54 



THE AMERICAN APICULTURIST. 



pie honey storage, ki this honey stay 

 there. Many losses occur from ex- 

 tracting closely all through the sea- 

 son, or cramping the stock in too 

 small a space to_ allow but little more 

 than the necessary brood, trusting to 

 fall forage or feeding for the winter's 

 supply. I never feed a stock of bees 

 anything for winter. If a stock lacks, 

 I give good sealed combs of honey ; 

 lacking that I break up the stock and 

 unite with another. Poor food, late 

 storage, or late feeding has caused 

 more loss to beekeepers than all else 

 combined. I have gone through the 

 same routine that you have, dividing 

 stocks too late to build up, not count- 

 ing on the season but doing the 

 increasing because I wanted to, ex- 

 tracting regardless of caution and all 

 this kind of work. Let a strong stock 

 alone, don't open it every time the 

 notion takes you ; let them have plenty 

 of good, early gathered, sealed honey 

 all through the season, and my word 

 for it you won't have a poor, weakly 

 stock in the fall. I am not writing 

 Iheory but what I had beaten into 

 me by hard, costly experience. Try 

 again, friend Todd. 

 Oneida, III. 



A GOOD REPORT OF THE 



AIIEY DRONE AND 



QUEEN TRAP. 



By MRS. S. . 



I WANT to tell you of a little expe- 

 rience that I have had with Alley's 

 combined drone and queen trap, and 

 see if you will not agree with me that, 

 in point of convenience and labor- 

 saving, it should be ranked along with 

 the honey and wax extractors and 

 smokers. On March 14, 1884, my 

 son and only child came home from 

 college, sick. His disease was typho- 

 malarial fever, which lasted him sev- 

 enty-two days during which time my 



bees increased from twenty to forty- 

 eight colonies by natural swarming. 

 Had it not been for two of the above 

 named traps that I had, it would have 

 been impossible for me to have se- 

 cured half the swarms, and at the 

 same time nursed and taken care of 

 my sick child. As it was, when a 

 a swarm would begin to come out I 

 would run and put a trap at the en- 

 trance, and by the time I could get 

 my empty hive in place with a few 

 frames of brood from the parent 

 stock in it, and the foundation all 

 right, the bees would miss their queen 

 and come back pell-mell in search 

 of her, and thus enter the new hive 

 at once. In about twenty minutes 

 the bees were hived and went to work 

 at once without further trouble or 

 ado, and I was back in the house with 

 my sick boy. In hiving them thus 

 I moved the old hive to a new loca- 

 tion and put the new one in its place, 

 and let the queen run in with the 

 bees. It was a beautiful sight to me 

 to see my golden Italians come pour- 

 ing in a stream, so to speak, from the 

 top of a tall elm tree into their new 

 hive, without any climbing of trees 

 or sawing off limbs, thus saving dis- 

 figuring the symmetry and beauty of 

 a favorite shade tree. I had no help 

 except a neighbor's litde boy. After 

 doing the chores at home he would 

 come over and stay a few hours in 

 the middle of the day to watch my 

 bees and tell me when they were 

 swarming. I do most truly and hear- 

 tily thank Mr. Alley for his invention, 

 and I would about as soon think of 

 going back to the old gum hive as 

 doing without the combined drone 

 and queen trap. We are having a 

 very mild winter so far here in Texas. 

 It has not been cold enough to form 

 ice worth speaking of but once, and 

 it all melted long before night. We 

 had a nice rain this evening, with a 

 litUe hail. 



Salalo, Texas, Jan. i, 1886. 



