I hardly blame myself. 

 Suspect I'd do the same thing again under 

 like conditions. [At one of our outyards I 

 put in a lot of frames of foundation to give 

 the bees room, and now I wish I hadn't. 

 The honey-flow that seemed to be so strong 

 was followed by chilly weather, and espe- 

 cially by cool nights. Some of the brood 

 chilled. In other years these nuclei would 

 have suffered from want of room, with pre- 

 cisely the same conditions that made it seem 

 necessary to put in foundation this year. — 

 Ed.] 



Replying to your queries, p. 805, Mr. Ed- 

 itor, this season is better than last in this 

 locality, and better than the average sea- 

 son. Nothing like so good, however, as it 

 promised. Up to July 20 it was great; then 

 suddenly robbers began to trouble, although 

 plenty of clover bloom was in sight. Grad- 

 ually the whiteness of clover faded out, al- 

 though there was no drouth. But it has 

 brightened up again, and Aug. 7 there is a 

 fine show of clover. Whether the bees get 

 any thing from it remains to be seen; but, 

 like a genuine bee-keeper, I'm hoping. 



Twelve hours later.— Been to work at the 

 bees since writing the foregoing, and there's 

 no question about the fresh start. No trou- 

 ble from robbers, 'and "honey shakes" — 

 that is, when you shake the bees off a comb 

 a flood of nectar flies out. [This is the kind 

 of reports we have been getting from other 

 bee-keepers. It looks decidedly as if there 

 would be belated crops in many sections, 

 when, early in the season, it was estimated 

 they would be without honey.— Ed.] 



"The Sunday closing law has finally tri- 

 umphed in Missouri. St. Louis police put 

 the lid on good and tight in St. Louis Co. yes- 

 terday."— Chicago daily, Aug. 7. — "That's 

 nothing to do with bee-keeping ? " Yes, it 



